Linux - NewbieThis Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question?
If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
Over the weekend I swapped motherboards, from a BX chipset to a VIA Apollo Pro 133. I did it so I can finally run my P3 733 (5.5x133) at it's rated speed instead of 550 (5.5x100). Unfortunately, this meant that I was left with only 64meg RAM, as this was the only PC133 I had (and hance the only one that was recognized on boot).
Anyways, I thought that 64meg would be OK since I'm using Linux, but apparently not as XFCE ran way slower than before. I noticed that the hard drive was constantly spinning, so it would appear that perhaps it's a lack of memory. It's even spinning like crazy just switching between windows, and sometimes takes like 5 seconds! But when I look around on the web it seems as though XFCE is pretty lightweight already and shouldn't require large amounts of RAM to run smoothly.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Is the degraded performance "normal" because of the reduced RAM, or is it because I swapped mobo's and have to do something else? I already installed the modules for the VIA chipset. Do I need to recompile the kernel as well? Does the size of the kernel really make a huge difference in performance? I likely do have "junk" compiled in the kernel.
Thanks for your help!
My configuration is this btw:
Debian (test) distro
Kernel 2.6.7
PIII 733MHZ
64MB RAM
6.4gig hard drive
Nvidia 64meg video card
It's the RAM. The constant disk spinning is the swap partition being written to and read from repeatedly. In my opinion, your only option is to go get some more memory.
Sorry, wish I had a better solution for you. Well, I guess you could disable X from starting and just use a command line shell until you get some RAM, but no GUI is no fun...
I'm guessing more RAM would make the problems go away as well, but I find it odd that 64meg RAM isn't enough to run a work oriented X desktop. I'm not doing 3D or anything like that.
I am still interested in listening to other opinions and suggestions to help optimize my system. One other thing to note is that I just realized that I had compiled the code for my old BX chipset right into the kernel, but I don't know if that matters or not since the VIA modules are installed and working.
i think u should for a custom kernel(i,e comple ur kenrel) wiht minimal options this will greatly reduce ur memory requirements and also try using the ICEWM desktop
I agree. Try making a slimmer kernel if you don't want to buy more ram. I was able to trim off a good few hundred k when I first started configuring my own kernels. I'll never do it another way again ; ) Although, pc-133 is so cheap now, I think that would be the easy solution.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.