My Linux is too sloooow

[Ron_Jeremy]

This is my first real Linux experience. I initially wanted to go with SUSE 7.3, but was unable to find the correct iso's (I could only find the Live-Eval iso, but since install took 15 minutes I think something went wrong). So now I'm running Mandrake 8.1.

Setup was pretty straightforward, even though I chose the Advanced Option.

I really don't know what to make of this OS. Yeah, I find it real complicated, but that's OK. I'm still trying to find "My Computer", hehe. What I can't figure out is why it's so damn slow. Opening a folder or icon takes from 2 to 4 seconds, depending on what it is. Is 850MHz & 384MB RAM not enough?

Considering I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, you can already assume I have a million questions. But, I'd rather get into a good Linux book & see how much I can figure out on my own first.
What I would like to ask you all, is how to speed up my system? Can I make some kind of config tweaks or something. I think my swapfile is close to the amount of RAM I have, so it shouldn't be the problem.

Cheers,

Ron_Jeremy

If you loan a friend $20 & never see them again, it was worth it.

 

[r2k]

Mine too...
Do you think this has to do with the GUI programs we're using? (I installed RedHat 7.2 with Gnome as the graphic shell). I mean Microsoft is pouring money in Windows and/or also has gathered years of experience in designing and optimizing their GUI to x86 PCs. Also I read that you have to put 2 times the amount of RAM aside for the SWAP partition. But with 384 MBs?(I creates a SWAP of 512 MBs on my Celeron 466/128 MB RAM)
I'm also new to Linux. There's a very good book on Linux that I'm reading these days which has tons of usable info:

Linux Bible
by Candace Leiden and Terry Collings ISBN: 0764546627
Hungry Minds © 2001, 763 pages

I think www.books24x7.com has it online. You must be subscribed though...

Ah, and try playing some of the little games while you're not thinking about doing anything special ;-)

 

[Ron_Jeremy]

Hey R2K, is your Linux kinda "ugly" looking like mine? I mean, the fonts (especially in the web browsers) look really bad to me. I'm using Netscape at this moment as I type this & can barely read my own text.

Cheers,

Ron_Jeremy

If you loan a friend $20 & never see them again, it was worth it.

 

[Ben_Porter]

I assume you guys are using the default Gnome and KDE file managers, Nautilus and Konqueror, respectively. These are rather slow to start up. There is a reason that these are so slow to start up, but it's kind of complicated to explain. I find that once they're open, they're not too slow to move around in. It's the getting started part that's annoying. But it is the software and not your computer.

There are a couple of file managers that I know of that aren't so slow: Gnome Midnight Commander ('gmc' from the command line, should already be installed w/ Redhat and Mandrake) and <A HREF="http://rox.sourceforge.net/" target="_new">Rox</A> ('rox' from the command line). If you downloaded and burned all the Mandrake iso's, installing Rox should be fairly easy: type 'su' at the command line and you'll be prompted for your root password, then it's 'urpmi rox' and then 'exit' to get out of root. Urpmi is a Mandrake specific tool. Don't know of any equivalent in Redhat.

Some programs do have real ugly font's. Netscape especially. It's something that's being worked on and shouldn't be an issue in a few more months. KDE should have a tick box buried in the preferences that allows you to turn on anti-aliased fonts. It still has problems because getting really high quality fonts is expensive and they can't afford to give them away for free. I do believe that you get much better fonts if you buy the boxed version of a distribution.

And about Suse: They only provide iso's that run from cd. They DO NOT provide iso's that you can install from. Yes, I know it's annoying and maybe not the smartest thing to do, but they're still around and still helping out with some major projects, so I'm not going to complain.

I hope this helps some.

 

[r2k]

Actually yes, I use Nautilus. Anyway, I don't have any problems with MoZilla and its fonts... I also personalized Nautilus a bit for getting closer to my taste.
Ah, and will you explain please?!

