Kernel tweaks/patches to improve responsiveness?
 

Hello, I have a question about improving the GUI responsiveness and load time of Linux applications. I have an old computer, 300 MHz, 128MB RAM, 8MB graphics, slow hardrive, and it runs RH9 and KDE 3.1 tolerably well. I would like to see how fast I can get this thing to run, without upgrading hardware. I have no back-end processes that I really need to worry about, it's just a desktop. I recompiled the kernel, and I changed HZ=100 to HZ=1000 somewhere in the sources, sorry can't remember where. Anyway, it made no difference, although one person said it cut app load time by 1/5. Are there any other tweaks to the sources that really work? How about patches, such as the preemptive scheduler patch for Linux 2.5? (Where is this patch located?) Thanks for the help!

The 2.6 kernels seem faster, i think the preempt patch as well as other "desktop enhancements" were included. Forget kde, its not fast on a 1ghz machine either (mine) even with the 2.6 kernels. I dont know if its possible to throw enough hardware at kde to make it truly fast. Try fluxbox or enlightenment.

Yeah, there are a few ways to reword that:

;)

Yeah, KDE is slow. I've seen it sorta fast, but when compared to something lighter (XFCE, E, Flux...) it'll lose in a speed contest almost everytime. I don't think it's meant to be fast, but rather "all in one". If you are looking for something that can do everything, and do it pretty well, KDE is a great tool for that. But if you are looking for something where speed meets performance and usability, you've gotta step outta the DE market and strap on a Light Window Manager.

Cool

KDE is only terribly slow to start up. The rest of it runs reasonably well. The thing is, I use QT apps, (mainly Konqueror) and they start up slow (even slower) in other desktops.