Hello,

I run FreeBSD 5.2.1 on Compaq 2266/PII/225mhz/128mb/onboard SiS 5597/98 SVGA ... dual-booted with native Win98 ...

I didn't and don't expect much X speed out of this setup, however ... Firefox thru any window manager is significantly slower than Firefox on booted Win98 (native proprietary setup/drivers).

X works just fine with X and X-like applications but Firefox seems a heavy load even thru twm, and much moreso thru WindowMaker, Gnome or KDE. Geez, even Gnome and KDE unto themselves are sluggish. It puzzles me that there is that much difference. It's seems like X doesn't use the Graphics Accelerator part of the chip set. Is that just the nature of the beast or are there some known tweaks, tests or configs improve speed a little???

XFree86 was same as Xorg.

Cheers.

Not in 5.2.1 it isn't. The X conversion just took place after that release. Have you followed the proceedure to upgrade XFree86 to X.org?

My advice... rebuild your kernel without the debugging information (read the handbook for step by step proceedure for this). Set your cpu type in /etc/make.conf ... and if you still have problems consider the switch to X.org -- although I do not know of how much difference it will make. I have a system of similar speed and firefox just seems too much for it. It works but very slowly. Of course, that system has not been worked over with any of these steps.

I switched to Xorg per procedures this past weekend and the behavior is the same as before. That's part of the reason I posted. Was hoping for a noticeable improvement with Firefox. I have been pondering a rebuild, but am also thinking that I am not going to get any more speed of X out of it. If I rebuild, I'm gonna download latest source and start from scratch. Cheers.

Well, you will notice a difference if you turn off the debugging in the kernel. That should amplify through all applications. Building a kernel is fairly easy. The biggest problem is that it will take a while on your system to build.

OK. You've convinced me. I'll try it some time this weekend. Something spooky about no debugging, tho. But what the heck, that's what I'm here for .. to learn. Cheers.

lol, let's be honest... if your kernel panic'ed would you really know what to do with the debugging information? Even if that does happen, you can build a new kernel (as long as you have the same sources) with just the debugging information added and find out most of what you need anyway. In either case, if you want a panic to tell you anything, you should enable a dumpdev for the coredump -- but that is another completely different topic.

Normally, it is a good idea to leave the debugging on. But the 5.x series is still pre-stable release so they have ALL the debugging turned on... more than most people would need. On top of that, machines with 450Mhz or less really do notice that little extra over-head. I never noticed it on my main desktop but on my two old machines I felt the difference. If you want to leave the debugging INFORMATION in the file but not the routines... then leave the line with the "=-g" at the top of the file. That line affects size but not performance.

Thanks for info. I will read up on it and rebuild with debugging off. Appreciate it.