Currently, the graphical installer is exceptionally slow, and a big part of the reason is that mtrr wasn't enabled in the -boot kernel. Now that it is (see bug 47296), anaconda should take advantage of it. (IIRC, XFree86 3.x doesn't do this automatically for fbdev devices. I could be wrong.)
The installer uses XFree86 4 if it can. I'm not sure whether XFree 4 user mtrr by default or not. If it does, then the problem should already be fixed.
Seems like this is more of an X problem than an installer problem. Changing component.
This is not an X problem. XFree86 uses MTRR if it is available. If it is not available then it is not built into the kernel. I am reassigning to the kernel component, however IMHO it is just unneeded code bloat in the boot kernel. I'll leave that decision up to the kernel team though.
It's not that big, so I enabled it, as a "feel" speedup of the installer is worth it imho. Note: we need /proc mounted for this to actually work. Does the installer have this ? (I assume so)
Yes, /proc is mounted during install.
Does the roswell installer have this ? (I find it hard to judge on my machines)
I'll install roswell this weekend and report my findings here.
Roswell is better. Scroll views no longer suck. :)