Hi Suse forum people

I'm running Suse 9.3 Pro (AMD64 3000, 1Gig ram)

I've noticed that Opera 8 is running really slowly on my machine. Obvious things like response time to get into the google results page or even a delay in clicking the connect button on my router main page. Compared to the equivalent on XP it's running like a dog.

Surely this shouldn't be?

Also Firefox takes 'ages' to start up, but to be fair it's just as fast as it's XP sister, once it's up and running. I hate the bouncing fox though, my kids get click hysteria and start about 10 sessions at once (see relevance to next paragraph).

Also, slightly related, how the heck do you kill processes on Suse 9.3? ie whats the equivalent of Task Manager?

Lastly, why does Open Office take so long to start, when it runs like a dream on XP?

As I've managed to get most of the big issues with Suse sorted I'm now starting to get very 'picky' about response times. Theres no good reason why Suse 9.3 should be any slower than XP, is there?
Long gone are the days that I was simply happy that Linux worked, now I want to actually better XP.

Relax mate. Firefox and Opera giving you headaches? Use Konqueror (You do have your KDE updated to 3.5 right?)

The Process table (task manager) can be found at ksysguard or simply by pressing Ctrl+Esc

Also, slightly related, how the heck do you kill processes on Suse 9.3? ie whats the equivalent of Task Manager?

You can also use "top" on console.

As I've managed to get most of the big issues with Suse sorted I'm now starting to get very 'picky' about response times. Theres no good reason why Suse 9.3 should be any slower than XP, is there?
Long gone are the days that I was simply happy that Linux worked, now I want to actually better XP.

Why do you think Suse 9.3 is slower than Windowsxp? You can also try Suse 10.0 - It is faster than Suse 9.3

Disabling ipv6 may help:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=243929

ctrl - escape, thats excellent, thanks.
will give Konqueror a try (on it now), I'll need to check plug-ins though as I like to watch the news and listen to the radion on the bbc website.

I think turning off IPV6 should help you with your Opera and Firefox issues. It may not FIX everything, but it definitely makes this faster going from page to page.

If you want a big boost, use the "prelink" program. Obviously do some research first as it can cause other problems. As I find solutions to various problems, I post them directly in this forum. It does help although prelinking binaries makes YOU (online updates) a much longer process because it has to prelink the libaries for every binary that gets updated. On a fast computer like yours though, it shouldn't be an issue.

And lastly, OpenOffice runs a "preloading" program much like MS Office does. When you start up the computer, OpenOffice partially loads into memory even if you aren't using it. I prefer to disable this "feature" and just wait a little longer for it to load when I need it. I thought the Linux version did it too, but I could be wrong.

IPv6 is used by KDE too (so Konqueror will/may be affected)
One step solution is to kill IPv6 for whole system. Or Kill IPv6 for each application using IPv6 rather separately which is time consuming.

IPv6 will slowdown loading web pages, but it has nothing to to with slow FF start.
Assuming that homepage is loading slow, you will see open FF window with blank page trying to load web page. His problem is different: FF starts slow and then loads pages fast (so it points that IPv6 is not a problem).
One possible reason is installed FF networking extension which is trying to connect to some slow/down site. FF eventually loads either after connetion is finally established or given up.
So you may try to disable exteosions and see it this will help. Or disable any Firefox helper app.
If you don't know what it may be) open terminal window, run top and try to start FF. Observe new instances. The one suspicious is probably trying to start and giving up.

Don't know if this will help

An easy way to kill a program that is frozen is to push Ctrl + Alt + Esc and then click on the program. Like, let's say firefox is maximized, but it froze and not the whole system froze. Press Ctrl + Alt + Esc and then click anywhere on firefox and it will kill firefox. Your mouse pointer should change to a skull and crossbones after pressing the button sequence.

Also, do you have the latest version of OpenOffice? I've noticed much faster load times in the 2.0 version of OO as opposed to the older versions. I'm not sure if this is an improvement on OpenOffice's part or something Novell did in Suse 10.0, but I can definitely tell the difference in load times.

thanks alot guys, I'll give the IPv6 tip a try.
Unfortunately I've ran into a bit of trouble as I've got 2 hard drives and I repartioned to NTFS a partition on my 2nd drive (120gig IDE, now with 2 partitions - both NTFS).
Suse won't start now at all. I'll post this seperately.

It sounds maybe to me like a disk speed problem - is DMA for the disks activated - -> YaST : Hardware

& might might be an alternative but that is not solving the issue.

As you are running 64 bit SuSE then lack of RAM & hardware power shouldnt be an issue I guess.

Is there anything inteesting in the system messages ?

I know for firefox there is a quick start program that keeps a preloaded instance running in the system tray. I believe in Suse I found it in Yast, but I think you'll find it here: http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3 if you search for "firefoxqs" It takes a second for the website to search, so be patient. Install it and put a shortcut on your desktop or taskbar or whatever. Once you open it, it stays running in the system tray. Then, when you click firefox, it opens in a flash!!!!