Hi! I'm, well, still a newbie. I migrated from Windows XP about a week now. I installed Kubuntu 6.06. I have no problems with this actually. Kubuntu on my machine is not really significantly slow, but is not fast either. I'd just like to know if there is any other way to make this work faster (other than buying new hardware ).


I'm running on Intel P4 1.4GHz, 128MB Ram, 20Gb Seagate Barracuda (not sure about the RPM) with 64MB NVidia graphic card.

Get more RAM if you want to see a speed increase. Get it up to 512 MB if you want to see some major speed increases.

Desktop environments like Gnome and KDE are very memory-intensive, even though a bare linux kernel takes only 19MB of memory[1] You don't need to upgrade your hard drive unless you feel you want more space. A Barracuda should be around 7200RPM, which is more than enough really. Your 1.4 GHz P4 is plenty - Fedora runs quite responsively on my 1.0GHz Pentium-M with a much slower hard drive. You need more RAM. That's all.

To get out of getting more RAM, try disabling visual effects and eye-candy.

[1] My Gentoo server takes 21MB of RAM. I'm subtracting two MB for non-kernel related system services.

RAM would be the cheapeast/easiest place to start.

I agree that the relatively small amount of RAM is probably the bottleneck. Linux has lower hardware requirements than Windows, but it takes advantage of greater hardware resources as well. Kubuntu will not start to realize its speed potential until you have at least 256MB RAM. 512MB would be better.

Go for as much as you can, of course. I wouldn't get anything more that 1GB, since at that point you're probably going to run into the CPU/Hard Disk bottleneck.

Have you tried the Xfce desktop? It is supposed to run faster than gnome and kde. http://www.xfce.org/index.php

If you really want to go small and light, try fvwm. Except for twm, that's the smallest and lightest I can think of (twm doesn't have squat in the way of usability IMNHO).

About the RAM, well I thought so too. My chipset supports RDRAM and for the meantime, I have no means to buy some yet. That's why I'm rooting that there maybe something I can tweak. But it's ok. Thank you all for your help!

And I'm really liking Linux! Woooot!

Not yet. But I was curious actually. And now I am again. Maybe I'll try this. Thanks!

is it possible to "dual-boot" xubuntu with kubuntu?

why would you want to?

Though it shouldn't be difficult.

Just make sure you config the bootloader correctly

im dual booting ubuntu and kubuntu so with xubuntu it shouldnt be a problem either.

install x desktop files(search (x)ubuntu forums for that) and then when you boot you can choose in your gdm/kdm/xdm wich windowmanager you want (session type) there you can choose xfce after isntalled. same thing can be done with fluxbox just apt-get install fluxbox then relogin with session type fluxbox en wham your in a lightweight windowmanager with A LOT flexibility (yeah i like fluxbox)

well, kubuntu is working just fine so i want to keep it. but i'd like to try xubuntu. there

thanks! i'll try this.

I couldn't get fluxbox to do anything, maybe I did something wrong....

I followed Mipia's instructions, and it worked fine for installing KDE and X on top of Ubuntu.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=494634

I did however, run into a minor problem afterwards, and here's how I was instructed to correct it(in case you run into it)

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=495248

IGF