hi all... ot better explain my question I have to talk about the opposition for a sec.. for years in windows there have been many tweaks that i've done to improve performance. (swap file static size / disabling services / block size change / removing startup apps etc....)

anyway to my question, i've been on fc1 for a couple of months and love it, but it seems quite sluggish compared to xp. what can i do to make things a little better?

if it matters much its on an athlon 1400 w/512 meg ddr....
thanks
ZW

For starters, you could have increased your swap files size during setup. Another thing is choosing the programs you install carefully and removing anything you don't use. To make it super fast you could also compile your own kernel.

yes, but being new to linux at the time, I didn't know what I needed and what I didn't. But I get the impression from your msg that it would make a fair difference.....now to figure out what I need and what I don't I guess.....

Hi Explorer

I'm also running Fedora Core 1 and like it a lot, however, I find it slow compared with XP. I have 1 Gig of ram on an Athlon 2000+. I let Fedora decide the swap file size.

The bit about choosing the programs that one installs, are you saying that even if the program is installed and not running it slows down the Linux system?? As far as I know with XP even though programs are installed they do not affect XP's speed if they are not running. How can just having programs installed slow down the system, does this mean that the programs that are installed on Linux are loaded into memory when the system start, this can't be right surely

hi all,

i think wat explorer means is to remove programs that are running in the BACKGROUND, including services... also, less programs will give linux more hard disk space, IF it really matters... (apparently not, since the linux swap is running on a separate partition)

fyi, i am running a P2 with only 120MB RAM, 6GB hdd, fedora core 1, but it runs almost like a tweaked Win98... and no one would argue that a Win98 (after running IEradicator) is slow, so wats the secret here?

well, i created only 2 partitions during installation...

Swap: 500MB
Root: remaining space on hard disk

(i am not too sure if /boot is necessary, but since 75mb is quite an amt on my 6gb system, i decided to make do without it - if anyone knows tat /boot is absolutely critical, pls let me know!!)

hope this helps!


regards,

rykel
singapore

p/s. i was a lean and mean windows user, coz i alwayz wanted to optimise e speed of the OS on my old hardware... guess i carried over tis mentality to linux!!

Removing unnessary background services would make a difference. Also, the more bloatware you have piled on the hard drive the slower the hard drive runs and even though all those programs aren't loading into memory on startup, the operating still has to keep track of all of them which is more overhead. I guaranty you windows xp is affected by it more so than linux. A few weeks back I setup 4 new IBM thinkcenter 2.8 ghz P4 machines with XP Pro for several plant engineers. By the time I got Office2000, Oracle, Autocad and all the other engineering applications they use loaded onto the machines, the log on times had definitely increased and all of them, even though still very fast, they were all noticably slower than they were right out of the box.

Also, if you're using Gnome, some themes are more responsive than others. "Simple" is supposed to be one of the quicker ones. (Select by RedHat->preferences->theme). I don't know much about KDE.

My box feels less crisp with the newer kernels (the ones without preemptive kernel patch), because I usually have either Folding@home in the background or something being compiled. On kernels without the preemptive patch, the mouse gets jumpier.

I'm running Fedora Core 1 with Gnome. What typically would be the essential 'Background' services?

Cheers

Scratchit: Which services are “essential” depends on what you are doing with your system. For example, if you aren’t trying to host a web page, then you probably don’t want to be running the Apache server (httpd). If you want a firewall, then you probably do want to be running iptables. What is essential for you is probably different from what is essential for me.

Just open the services dialogue, look down the list for “checked” services and read the brief description of the service. If you don’t understand the description, then search this forum, google, etc. and find a description of it. If it looks unneeded, stop the service, uncheck the box, save the configuration and write down on a list what services were discontinued.

If a desirable process unintendedly stops working, then go back and try restarting the discontinued services until you find the needed one. Also, don’t forget to check the box and save the configuration when you find the right one, so that it will start the next time you reboot.