 

[Ben_Porter]

Good that you don't have any problems with fonts. Some people do. See above. I personally had problems with fonts in Netscape 4.7. I was just trying to give an explanation as to why. .

What is it that you would like me to clarify?

 

[r2k]

The thing you said about Nautilus starting too slow but then working reasonably fast. You said that was hard to explain (not impossible I gather?!) and I wondered what the reason was. Because I paid attention to this matter and you're right.

 

[Ben_Porter]

I'll try and explain it the way I understand it. It's still a bit over my head, so if you later find out I'm wrong, please don't be angry with me. . But I'm pretty sure I've got it close to being right.

Konqueror and Nautilus, etc. are written in C++. Most of Microsoft's programs, including Explorer, are also written in C++. The way that these programs have been made, they have to use another program called a run-time linker. The run-time linker goes through and connects the libraries to the program that is using them. The problem is that the run-time linker used under Linux has many more varied features and is much slower than the Microsoft one for the type of linking that is needed by Explorer, Nautilus and Konqueror. On the other hand, the Microsoft one also has various speed hacks for the particular type of linking that gui apps use, but it is much more limited in the features of the Linux one. The weird part is that this type of linking isn't sped up very much by any increase in a computer's speed. Not a faster processor or more ram, etc. (not sure about a faster hard drive). Also, alot of this work is done for Explorer on bootup under Windows, so that it appears faster than it actually is. Under Linux, you get to see how slow actions like these actually are.

This is a problem that affects most of KDE and there is talk that they are working on actually increasing the speed of the run-time linker under Linux. Also, since it's basically the same problem that faces Nautilus, any work in this area will help it out too. So, the problem is being worked on.

I hope that wasn't an overly technical description, but I'm not sure of any other way to say it. Hope it helps anyway.

 

[Guest]

In addition to the above, both suffer from the amount of work they have to do when you open a window, eg figuring out what each file is and rendering the previews.

Large speed ups can be had from Nautilus by turning off smooth graphics, or change the speed tradeoff settings. Newer versions are supposed to be a little faster than older ones, but because much of it depends on other components, many packages should be updated to get the full benefit. Ximian Red Carpet might help here.

You can change to GMC if you want, by telling Nautilus not to draw the desktop, then telling Gnome control-center to use Gnome to draw the desktop (and re login). This should then let you use the faster and less featureful GMC as your file manager.

BTW, a good way to demonstrate the slowness of the library loading/linking and client/server registration etc is to run Konquerer from within Gnome, or Nautilus from within KDE, so that the required components aren't already waiting.

About the fonts... Fonts often look nasty because the wrong settings are/were often used in /etc/X11/fs/config. Make sure the bitmap fonts (72dpi and 100dpi) have :unscaled after them, and don't have duplicate entries. Additional M$ ttf fonts can be downloaded from the M$ website, which might help display some webpages properly.

edit: For decent web browsing, try galeon, opera, or mozilla.


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by rjb263 on 12/28/01 10:44 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[r2k]

Thank you very much guys. Valuable info. And I agree with rjb263, MoZilla looks better than Netscape Navigator.

 

[Guest]

One first thing that should be done, at least by us Nvidia users is to download the Linux /X11 drivers from the Nvidia website so in order to get accelerated graphics. It does wonders. Try playing Tuxracer before and after installing the drivers and you see what I mean...

 

[r2k]

Exactly! Although editing the XF86Config-4 file in text mode with a hideous tool like ED was not too much fun (I had to recall working with EDLIN in early DOS days and had to read the MAN page for it for a couple minutes ;-) and very powerful I must admit, it resembles Perl's regular expressions' functionality) And TuxRacer's a charm making me boot Linux more and more! I must say I'm VERY HAPPY I chose the MX400 over Radeon VE if only because of nVidia's great drivers for Linux. [the VE had very little difference in price with my MSI MX400 when I bought it about 2 months ago although the MX400 has some odd problems with my BIOS and POST screens]<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by r2k on 01/01/02 11:48 AM.</EM></FONT></P>