Sluggish
 

I find slackware somewhat sluggish at times when loading programs such as internet apps and media players... Not to mention the times where it will just stop/freeze for around 10 seconds. Maybe it's the KDE? Also when I play music, it get choppy and distorted when loading apps sometimes, or sometimes just randomly. My Mplayer also locks up occasionally while opening, in fact a lot. Any ideas as to what is going on?

Could you provide your hardware specs, that mau have something to do with it (KDE is quite resource intensive). Also, in a console type in top, it may be that you have a process running which is eating up memory.

omg i have 512mb, but it says 513500k/516000k used up HOW. I have 95 tasks running and I don't even know why. In Windows I usually had 30 - 40 tasks and the memory consumtion was not nearly as much. What's going on?

My specs:

corsair xms pc3200 512mb
intel p4 2.8ghz ht enabled
wester digital wdc1200jb?

What processes are running? 95 sounds like a lot.

Ok right now it says 91 processes running 90 sleeping... I have the tasks shown to 0, but it only looks like its showing 40 of them why? I don'y wanna name off all the tasks, but they're memor onsumption i sbasically around .1% with kde being around 5%.

Maybe it's not about mem consumption, but about CPU consumption
You can look about it in "top", or, what's much easier to use, KSysGuard.

Just a try :

go in the KDE control center, Sound & Multimedia, Sound System

click on the "Hardware" tab

What does "Select Audio Device" say ?
Does it say "AutoDetect" ?

If yes, try to change that to "No Audio"

If it works, and you want sound in KDE, change it to ALSA, and edit your ALSA configuration (alsamixer/alsactl)

I had a lot of /sbin/agetty and nautilis running; what are those? I'm closing them... as much of them as I can even though they say they're not taking up any system resources, the more I close, the more free mem I gain. Really though... Why doesn't linux close these programs at restart; they just keep piling up. Isn't there an autokill?

to learn about agetty : man agetty
basically, it asks you for Login+Password and then logs you in
anyway, don't try to close them manually, because the app which launched them will automatically re-launch them.

you're mentionning many instances of Nautilus, the GNOME File Manager (it's the equivalent of Konqueror file manager of KDE, but for GNOME)

Since you ask what Nautilus is, I assume that you haven't launched Nautilus by yourself. So there must be some GNOME app running which automatically launches Nautilus instances.

I don't know much about GNOME but it looks like you're using KDE so here's what I would do.

Go in the KDE Control Center, KDE Components, Session Manager.

In "On Login", choose "Start with an empty session"

Apply changes, reboot your computer.

If it still doesn't work (ie, if you still have Nautilus instances running) :

I've got another idea.

You're booting automatically into graphic mode, aren't you ? (ie, you don't have to type "startx" manually before you get into a graphic environment, do you ?)

If yes, you're using runlevel 4, aren't you ? (if you don't know your runlevel, look into /etc/inittab)
If yes, here's my idea.

By default, in runlevel 4, Slackware uses the GNOME login manager on startup.

I suggest you use the KDE login manager instead (that's what I do)

To achieve this, *as root*, edit the following file :

/etc/rc.d/rc.4

And, in this file, replace

by

this way, GDM won't be loaded.

How do I get it to run straight to KDE? I always have to type in startx, but I prefer it that way for now. Right when I boot and I'm at the prompt, I type in top, and it says there's 27 processes already running... I'm not even in KDE yet. What's going on? I thought linux was supposed to be more resource efficient than any Windows, but I'm seeing the exact opposite. Why are so many processes running aftera fresh install? Is it because I did a full install? Should I install just the minimum and only the programs that I want or should I keep going with full installs? I want to make my Slack box as fast as possible. Any suggestions appreciated.

I would suggest editing your /etc/inittab. Look for the line that says something like "init:3:something". Change the 3 to a 4 and you will boot start to a X session manager. Since you are using KDE exclusively (like me) I would suggest that you do what Ben2210 said. Edit the rc.4 file by putting # in front of all of the lines he posted. By doing this you will load KDM which is the KDE X session manager.

The result of these changes are...

1. You will boot straight to KDM and NOT a command line
2. You will no longer need to type "startx" to load KDE. You will simply login to the session
3. You will be using KDM instead of GDM.

Don't get too frustrated. I have Slack 10 running on 2 aging laptops (AMD K6-475Mhz and PII-266Mhz) and they both run GREAT...even with KDE. Slack is WELL worth the effort it takes to get it configured to meet your needs.

I hope this helps!

Yeah follow tubatodd's advice and mine and it should be OK.

27 processes running is not much at all. Yes linux is damn resource efficient compared to windows. But that can't be measured in terms of number of running processes. Actually 27 is not so many. I have 49 right now. You're just discovering that a complete gnu/linux systems consists of a lot of little independant programs working together.

To make your slack box as fast as possible :
1. solve your current problem. This will be enough to make it damn fast
2. as filesystems, avoid Ext3. Choose either Ext2 or ReiserFS
3. switch to a homemade 2.6.x kernel. Patch it with Con Kolivas 's patchset (which will also give you the very convenient supermount feature). In the kernel config, desactivate all you don't need. Yes you'll make errors, and your first attemps will end up in blank screens and kernel panics, but that is the way one learns. I was there 5 monthes ago.
4. Keep current : many pieces of software are quickly getting more and more efficient. Take advantage of this with tools like swaret or slapt-get.
5. Replace installed programs by more efficient ones. For example, replace Mozilla by Firefox.
6. Get GKrellm. Whenever it shows you something weird, open KSysGuard to see what's happening.

I don't have time to elaborate on all of this, but it gives you keywords to ask Google or this board about.

Some one thinks 91 processes is "a lot"??? My system normally runs over 100 all the time. When the whole system is considered my processes skyrocket to over 200. :) This of course is spread across 4 processors also...

91 seems a lot to me, mine runs 13 processes with nothing running and windowmaker as a gui.

Ebit, how the hell. I do a clean, full install of Slackware, boot it up and run top, and it's already running 33 processes. The thing is, the processes just keep adding up like I don't even know. They keep adding up even though I close my programs. Maybe I'm not closing them right; I don't know.

This won't directly help with why your install is sluggish but try "pstree" to get a better idea of your processes:

1. getty are your login terminals, by default 6 of them
2. everything under startx will be programs running in X
3. there will be a number of processes starting with k, they are different kernle processes (unless they are uner startx in which case they are KDE processes)
4. everything else is likely to be a daemon of some sort.

These are rules of thumb by the way, not 100% accurate.

Now for memory, type free and look at the second line in the "used" column. That is the amount of memory actually being used by active programs.

Finally is you X still using VESA or did you configure it for your video card. A lack of video acceleration mught be some of it.