Slow performance with linux compared to winxp
 

Hi, I've had this problem ever since I've been playing with linux and never found a resolution. I find linux runs much more "jerkier" than windows (talking GUI here), with soo many basic operations making the processor usage shoot up to 100% (moving a window around, for example). Its hard to give specific examples because its just a general 'feel' of linux, everything seems to involve that little bit of lag, nothing is smooth... unlike windows xp, which runs perfectly smoothly. At its worst I've actually had xmms stop playing mp3s because I've been moving a window around. I'm using Fedora 4 right now, but I had exactly the same experience with CentOS 3.

Can anyone suggest to me likely/common causes of this general lag? Perhaps linux simply cannot be expected to be as smooth as windows? Is this a common issue, or is it something to do with my specific setup?

Any help much appreciated.

Get more ram.

RAM doesnt seem to be an issue. According to system monitor I got plenty. Its more to do with procesor hitting 100% for minor things. I just watched system monitor whilst I moved the mouse cursor around and it was hitting 30% processor usage! just for moving my mouse! That cant be right.

My spec is:
1.3 Ghz Athlon
768MB RAM
ATI 9550 - with official fglrx drivers

Any more suggestions?

I think FC4 is CPU hungry.

I agree with the previous poster.

Pop in something like Ubuntu, Debian or Gentoo and you will be AMAZED at how fast it runs

CentOS is slow because it is a RedHat rebuild
should be

Ah no dont say that! Spent so much time getting fedora how I like it. Besides, as I said I had the same issue with centos 3. To add a couple more specifics: Scrolling the page in firefox, file browser, etc is sluggish and unresponsive. Dragging a window leaves a trail behind (and as I said gives 100% cpu usage).

From top it seems that X uses most of the CPU when I move a window around, followed by whatever program is needing to repaint because of the covering/uncovering of it by said window. Together they add to just under 100%, not sure where the other few percent goes to make it 100%, but it does.

So basically, I should just expect linux to have a lower performance threshold that wndows xp? Even though it is seemingly (at least on the GUI side) much more simple? Dont know if I could cope with that. Looks like I'm going back to xp for a while.

No, but I can't see from here what you didn't do to get Linux configured. Is your kernel optimised, is all your hardware working properly, do you use Opengl with the desktop, are you running the unstable xcompmgr with Xorg etc?

Linux should outperform any Windows box, since it multi-processing and ram usage is much better.

OK now this is more like it.

How would I go about optimizing my kernel? Does this usually result in a large performance increase?

Pretty damn sure my hardware's working properly.

I have latest ATI opengl drivers installed and can only assume I'm using opengl for my desktop. How would I go about checking this?

I looked in system monitor, couldn't see anything called xcompmgr.


See, this is the stuff I was on about, there must be a load of common causes of slowdowns -- I dont know any because I'm new but you all must know some.

Cheers for the responses so far.

Kernels can be adjusted to the processor, making them instantly perfrom better. Kernels on Fedora:
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-kernel-fc4.shtml


Check Direct rendering with the command glxinfo. It should read "yes".

There is also a utility called hdparm, which enables DMA on your drives. Debian has DMA by default, but other distro's don't I believe.

http://ale.freeshell.org/pread/hdparm.html

1.get the properly optimized kernel for ur CPU

2.make sure that u have the right configuration for the graphic acceleration in X.org



normally, FC4 performs well. at least on my T41

OK, tried suggestions above. I got optimized tweaked kernel and recompiled... but no performance increase, and in fact lost my ntfs support! (and couldnt get it back, package already installed, yet filesystem not recognized) so I went back to my previous kernel.

I dont really understand the xorg.conf file, but I messed around with a few settings to no avail.

I am leaning towards a problem with my ATI driver. Was wondering if anyone could look at their settings and tell me if, like mine, the ATI control panel displays "Card name: unknown" and "Chip type: unknown" for display adapter? The OpenGL section all looks right. And in system settings->display, under "hardware" I have "Monitor type: Unknown monitor" and "Video card: Unknown video card"

Reason I ask is because after I changed kernel, on the first boot it failed to load the fglrx module, yet nothing changed - which leads me to suspect even when its loaded its not being used somehow.

Help!

What are your system specs?

Posted above, but here again for you:

My spec is:
1.3 Ghz Athlon
768MB RAM
ATI 9550 - with official fglrx drivers

At the end of the day, whether you have fc4 exactly how you like it or not it sounds like it would be much less work to just simply install another distribution. I have an old machine. By the end of its previous life it was struggling to run windows 98, there was no way it could handle xp. But Debian is nothing short of a miracle. Honestly judging by the speed of operation you could be fooled into thinking it was a brand new system. Don't assume linux in general is always slower than windows.

there are so many issues to work on but for some reason every rehdat or clone i have ever tried has run horribly....

you really have to get the smaller more optimized kernel compiled
trim everything useless out of the config
you have to edit the Makefile and add -O3 -march=athlon
flags
your choices are
athlon, athlon-tbird
AMD Athlon CPU with MMX, 3dNOW!, enhanced 3dNOW! and SSE prefetch instructions support.
athlon-4, athlon-xp, athlon-mp
Improved AMD Athlon CPU with MMX, 3dNOW!, enhanced 3dNOW! and full SSE instruction set support.
k8, opteron, athlon64, athlon-fx
AMD K8 core based CPUs with x86-64 instruction set support. (This supersets MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3dNOW!, enhanced 3dNOW! and 64-bit instruction set extensions.)

whatever you have there

put these flags in the kernel Makefile variable
HOSTCFLAGS
HOSTCXXFLAGS
and
CFLAGS_KERNEL

next cut out all the cruft from the run level boot so you are not running services like crond and http and ftpd and whatnot you don't want or need (look up all the services you are running and decide if you need them) test by killing them off and see if everything still works

next you can play with your video bus latency settings
run
lspci -v
and you find the name on left for your components (something like 01:00.0)
try
setpci -v -s <video device name> latency_timer=ff
this sets video burst size to max
you can also set the main bridge to like latency_timer=b0
or something and see if it helps

Missed that, sorry.

Do you have the specs for your video card and monitor? If so, try running xorgconfig, it'll help you, well, config xorg!