i've just installed mandrake 9.2 on my other pc with windows, and i noticed how slow it is compared with windows on the same system...not just slow at loading up the KDE thing, but slow in doing everything else aswell (opening files, programs etc.)

so my question is first, is this normal (i assume it is), and second...would a computer with 512MB DDR RAM and 3.06GHz Pentium 4 processor running mandrake be faster that a computer with 128MB RAM and 833MHz Pentium 3 processor running windows me?

I have never used a distribution like Mandrake, but my only linux system that ever had windows on it is much faster at doing everything it does then when it ran windows. I am guessing you have a crap ton of stuff running on the background you don't need. Try turning off all the services you don't use and see if it is any faster for you.

No this is defenetly not normal. However there you may be running thousands of programs in the background with out noticing. (A little like opening the M$ job control) to check wich programs, you have in the background, type
su -c 'ps -A'
(this ask for your root passwd, althoug the ps -A happely runs without root privilegs, it may not show all your running processes.

Welcome to the free world.

Actually, recnet Linux distros seem to have become quite bloated. I'm finding that Windows 2000 is a nice operating system that runs pretty fast.

My initiall install of Calderra OpenLinux 1.2 way back in 1997 was super fast compaired to Windows 95. Then Slackware for a while and Turbo Linux 6.0 was really really fast.. (my best linux experience yet)
Perhaps install an older distro for some quick linux on that p 833.

After that it was Mandrake 8.1 (slower but still faster then windows 2000, and it had lots of nice features.)

Now, it's Mandrake 9.2, and yes, it seems to crawl sometimes.. If you are doing primarilly web browsing, then I suggest Netscape 4.7 or Netscape 7.1 SKIP netscape 6.0 as it was horribly slow.. Or, perhaps the latest version of mozilla.
Also, try the mandrake configureation tools and look through your startup services, see what you can eliminate.. You might also check into your X server, and see if you have the appropriate accelerated video drivers.. Mandrake does not ship with Nvidia Geforce drivers, and rather uses the Vesa drivers which is horrible. And lastly, you might recompile your kernel and trim some of the fat for a modest speed up..

ps aux
will show you all of the programs running and their owners.

Also, avoid Windows ME if you can.. it's in contention for the worst operating system I've ever used...

I really doubt that any unneeded background services are noticeably affecting speed. First of all, they typically aren't running 99.99% of the time (or so). Secondly, if you're low on memory, such processes are just about guaranteed to be swapped out, anyway. Unneeded services should be killed primarily for security reasons.

I'm tempted to lay most of the blame on KDE. I've always (since 1996) found Linux to be MUCH snappier than Windows on the same hardware, but I don't run desktop environments. It's hard to know for sure. Anyone who sometimes runs 'em and sometimes doesn't?

Upgrading to a 2.6 kernel is (almost) always a good idea. The responsiveness increases are very noticeable. You can REALLY push the system and still not feel any latency. For example, you can be compiling a kernel and browsing the web and doing desktop operations at the same time - in the past, this would have caused noticeable choppiness, but it's no longer even noticeable.

I've a lot of respect for Mandrake 9.1 as it was my first experience of Linux. However, it comes configured to run on a wide variety of different systems and it was quite slow to boot as a result. But once it was up it was as fast as Windows XP. It wasn't easy to alter it without the wheels falling off somewhere. If you go tweaking, you may end up reinstalling. The way to get a fast system is to build it yourself with just the programs you need and everything individually configured to run on your hardware. Linux From Scratch is not massively quicker than Windows. But it is quicker, more stable, more secure and much nicer to look at.

i know...windows me is the worst os i've ever used , which is why i wanted to switch to linux

so kde could be the problem then...which desktop environments run faster then?

and "Upgrading to a 2.6 kernel"...do i dare ask how to do that?

You can't really blame the fact that a distribution includes a ton of software on your system being bloated. Because if you recall, during the install you had a perfect oppertunity to pick and choose what packages were installed and you could have gone ahead and deselected all the bloat if you had wanted to.

This is a little out of date as Nvidia have released drivers for the 2.6 kernel now but the main thrust of it is good http://linuxfromscratch.org/pipermai...er/002290.html

Yes, "Individual Package Selection" Took about 1 hour for me to read and uncheck everything I didn't want! For a poor newbie... that would have been overwhelming, and they would have been stuck with bloatware. Do I need this package? Do I need that one? Most of the ones that say "Important" or "Must Have" make me wonder.. Why, must you have XMMS, Mpeg123, XMovie, Gimp, Eye of Gnome, qiv, 13 development packages for Perl.. I could go on and on! Mandrake IS bloated. Natulas and such slow gnome down unneccasarily.. what happened to gmc? Evolution instead of pine? All modern operating systems are becoming this way. more eye candy and less snappiness.. For someone that was raised on Amiga OS etc.. I find this trend of more is better kind of disstressing.

It's almost eaiser to set up Slackware from scratch and install what I want from source code.. no scratch that, it would have been eaiser if the installer didn't overwhelm me by default and leave 30291 rpms in it's wake.. Most distros used to fit on one, or slackware was always 2 cd's.. no more.. now we have 3 with the option of eight!! Size restraints are no longer a practical consideration, and the more commercial linux becomes, the "more is better" it becomes.
Just my opinion!

Found with a 1.7ghz Celeron/256mb ddr, they're roughly the same......... if the betas are anything to go by, looks like Mandrake 10 will surpass XP in terms of "speed/responsiveness".......... interesting that its happened so "soon"..........

my linux-box runs 'much' faster now, with the Nvidia 3d acceleration graphic Driver, compared to the default kernel one.

It's much faster not only special applications, but all around.