Using SuSe Linux, Takes forever running Office Program
 

I am using SuSE Linux 9.2
My system is 400MHz w/ 13G on the hard drive... I just reloaded my hard drive with Suse Linux 9.2 and took Windows 2000 completely off. I noticed when I have "Chat" up and running, the system runs extremely slow. Later, I ran the Office 1.1 Word program and it seems like with every single key stroke, the processing takes forever. Been trying to copy from my G-mail and paste onto KWrite? but nothing happens. Is a process running in the background that is taking up all of my memory?

How much RAM do you have?
How is the system set up---eg what partitions? (as root, run fdisk -l)

pixellany,

Thank you for being patient with me... I'm a little fustrated but still having fun with the little successes I'm having learning SuSE Linux. As to your question, here's how my system is set up after I did your command run request:

Disk /dev/hda: 8447MB, 8447459328 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1027 cylinders
Units-cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 25 200781 82 Linux Swap/Solaris
/dev/hda2 26 1027 8048565 83 Linux

Thank you in advance for all your help...

9
How much RAM?? (Memory) Not enough RAM can easily cause things to be slow---especially a big fat application like OOo

pixellany,

I remember some time ago when I was using Mandrake for the first time... KDE had their own word, excel and powerpoint programs which worked pretty good. I would use Open Office only when I have to, but is there any way to get "Kwrite?" for example.

there are a variety of word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation programs out there. Abiword promises a level of MS Word compatibility. The only one that mathes up to Office in a comprehensive way is OpenOffice. Check out SourceForge for LOTS of info

I would STILL like to know how much RAM you have.....What if I say Please?........;)

pixellany,

I don't know how to find out how much RAM I have... is there a command code I can use? At least I figured out how to switch from the SuSE Linux Windows type screen to a terminal ? and back.

It's very easy to find out, actually:

On boot (right after switching on your box), you should see a memory check - that shows your RAM. However, if that doesn't work, do, the following:

Open a console (terminal, xterm) and type
Look at MemTotal; that's the amount of RAM you have.

If it's less then 128MB, I'd not run SuSE if I were you... It uses KDE as a default, which is already big enough, and if you try to run OpenOffice along with it, it'll get really nasty (i.e. slow). KOffice is a little slicker - you can use SLAX to check if your machine would run an optimized KDE with KOffice. Anyhow, I don't think SLAX would run well on less than 128MB with KDE (but it has Fluxbox, another window manager, so it's very well suited to run on systems with low resources).

MoonMind,

thank you for your response... it worked... I checked the MemTotal: and I have 61188kB... like I said, I have an old HP

The fastest way to speed up that machine would be to add more memory. 64 MByte is pretty marginal for many modern apps. In particular, OpenOffice is a real oinker with resources.
For a simple WP which can read and write *.doc files, take a look at Abiword.