linux slow xp fast?
 

I have a microtel pc from walmart. My system specs are as follow..

p4 2.4 ghz
128 ddr ram
40 gig hard drive
lan on board
ac 97 audio
52 x cd rom
48 24 48 16 memorex dvd cdrw combo drive
pro savage ddr 16 mb on board

Now every time i install linux it is way slower than windows xp(it is slower than win 95) I have installed redhat 9 and mandrake 9.1 they both run slow. A friend of mine told me that they should run just as fast as xp... i really want to trash windows, but if linux is going to be that slow for me then i dunno if i want to trash windows. I really need help..... I order suse 9.1 .,., maybe it will do the trick for me???


Please help

Well. First... I cant even beleive that windows xp is fast with only 128mb of DDR. I would say you should at least run 256mb minimum especially if your going to be burning lots of stuff.

As for linux. I'm no expert or anything, but Linux usually isn't as fast on x86 computers as windows is. Mainly i beleive because drivers are made an optimized commerically for windows, as for linux, very few companies put out optimized drivers that run on linux's or drivers at all. I've never felt that Linux has run faster than windows doing windows type operation.

Linux's strong points aren't to mimic windows type operation. I feel linux is best used as a programming console or server environment. Another huge advantage of linux of course is that its free! in almost everyway possible, and there is lots of support out on the web such as these forums.

But. Do tell me. what distro are you using and what version?

Try for example vector linux on an old computer, say a 200MHz with 32 megs of ram and then try xp on the same box, and we'll see what the result is. Personally I use slackware, it runs circles around XP on this box, except boot time maybe. If you want speed, don't use distros like redhat/mandrake, they're not fast, they're do it all for you user friendly. I agree, they are the ones to compare with xp, but that does not make linux slow.

Hi mcs

One thing I would suggest is to turn off any un-needed services that run in the background

If you su to Root user on the command line then type:

chkconfig --list | less

you'll see what services are set to run automatically on boot up in each run level - more specifically for run level 5

chkconfig --list | grep 5:on

To stop a service from starting at next boot-up :

chkconfig crond off

(for example)

i'll debate that. maybe out of the box, this maybe true, but you sure as heck can tweak them to perform better. most apps on my 1 ghz laptop open and work just as fast as their counterparts in windows. the only apps i noticed opening slow is openoffice and mozilla. but do a 'man hdparm' and set up hdparm in one of your start up scripts. there's more to hdparm than just enabling dma. for instance:

hdparm -q -d1 -q -m16 -q -u1 -q -c3 /dev/hda

that's the line i put in my /etc/rc.d/rc.local with a few optimizations that certainly does help when opening programs and other file i/o procedures.

http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/li...29/hdparm.html

I agree with wh33t. I ran windows xp with 128 mb of ram and it ran like crap on two computers.

Make sure you're not comparing the boot time to windows xp. One thing about linux is that it loads lit bits of everything into your memory at boot, and manages the memory far better then windows xp. You may notice if you check that linux uses almost all of your memory at startup, even with my 1 GB of memory. I have impressed many people with the speed of mandrake on my computer, and I haven't done any teaking to my computer what-so-ever.

But, speed isn't the reason you should go into linux. Linux is an OS that's open source and completely customizable. Have you ever seen Microsoft give you the option to add your own features and buttons to outlook? I think not. If you want speed, go for slackware. You might be awhile learning how to use it but it will run faster then any OS today. Mandrake and Redhat were made to be easy... just like windows was. (no offense to anybody out there)

If you want speed, go for FreeBSD. But it's not Linux. It's Unix.

So its a speed thing now eh? If you want speed on the x86 architecture go with Dos. Sell your current machine hardware for whatever you payed for it, except that windows xp home license, those oem license stickers are like $100 bills. Keep that for safe keeping. Then take $20 and go buy a 486 Dx4100 and boot Ms-Dos 5.

You cant go wrong!!!!

I'm sorry I wasted everyones time with this post. I'm tired and this is my last post of the night.

Wh33t

LOL... that's the price for speed

thanks for the info everyone, I guess i just need some more ram. Has anyone use suse 9.0? i just baught it off there site. I just thought linux would be a little more speedy than xp because the sys requirments were not as high.

is that onboard savage pro supported by that version of xfree?
if not, the vesa server would be running, and would be really slow.

it sets up the card has a savage 4 8 meg..but it has 16 meg in the bios.. no hardware acceleration either.

If linux is saying that your video card is a 4 or 8mb card, then you can probably check around on the web to see if there a newer driver that better matches your cards performance. And for speed. I think slackware is the way to go, from what i've been reading, its the quicker one out there.

Wh33t

Heh ... I had XP Pro preinstalled on my notebook,
it didn't last 2 days ;) ... XP booted in 1:20, Slack
8.1 boots in 0:50 ...

Two things that definitely will be slower in Linux
is Browsers like NS or Moz compared to Explorer,
and OO compared to Office200X


Cheers,
Tink

OO is written Java. Ofcourse Java based applications are slower, about 20 times, than native applications. But the performance is improving. Always try to download the latest J2RE from sun. The latest version is 1.4.2 which start-up time is 50% or so faster than the previous ones.
But it's still slow ofcourse.