Slow performance on SuSE 10.0
 

Hi guys, I use a SuSE Linux 10.0 and I partitioned the hard disk on ReiserFS format.
The functioning of Linux is extremely slow compared to that of Windows, which uses FAT32/ NTFS. I tried migrating to ext2, ext3 partitions, too, but, the system was still slow. My swap is totally 3GB. My main system specifications: 80GB SATA hardrive, AMD Athlon 3200+ 64 bits processor, 256 MB RAM. I don't think the low speed is due to 256 MB RAM, because when I tried running SuSE on a machine with 512 MB RAM and remaining specifications remaining same, the performance was same.
I initially thought that it was due to heavy-weight KDE, but I have used light weight desktop environments like window maker and FVWM, but both of them yield the same performance as KDE.
Is there any method to increase the speed of functioning of the system, while using SuSE Linux?

easier way, don't use suse. It is always like that. Eventhough I recompile the kernel. try ubuntu.

Kstan said it, while I might add that 256mb of RAM surely constitutes one major performance obstacle on a system with references to KDE.

I run KDE 3.5 on Mandriva 2007 with 256 MB RAM and the speed is fast.
sriram_16a,
Check your machine "services" and see what's running or started during bootup of your SuSE box. There are a lot of services that start at bootup by default that hog all the memory and CPU resources such as AV updates, e-mail retreival, looking for various network connections, etc. BTW does SuSE use KAT for an indexing service ? This is a known killer for desktop speed.
Good Luck,
Scott Nash

(to Cara25): But, is it as fast as any other operating system like Windows or MacOSX? I am a very good supporter of free OS' like linux and FreeBSD, but my rising concern is that is it as fast as the above mentioned proprietary OS'?

In 1st 2/3 months I feel little bit slow if compare to windows, after 1/2 years KDE will become faster than windows. Why? Windows registry cause windows slow down. If you want to make kde faster, can use ram disk. It should be fastest, but you need to hack yourself.

Regards,
Ks

I migrated from SuSE to PCLinuxOS (Mandrake based) and found it 10 times
faster. Can someone thus suggest me the fastest linux distro?

Thats funny, I have SuSE 10.0 running on a 256 MB PIII machine as my gateway. I even tunnel through with VNC (with very nice results) and the only performance problem I get is when I have to perform a selection on the desktop (that transparent selection box is quite slow).
I also have it now on my 64bit machine with SuSE 10.0 x86_64. I have no problems, except the selection box again. I definately can't wait for the KDE 4 to reach our desktops on SuSE!

@Cara25: What's that about a KAT? I'm also open for removing unnecessary stuff for greater performance!

To Last Attacker,
Kat was a search or find program that indexed the entire hard drive. My first experience with it was on my 2006 Mandriva install, it was automatically loaded by default on the initial install. It took all my memory and CPU resources during an index of the hard drive files. After hearing from many other readers of this forum, I uninstalled it and my machine ran much better. The program KAT has good intentions, it's just a bad design with very poor configuration options.
Scott Nash

@ Carra25: No such software as KAT is there with SuSE 10.0
I made few performance tweaks and got it alright: -
1) installed kernelsmpw for AMD_64 Athlon processors
2) added noatime attribute to all linux filesystems
3) (re)configured runtime-levels as per my needs
4) changed value of VM/over_commit memory, under vm/swapping, in powertweak to one.
Before these tweaks, I always had just 10-20 MB's of RAM (with no visible processes like konqueror/amarok open) whereas now with Konqueror, Firefox, Gimp,GKrellM open, in KDE, 99MB RAM is still free.

Does anybody know if XGL-3D would work smoothly on a 64-bit PC with 256 MB RAM, 32 MB Graphics Card?

"In this open world without a fence, who wants Bill(ed) Gates?"