Performance...I'm talkin Speed Baby!
 

Hello, I just installed Red Hat 7.3, never really used linux before save a brief stint with Mandrake 8.0, and im having some performance issues. Firstly here are my specs...
Video Card Nvidia GeForce 2Mx 384 megs 'o RAM
800 mHz Athalon and around 400 megs of swap file space

... my system seems to run fairly slow when trying out some of the programs available. For example tux racer doesn't play at all, the screen pops up but it takes minutes for the mouse to move accross the screen.

are there any tweaks i can employ to make my linux experience a more enjoyable one. is my system just too slow. any assistance would be appreciated

im also running gnome if that matters

You should search the forums here and there your question was answered many times, head to http://www.nvidia.com and get the latest nvidia drivers, read the docs carefully, and install them, video performance rocks afterwards.

true man, my 900mhz Athlon totaly changed after I installed the nvidia kernel and glx files.

Personally I find they work better if you download the source and compile it for your box.

I'd also suggest (if you have the time) recompiling your kernel or a new one to utilize the Athlon chip as the default red hat kernel is setup for an Intel 386 chip.

If your lazy like me I just get the newest kernel and doing make oldconfig so it just uses what you have but compiles for your processor.
You'll notice it will run faster after that as well.

good luck :-)

thanks for the tips... ow exactly do i recompile my kernel for the athalon... i have a book so i dont need the specifics but will i need any software or do i use an athalon compiler or what thanks

how to compile an kernel is here also please check out
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html

well I prefer to download whatever is the stable kernel from
kernel.org and just config it to whatever is working on your box... however I'm not a kernel guru so you may want other opinions on that :-)

in order to recompile my kernel do i have to download a knew kernel, i have Red Hat 7.3 and i seem to have the latest kernel offered, kernel.org's latest kernel is 2.4.18 ... i seem to have 2.5.4.

No, you don't have to download a new kernel, you can recompile the one you've got (as long as you've got the kernel source installed, it'll be on your distro's CDs).

Whether you download a new kernel or just recompile a current one, they should be put in /usr/src/linux.

A very brief rundown of kernel compiling:

• make xconfig
• make dep
• make clean
• make bzImage
• make bzlilo (optional)
• make modules
• make modules_install

The 'make xconfig' step should be done very slowly, and you should read everything regardless of whether you think you don't need it...such as SCSI - you'll need it even if you have an IDE burner.

The howto linked by Mr. PBHarris (above) is very good, but be prepared to read the whole thing before you attempt a kernel compile - it does seem to jump from section to section.

As for the NVidia drivers. Get the source code files, not the RPM ones. If you get the RPM ones, you'll have one hell of a time getting them to work on anything other than the exact specifications given on the site, if you go for the source code, you can get it to work on anything with only about 10 commands (or less).

Hope this helps.

Wait did you say that your kernel is 2.5.4?

I thought that is the second number is odd then that means it is a development kernel, which is not as stable as the ones with the second number being even.

If that is the case then you might be better off with a 2.4.18 kernel

oops I mis read, my kerel is 2.4.18

how can i tell if my kernel has compiled successfully or if i configured grub successfully, i think it was successful but chromium still runs at a snails pace

Nvidia
 

You *must* install the NVIDIA drivers for playing games with your vid card. NVIDIA does not open-source their drivers, therefore the default install of X comes with *no* 3D accelleration, therefore 3D (glx) program will run slow, no matter what you do with kernel.

You might also like to check out hdparm, which will allow you to switch on UDMA hard drive mode (disabled by default). This can seriously improve performance, and it comes on the RedHat CDs.

Read the manuals first (man hdparm) because you can damage your system, but your Athlon system should be fine with something like:

/sbin/hdparm -d1 -c1 /dev/hda

You can test speeds before and after this command with:

/sbin/hdparm -t /dev/hda

Put this in /etc/rc.d/rc.local to enable UDMA mode everytime you reboot.

HTH