Hi,
I have a computer running the following hardware:
processor; Intel P4, 2.6GhZ, 478 pin
motherboard; Asus P4SC-E, SiS651 north bridge and SiS962L south bridge controllers.

I originally had Xubuntu 7.10 (i386) setup on this machine and it ran
brilliantly with my only quibble being that the graphics were a bit slow at times but nothing major (apparently this is becos this kernel does not have the sse etc modules compiled into it). At a later date i completely replaced the system with the latest xubuntu 8.04 (i686 smp - clean install not upgrade). This was a big mistake. This version has never run overly well - graphics are very slow, it is prone to crashing (individual programs or whole OS locks up), things like screen saver not operational, overall quite slow performance. CPU monitor indicates very high CPU usage even when very few programs running.

So my questions are:
What sort of kernel should i be using with this type of hardware - i386, i486, i586 etc?
Is there a rule of thumb for choosing which kernel to use with which type of hardware?

Any help would be much apreciated.

Cheers.

Any of those kernels will work with an Intel p4. You should choose the highest number available of the 3.

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Steve Stites

Hi,

The 'i386' will run on any Intel compatible system. If you do compile a new kernel you won't gain a noticeable amount. Your boot time might decrease but still not noticeable enough.

Now the graphics issue can be attributed to the GPU driver. You can get a lot of information here on LQ on what to do. Since you didn't provide the GPU information I can't assist.

As for the changing of distribution majors, 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'.