Running Slack 8.1 on Pentium 200 128MB ram. Boot up is fast (40 secs) but starting Konqueror is very slow - 20 secs 1st and nth time on both KDE AND xfce. Under MDK 7.2 it starts in 5 secs. Any idea why it is so slow under Slack?

maybe it's hard drive speed. You can check and tweek it with hdparm

Slackware 8.1 is KDE 3 based. I noticed considerable performance difference on older Pentiums when I moved from KDE 2. Perhaps the Mandrake version was KDE 2 based.

Well you DO only have a 200, possibly processor speed has something to do with all this afterall??????????????????

It is most likely your PC, I am running slack8.1 on a Pll 600, 128MB ram. Konqueror opens by the time I release the mouse button. I also have a SCSI HDD

running a GUI with a P200 is masochist.

anyways. Try updating your kernel for your processor (Pentium MMX?) then compile Kde from source (if you have REALLY time to loose, it will take you at least a complete day.... but it should run faster then).

Also, make sure you have enabled DMA.

Wow! I didn't think ANYONE else in the whole world had hardware as slow as mine! I used to run Enlightenment on an AMD 486 100 and 16 Meg of RAM! ("If a man is seeking to rescue his captured friends, he will not ask permisssion, neither will he count his foes, save with a sword." -Aragorn)

Anyway, 'drake 7.x did indeed use KDE 2.x, so that might be some of the problem. Do optimize that kernel for your pentium:
(as root)
# cd /usr/src/linux
[read the install text files]
# make menuconfig
and have at it!
The help for the processor optimizations is very good, and menuconfig is almost exactly like the Slackware setup, so you'll feel right at home! Notice that once you hit pentium class, it becomes important whether you have AMD v. Intel, and MMX v. non-MMX, so read the help carefully!

Properly configured, you will get better performance from X than Win9x on the same hardware. Have fun!

How do I install 7.2 source? There is nothing in /usr/src/linux except a readme file and include subdir.
Thanks

PS: I do have faster PC's, just want to play with the P200 to see if I can get linux to run as fast as Win98

hahah, you'll get it running that far for sure! don't give up!


Try installing Fluxbox, or Blackbox, or one of them, i run fluxbox myself, and it is an extremely fast window manager. Its only a window manager, not a desktop environment, so you don't have icons etc, but you can get addons + packages that will extend fluxbox and give you this capabitily.

On an old, P233 or 266 it was, with 32meg ram I had slackware, full install, with fluxbox running nice and sweet. It booted fast, and loaded X and fluxbox almost instantly (and thats no bs...i type: start x....a few moments later up she pops..)

Ok, I got the source linux-2.4.0.tar.gz, unzipped with tar into /usr/src, then ran (from /urs/src/linux) make clean, make mrproper, make menuconfig, make modules, make modules_install. Then cp /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bxImage to /boot/mynewkernel. Finally modified lilo.conf for new kernel. Boot time decreased by 16 secs or 28%.

To Grim: What version of slack did you use on the P233? Any optimizing done?

martik: 45 sec for booting still too slow. I have a P166 booting Slack 8.0 in 20sec. For the boot time, you might want to optimize your system... First, stop each daemon you do not need. Just comment everything useless in /etc/inetd.conf. Also there's a lot of useless feature you can turn off in /etc/rc.d/rc.* . Open all these file with a tesxt editor and add command. It's the way to "stop" service in Slackware.
Also, try to get the smallest kernel as possible... don't load anything you don't need it will slow down the boot.

Slack 8.0 will be faster than Slack 8.1 on an old box, but just because his softwares are older (as example, it use Kde 2.2.1), so you probably want to stay with an up-to-date Slackware like 8.1.

I have found the solution to speeding up my P200 - Vector Linux 3.2. It is awesome! Almost as fast as Win98 with the 2 wm's XFCE and ICEwm and a nice set of tools including Dillo and Opera web browsers. I have tried them all and this distro is the best performer on older PC's

did you enable 32bit I/O and dma?
If you didnt, then thats your biggist problem