I'm running Arch on my laptop and desktop. There's no problem on the laptop, but I'm having problems with X on the desktop.
It takes a long time for X to start after "startx", and it takes a long time for applications to open once I'm in X. I know this may be a problem with my network, but for now the desktop and laptop are sharing the same router via ethernet. til I can get the wireless working on the laptop, so they have very similar settings except that the ip addresses and modules are different, but I don't think I've missed anything obvious in this regard.
I get a strange warning after shutting down X. This has only been happening (the warning) since I installed fluxbox-devel 0.9.12-2 so I don't know if it's related to the sluggish X behaviour or not (I think not though), but here it is;

*** WARNING: 'Workspace<n>' actions are deprecated! Use 'Workspace <n>' instead

I'm assuming this is related to ~/.fluxbox.init though I'm not sure how.

Any hints for getting X to start quicker and execute programs more quickly once open are much appreciated.

Thanks

what kind of processor load is your system under with this? what spec is the machine?

the fluxbox error is totally unrelated btw.

Can you explain how I should assess the processor load while the X server is starting up?

For a while last night, it seemed to kick into gear, the programs opened quickly and I was able to open X quickly. I couldn't think what might have caused this, but when I rebooted the box, everything was back to its bad normal self again. I'm thinking this is network related as I'm having a hard time using pacman as well. It seems to be always slow - this may be because I don't have good mirrors set up, I'll check that later.

My pertinent specs are as follows

Dell Dimension 8200
Pentium IV 1.8 GHz
256 MB RAM
10/100 PCI fast ethernet NIC (runs off the tulip module)

Connection through DSL via NAT router setup with static IP address assigned by the router.

Cheers and thanks

while you run X, run "top" in a console to see where the CPU is being used up, assuming that it is the CPU being whopped by something that's slowing things down. also look at "free" to see how your RAM is being used up.

ok, I managed to correct the problem and it wasn't too difficult to do.
when setting up /etc/rc.conf, I had given a name to HOSTNAME, but had forgotten to edit /etc/hosts. As a result, X was looking for an invalid hostname. Things seem to be back on track now. At least I got to find out about "free" and "top". Very useful. Thanks!

I made the same mistake! now i have solved this problem.thank you!

That's cool.
Enjoy Arching
Cheers!