Fedora running slowly on Gateway 200ARC

mohaas05 · 10-14-2008, 05:56 PM

I installed Fedora 9 on a Gateway 200ARC laptop and for some reason it runs exceptionally slowly. Even things like opening menus takes some time and doing anything while running yum is nearly impossible. The laptop, despite having a 1ghz processor, only has 256mb of ram which may be an issue but I have also installed Fedora 9 on a Dell PIII laptop with the same amount of ram but with only 733mhz processing power. Is Linux not optimized for this hardware? Or may it be another problem?

irishbitte · 10-14-2008, 08:19 PM

Probably to do with the graphics card rather than the memory / cpu speed?

srtechy · 10-14-2008, 11:35 PM

what Desktop did you install, Gnome? On old hardware, you will most likely want a light weight desktop like XFCE, along with a light weight browser, like Opera.

mohaas05 · 10-15-2008, 11:25 AM

It uses the Intel 82855GM. Not sure if that is the problem but X did crash when I tried to run compiz.

I don't think its that though because killing the updater processes seemed to speed things up quite a bit.

irishbitte · 10-15-2008, 03:26 PM

I would agree with srtechy,

Quote:

what Desktop did you install, Gnome? On old hardware, you will most likely want a light weight desktop like XFCE, along with a light weight browser, like Opera

Hold down ctrl+alt, hit f1, and that will bring you to a console session. Login, and install the XFCE desktop:

Code:

yum install xfce

or something like that should do the trick. See how you go.

mohaas05 · 10-15-2008, 05:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by irishbitte

I would agree with srtechy,

Hold down ctrl+alt, hit f1, and that will bring you to a console session. Login, and install the XFCE desktop:

Code:

yum install xfce

or something like that should do the trick. See how you go.

I already have XFCE installed. But I don't think its GNOME since it works like a charm on my older laptop with the same amount of RAM. I might try my live CD on it and see if its a fedora issue or just one with that installation.

srtechy · 10-15-2008, 05:34 PM

256M is marginal for Gnome. You won't have room to do much without swapping. You can check for swapping by watching the hard disk light when the machine feels sluggish.

mohaas05 · 10-15-2008, 07:46 PM

mmkay i ran free -m and found that indeed the RAM is almost completely used. Guess i'll stick with xfce or fluxbox.