Hi !!...., here's another newbie searching for answers.

i'm running RH9 with Gnome 2.2 as window manager. I have been searching high and low for some answers and solutions but to no avail. There have been some sites with helpful hints but were not useful to me cos I dont understand fully linux jargons.

I've encountered slow performance after launching some windows in the Gnome environment. This includes minimizing/maximizing windows, dragging 'em et all. So I tried to rip those fancy stuff away like disabling icons on menu and so on.... and then, I came across another helpful tip, which is enabling the 'wireframe' mode in Gnome. I went to Gnome site and searched the user's guide:

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7.2.3. To Reduce CPU Usage by Turning On Wireframe Mode

The Metacity window manager has a wireframe mode for when you move and resize windows. When wireframe mode is turned on, only the outline of windows is displayed when you move and resize windows. The contents of the window do not need to be updated during the move or resize. The contents of the window are displayed when the move or resize is complete.

To turn on wireframe mode, run the following command:

# gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/metacity/general/wireframe_move_resize true
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I then launched gconf and added 'wireframe_move_resize" entry as bool type and the box checked. Nothing much happened, so I thought it may require a reboot, when I logged back on and tried to drag windows around, things started to lag ((( The contents of window is still updated during the dragging process. Am I missing something ? I'm currently using 'Simple' theme, seems to me the lightest among other themes.

I am still looking for a solution to enabling 3D hardware acceleration on my video card. It is a Trident Cyberblade/i7d and the 3D box is grayed out

Also, I often use the terminal. As I'm so so new to linux, there's so much to learn and explore. I gave vim a try to edit and read documents, and this is what happened. I launched vi abc.txt Then after viewing (without editing), i hit Ctrl-Z to close it. I exit the terminal and was prompted with something bout "stopped jobs". I did not know much but all I knew was typing 'jobs' and found vim with a + next to it. So I tried fg and vim came back up and I was at where I quit the viewer. If I typed exit twice at the terminal, the vi process still existed in the process list and took more than 90% of cpu cycles. What should I do ? At the moment, I use 'more' to read instead.

At least, the day isnt entirely screwed. I managed to dual boot RH 9 with XP with ease, and share a FAT partition with XP. Ya, thinking back, it was real easy, but my first attempt on dual-booting gave me hell, and that was just less than a month ago So apart from some minor problems, things are going very very well. But knowing my system, every minor tweak adds up to a whole lot in the end.

I appreciate any input and thank you i nadvance.

My laptop:
AMD K6-2 450 with MMX
Trident Cyberblade/i7d
160mb RAM
Redhat9 with Gnome running at resolution 1024x768

What are you comparing the performance to? Bear in mind the vintage of the processor you are using and the amount of memory you have. My personal observation is that you are fairly fortunate that you get any performance given that the gui is really designed for much more sophisticated equipment. I don't think you'll squeeze much more out without more RAM and perhaps increasing your swap partition.

why don't you just jump right into fluxbox or blackbox? they're low memory-consuming window managers and if you give it time, you'll stop using gnome. the latest version of fluxbox actually has some gnome features that are nice to use at times but i'm getting more and more comfortable in flux...

I've been using IceWM on Pentium III 500mhz boxes. It's pretty much instantaneous response time as opposed to KDE/Gnome. Fluxbox IS instantaneous, but a little to 'thin' for me. One of the benefits of Linux/GNU is that you get some choice in the matter.

How does one go about switching window managers?

I'm running KDE on RH 9. Would I simply download, say, the fluxbox rpm and install it?

TIA

On my AMDK6-2/266Mhz with 128MB of RAM I used XFCE and it was fast compared to Gnome or KDE. It's got access to Gnome and KDE apps as well. Very nice WM.

at the terminal type xwmconfig. That brings up a menu. Pick what you want from there and change as often as you'd like. (this is for Slackware...and i'd be surprised if you don't have fluxbox already. as root do 'which fluxbox' and if you get something, you're good...you'll just have to find your wm config utility)
Fluxbox is a little 'thin' at first but as you get used to it you'll be surprised how much you'll like its simplicity!
I went back and forth between Dropline Gnome and Flux and over the course of about a week I stopped using DG at all, even though it looks great!

Thanks for that Vincent!

Is it possible to get rid of KDE and/or Gnome if one chooses to do so? I'm running on an old Compaq Presario with 128MB RAM and am trying to keep everything to an absolute minimum.

Yes. With Slack we use a package manager but RH is different. You'll have to look around for how to remove them. But just keep in mind that some programs you might want to use in the future require certain parts of these so it might be better to just keep them. They're taking up some space on the hard drive but if you can live with that for a while you might be better off.

also, in fluxbox 0.9.8 (and maybe older versions too) there is a program called gkrellm under the multimedia > x-utils menu. It will keep a display of different system processes including CPU, RAM, eth, Disk, and more. Good to keep an eye on how things are looking. You can also see that your swap is getting used.

I have a P166 with 64MB of RAM and use Blackbox for performance reasons. If I can add a question to this thread, I recently installed Slackware 9 unlike anytime prior in that I did not install KDE or GNOME. For the first time, I chose XFCE as the Window Manager.
Usually, when I do a new install, I choose KDE as the Window Manager. After the install, I copy a blackbox.tgz file into the home directory and install it. The only thing I have to do is edit the bottom of the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file and replace "StartKDE" with "Blackbox."
When I chose XFCE as the Window Manager, I attempted the same but it did not work.
I noticed there is no .blackboxrc file in my home directory as usual, which I thought was strange. I guess it is good that Blackbox is not listed in xwmconfig because now I actually have to understand what is going on.

"exec blackbox" worked