Hi, I'm running a pretty much standard install of RedHat 8.0 with GNOME (Looks better than KDE ) and as few services as possible (+apache and samba) on a 500mhz Athlon processor.

I've found that Mozilla takes about 10-12 seconds to start, and gedit takes about 7 seconds to start. Everything seems to lag slightly, and when I am deleting text, it will continue on after I let go of backspace

What I want to know is is this normal performance? 10 seconds for a browser seems very loonngg to me, expecially since I previously had K-Meleon (mmmm) poping up almost instantly (although it is optimised for pure speed, but still mozilla code) under Windows98 Also, gedit seems to be a simple Linux version of Notepad, yet it is very slow to load.

Are there well known problems that can cause this if abnormal? At this speed I couldn't imagine working on an older computer... later I will try to use one of the alternative Window Managers.

Some good news is that after pointing them to the right programs, my friends all happily use my Linux box for chatting and surfing, all they do really. The only exception is Kazza, which I will look around for replacements for.

Thanks for your advice.

I'm not sure about the speed problems, but try using WINE (WINE Is Not an Emulator). Its a program which can use your Windows 98 DLLs to run KaZaA under Linux. Its been tried, and it works; it even comes with a setup program if you don't want to get your hands dirty.

Cheers

Thanks, I will try that later, although I don't have Win98 on this computer... does it come with the dlls?

ya, you might try one of the smaller, faster wm like blackbox, fluxbox, window maker...they are simple but fast. also might try using pheonix. it is a fast browser made from mozilla code. it supports tabbed browsing and many other features.
As far as gnome looking better than kde hmm dunno
http://members.cox.net/sand_man_/kde.jpg
hopefully you will find a faster wm. good luck.
/edit if you have trouble with wine. try p2p programs like gnutella or limeware. they work great for me.

Hi

Before you do anything else, have you made sure you have your hard drives working at full speed? There's a great thread somewhere here about HD optimisation, check it out first. If it still seems too slow, then I'm not sure a different WM will change things. I use RH8 on a 1Ghz athlon, RH7.3 felt a bit faster, but I doubt it was. I'm off to try slack, will report back eventually!

Jim

Thanks, I'll go find the HDD thread.

As far as Gnome vs KDE, I like Gnome better because the grips (bits you drag to move them) are very faint and only appear for the window list. I also prefer the edge of the border better, it looks cleaner and more modern

Ok, it runs at 11.66 MB/sec, which seems fine for my IDE drive. I found another thread where somebody found Netscape taking 18 secs ot load on a 350mhz system, so I'm taking this as normal.

I've decided I'll move the hard drive with linux onto it to my faster Athlon 1.6 system, is that a good idea? Would it just be better to do a clean install on that system??

If you just move the drive, it "should" run kudzu and detect all the changed hardware, never seems to work for me, but if you haven't got any mission critical data on the drive, give it a go.

Alternatively, you could do an upgrade using the install disks. Saves time formatting disk etc, can also preserve data if you've setup your filesystem properly.

Jim

Thanks, I'll just switch it over and hope it detects all the changes

I am running RH 8.0 on a PII-233mhz system , I prefer Gnome(actually gnome2 is what ships with RH8.0) but KDE runs SO much faster, however it takes in gnome less than 10 seconds to get any of the webbrowsers up, a console window less than a second, I think I only have 64 mb of ram, MAYBE 128, I can't remember what is in which machine, but it runs quite decent, I may switch to KDE but every time I say I'm gonna do it, I look at gnome and just don't think I can.....

-robf