Very Computer

by **Mark Johnso** » Wed, 29 Nov 2000 11:48:12

I've done the developer installation of Mandrake 7.2 running KDE. Things
seem to run very slow. My machine is a Pentium II 400 MHz with 256 MB
RAM. I'm a first time user of linux. Should things be running so
slowly? At work I have the same setup running on a PIII800/256MB and
it's very spunky even over Exceed. I understand that there is a big
difference between my home machine and my work machine, but I've heard
all these stories about how linux runs well on even anemic systems. I'm
kind of disappointed with the whole thing.

Netscape 4 and 6 both seem to be total beasts, I guess that is to be
expected. The newsreaders KRN and Pan seem to be a bit beasts too but to
a lesser extent, is this your experience too?

Even excusing the browsers, just clicking on Desktop Properties seems to
take forever to load.

I tried the Helix Gnome stuff, but it was so painfully slow that I
reverted back to KDE.

What's the ideal hardware to run a typical developer installation of
Linux? (I did a developer installation because I have to be able to
download the source and make the applications I want to run since
sometimes the plain binaries are not available.)

by **Paul Kimo** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

> I've done the developer installation of Mandrake 7.2 running KDE. Things
> seem to run very slow. My machine is a Pentium II 400 MHz with 256 MB
> RAM. I'm a first time user of linux. Should things be running so
> slowly? At work I have the same setup running on a PIII800/256MB and
> it's very spunky even over Exceed. I understand that there is a big
> difference between my home machine and my work machine, but I've heard
> all these stories about how linux runs well on even anemic systems.

Is it seeing all of your memory? (Is it slow because it's swapping?
The easiest test for that is listening for disk activity ...)

Quote:> Netscape 4 and 6 both seem to be total beasts, I guess that is to be
> expected. The newsreaders KRN and Pan seem to be a bit beasts too but to
> a lesser extent, is this your experience too?

> Even excusing the browsers, just clicking on Desktop Properties seems to
> take forever to load.

> I tried the Helix Gnome stuff, but it was so painfully slow that I
> reverted back to KDE.

The desktop environments (KDE, Gnome) reportedly consume huge amounts of
memory. You can use top(1) to see where it's going.

--
Paul Kimoto
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text. Any images,
hyperlinks, or the like shown here have been added without my consent,
and may be a violation of international copyright law.

by **Chris L** » Sun, 31 Dec 1899 09:00:00

Check your hdparm, it seems the MDK7.2 has turn OFF the DMA and
READAHEAD settings. They used to be in MDK7.0 at least.

Regards,
Chris

> > I've done the developer installation of Mandrake 7.2 running KDE. Things
> > seem to run very slow. My machine is a Pentium II 400 MHz with 256 MB
> > RAM. I'm a first time user of linux. Should things be running so
> > slowly? At work I have the same setup running on a PIII800/256MB and
> > it's very spunky even over Exceed. I understand that there is a big
> > difference between my home machine and my work machine, but I've heard
> > all these stories about how linux runs well on even anemic systems.

> Is it seeing all of your memory? (Is it slow because it's swapping?
> The easiest test for that is listening for disk activity ...)

> > Netscape 4 and 6 both seem to be total beasts, I guess that is to be
> > expected. The newsreaders KRN and Pan seem to be a bit beasts too but to
> > a lesser extent, is this your experience too?

> > Even excusing the browsers, just clicking on Desktop Properties seems to
> > take forever to load.

> > I tried the Helix Gnome stuff, but it was so painfully slow that I
> > reverted back to KDE.

> The desktop environments (KDE, Gnome) reportedly consume huge amounts of
> memory. You can use top(1) to see where it's going.

> --
> Paul Kimoto
> This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text. Any images,
> hyperlinks, or the like shown here have been added without my consent,
> and may be a violation of international copyright law.

Very Computer

Linux runs slow on PII400/256MB

Linux runs slow on PII400/256MB

Linux runs slow on PII400/256MB

Linux runs slow on PII400/256MB