Very slow responses when running pandora (in FireFox)

English Applications
#1

Okay, this is not exactly something I would expect people to be concerned about but it is annoying when I see Linux seemingly not as good as that other OS.

I have a pretty quick machine, quad core 2.66GHz duo processor, nice ASUS motherboard, high speed memory bus and so on. Basically, this is not a machine that’s getting “maxed out” by playing some music.

Load averages for the 4 processors according to htop are 1.48, 1.25, 0.85. Looking at the System Monitor CPU history I am seeing an average of perhaps 25% load.

However, when I am in a shell, I am getting a second or longer waits between key presses at times.

My only guess as to why is that may be is that the streaming audio is on some very high priority so everything else gets put on the back burner.

In any case, does anyone have any experience with this and a possible tweak that would give everything else a “fair go” so things didn’t seem so unresponsive?

Thanks,
Reg

#2

I cannot speak to this experience directly. The last time I used Pandora I was told that my country was not supported. I suppose the reason lies in per-country licensing.

Anyway, I would ask if your experience is the same in other browsers. Have you tried Pandora in Chromium? Opera? Rekonq/Arora?
And if so, is your experience the same as in Firefox?