I have suse 9.0 pro and i would like to install it. The problem is when i do it runs quite slowly, even with all the services disabled and windowmaker as the wm. It seems to read from harddisk a lot (a very lot) and apps start very slowly. This is most likely due to the fact that i have a decrepid old k6 with only 64mb ram, 5gb hd and a 8mb graphics card, so i didnt even expect that it would install at first, but no problem there.

Now that there is a suse forum here (yipee) , i thought i'd try again but before i begin can anyone give me any advice on what to do to make it run better. I have tried a kernal recompile, and as i said disabling all unneeded services, is there anything im missing to increase performance?

any help would be appreciated

The issue with that hardware and basically any recent OS is it has nowhere to breathe...memory, disk, and processor are all constrained. Maybe something older, like 8.2?

Suse is just not a good choice for a PC with those specs.
I tried installing a text/console Suse to a Pentium 100 with 80 MB RAM. It ran way too slow, some functions taking 5 minutes. I think YAST is the main culprit.
Using Vector Linux, Damn Small Linux, or some sort of custom Debian or Slack install would really give you a working PC.

to speed things up you need to thing about one thing. MEMORY. Speed will reach a ceiling considering what you might have for processor speed, buy you may want to consider using an X desktop environment that takes less resources like XFCE or Fluxbox, look around see what you can find. Light-weight apps make the difference most of the time.
I myself am suprised that the new upcoming SuSE release is stating that you should have at least 512 megs of ram, or was it 256, I cant remember. Just keep in mind that a linux distro is nothing more than packaging or what software comes with the kernel. Keep your options open.
I myself started out messing with Mandrake, SuSE and other various rpm distro's only to get frustrated at how bogged down the system was. Eventualy I moved to slackware because of its speed, but there is always a trade-off between performance and the steepness of the learning curve. That and 95% of whats on SuSE pro can be found for free on the net anyways, just doesnt seem worth the money to me.

In other words, get more ram. Its constantly reading your swap file. 64mb wont cut it with the default install.

Mipia is 100% correct, RAM is your number one priority. Get as much as you can afford. The other thing I would just mention is purchasing a new hard drive. Make sure it's a 7,200 rpm model from one of the more reliable manufacturers, Hitachi, Western Digital, etc. and you will notice a huge improvment. A fast hard drive is important as when the swap space is accessed you want it to be as speedy as possible.

I followed this strategy on a lowly Compaq PIII/500MHz. When filled with 512MB and only a 40GB 7,200 speed drive, SuSE 9.0 flies. In the UK this cost me £35 for the drive and £80 for the RAM. As the PC cost £80 from eBay, I have a fast stable web server and desktop for less than £200.

Go for it!

Regards,

dkpw

I installed SUSE 9 on a Duron 1300 with 512MB of ram and it ran like a pig. Continually accessing the hard drive anytime you did anything. Granted that the drive wasn't all that fast, UDMA33 at 5400rpm, but I really don't think that could have been the whole problem.

duron 1300 a bit ;lame for suse 9, try using windowmaker instead of kde

For light weight wm, I used IceWM. There are utilities out there to convert the whole kde menu set into IceWM (if you are using SUSE 9.1, the version that comes with it will automatically include the SuSE menu into IceWM's menu). Very, very light weight but provides most of the functionality of KDE's WM.