I have an IBM thinkpad 600X. I believe the CPU is 333 MHz and it has 128 MB of RAM. I had Redhat 7.2 installed on it, and it worked like a charm, but I decided to install FC3 so I could use some of the new software.

Well, FC3 works very clunky on this system. For example, when I run the "ls" command in a Gnome terminal window, there is an annoying delay before I even see the results. I probably just dont have enough RAM for the latest version of GNOME or something.

Anyways, I was thinking of rolling back to an earlier version, like RedHat 9 or FC1 or something. Id like to stick with some form of RedHat tho.

I was wondering, DOes anyone have any experience running FC on limited resources, and if so, what do you recommend in this case?

Thanks!

hi there

surely u have less amout of RAM

what u can do is
turn off the unrequred services from the services section
especially the the services associared with NFS

after that try using another desktop like icewm ,xfce
also u can try to compile ur own kernel that will also help

regards

hey, i already turned off all the unrequired services.

i guess I could use a different desktop, but the thing is, I like GNOME! The version I was using with Redhat 7.2 worked very well on this same laptop. It's hard to believe that the whole thing has gotten so clunky since then.

Anywho, does anyone know if it's possible to roll back to an earlier version of GNOME in a situation like this?

Ive tried a bunch of crap, but performance is still really bad running FC3 on my laptop. I know its not the most modern laptop, but still, a Linux system should be able to run fine on a Pentium 3 system with 128 MB of RAM.

If I just make the ls command repeatedly in a Gnome Terminal window, my CPU load goes up to over 90%!!! The primary offenders are the "X" process and the "Gnome-terminal" process.

This is just pathetic, and quite a shock after Redhat 7 was running like a champ. Fricking Winblows gets better performance than this.

I guess Im going to try out Debian. I used to love RedHat, but this Fedora shit aint doing it for me. Maybe Ill try again after I buy a new laptop one of these days. Oh well.

Just for process of elimination, have you tried running twm or another windows manager; to narrow down where the problem is? (or, of course, running without X just to see that everything is OK).

I tried using IceWM instead, and performance was still crap. For reference, I booted KNOPPIX on this same laptop, and it worked like a champ.

Been using Redhat since version 5.2. This was my first experience with the new Fedora stuff, and Im disappointed. Still havent had a chance to install Debian tho.

Hi, I just installed FC3 yesterday and began my search for some performance boost.
I found these couple of guides in this forum:
Building the Lo-Fat Linux Desktop - A newbies guide to building a fast desktop system that will perform well on older hardware.
Lo-Fat Linux Part 2 - How to perform a post-install tune-up to free up resources and improve performance.
both written by the same guy. I haven't finished them yet, but they seem pretty useful.

Cheers