Slow responsive desktop on older machine (using Xubuntu 64bit)

robertjinx · 10-15-2014, 12:44 PM

Hello, got an older laptop, AMD Athlon64 3200+, with 1.5GB of RAM and an old Seagate 80GB ATA disk.

I've installed Xubuntu 64bits, it works, but every single click takes 30 seconds or more to get a response, for example opening a directory, or any application, doesn't matter how small or big it is.

On the console or connecting to the laptop using ssh, it's a bit faster, but overall kind of the same.

Running apt-get upgrade from the console, sometimes requires extra 'enters' to actually do something or continue (I'm referring to a processes which doesn't or shouldn't require interaction).

Checking load average or top or htop or vmstat or iostat, there doesn't seem to be any 'excessive' memory or CPU or disk usage.

Any idea how I could improve the 'speed' ?

As a note: starting a movie or something like that, once you went thru the 'slow' response, the actual movie plays really well, tried avi's, mkv's, mp4's and most of the work well.

ondoho · 10-15-2014, 01:20 PM

thoughts: maybe the disk is really slow or about to break?
or, kind of a default advice: open a terminal with "top" or "htop" and see what might be eating resources.

imho xfce is not really lightweight, but with those specs it should be fine.

robertjinx · 10-15-2014, 02:56 PM

Would there be a way to see if the disk works well or fast enough for xfce?

Does the fact that is 64bits make a difference? Some time ago, 64bits apps weren't exactly fast, sometimes even slower then 32bits, but I guess that was 5 to 10 years ago, if not more.

ondoho · 10-16-2014, 03:25 AM

i don't think it makes a difference.

you have to find out what's eating resources. see my previous post.
also check if your ram is ok. 1.5gb is kind of a weird number.
it could also be that your disk is (almost) full.

check xubuntu system requirements.

rokytnji · 10-16-2014, 07:52 AM

Might be a video driver issue.

Code:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i "dri" | grep -v -i "driver"

This low powered IBM T23 Laptop does not exhibit

Quote:

but every single click takes 30 seconds or more to get a response

and I am a P3 with one gig of ram but XFCE stays off of here.

Quote:

Checking load average or top or htop or vmstat or iostat, there doesn't seem to be any 'excessive' memory or CPU or disk usage.

Well, you are checking the right things. Maybe

Quote:

maybe the disk is really slow or about to break?

is right?

Just my specs so you see what I mean. My gear is older than yours.

Code:

$ inxi -f
CPU:       Single core Mobile Intel Pentium III - M (-UP-) cache: 512 KB
           clocked at 1197 MHz
           CPU Flags: cmov cx8 de fpu fxsr mca mce mmx msr mtrr pae pge pse
           pse36 sep sse tsc vme

Code:

$ inxi -M
Machine:   Mobo: IBM model: 26474MU
           Bios: IBM v: 1AET64WW (1.20 ) date: 10/18/2006

But my graphics are dialed in as good as it gets

Code:

@biker:~
$ inxi -G
Graphics:  Card: S3 SuperSavage IX/C SDR
           Display Server: X.Org 1.12.4 drivers: savage (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1024x768@60.0hz
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on softpipe GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.5

Quote:

it could also be that your disk is (almost) full.

You can check with

Code:

@biker:~
$ df -h
Filesystem                                              Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs                                                   73G   34G   36G  49% /
udev                                                     10M     0   10M   0% /dev
tmpfs                                                   101M  340K  101M   1% /run
/dev/disk/by-uuid/6011bbe8-33ac-450c-a316-2a4c3d87d960   73G   34G   36G  49% /
tmpfs                                                   5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
tmpfs                                                   415M  4.0K  415M   1% /run/shm

dolphin_oracle · 10-16-2014, 08:16 AM

I would turn off the compositor (Settings>Window Manager Tweaks> Compositor Tab) ,which should be on by default in xubuntu. If there is an improvement, that would point towards the video card drivers but it won't rule out the other suggestions given already.

Shadow_7 · 10-16-2014, 12:29 PM

To have that much ram on a laptop, *sigh*.

Initial thoughts is that maybe the filesystem on the drive has gotten fragmented. One other thought is that the cpufreq stuff might have lowered the speed of your cpu to save power. On one of my older laptops, if I left it unplugged, it would get really slow right before the battery ran out of juice. There have been a few performance drains with the implementation of systemd under certain configurations. Check your ps output for things that shouldn't be running. Like a runaway java or nspluginwrapper. Whatever it is will be chewing up resources in top or htop.

robertjinx · 10-17-2014, 01:51 AM

Nope, none of this is relevant. I'm been talking to some kernel developers and gave me some ideas to boot with 'pci=nomsi' or 'noapic' or 'acpi=off', etc.

It turns out that using pci=noacpi or acpi=off makes the desktop works perfectly (mouse very responsive), but connecting to the laptop thru ssh is horrible. Horrible is not a good word, just simple bad.

So, it seems that there are some issues with acpi on my old laptop, but to be honest not sure how to make it work, for both desktop and console.

NOTE: as I said before, this issue has nothing to do with HDD, CPU, MEM, as there is no usage of any of this when the mouse is not responsive.

Shadow_7 · 10-17-2014, 08:34 AM

Curious as to which mouse driver / module you're using. But slow to launch applications shouldn't be acpi or apic or msi related. Unless one or more of those things is affecting the hard drive.

Perhaps tweaking some stuff with evdev might help the mouse. Without overriding the kernel features.

$ xinput
$ xinput --get-props #
$ xinput --set-prop # ## ###

Where # is the id=# for the device
And ## is the property number you wish to change
And ### is the value you wish to change it to

Something I have to fiddle with to enable 3 buttom emulation on my trackball. Since the usual xorg.conf doesn't seem to recognize the old ways.

Lots of options that can be passed to the kernel. modinfo can help list the parameters for module related parameters. It sounds like you have a quirky laptop if those things are affecting it. Or perhaps a bleeding edge kernel.

robertjinx · 10-17-2014, 12:23 PM

I'm using Xubuntu 14.04 64bits kernel 3.13.0-37-generic. I haven't rebuild or modified the kernel or any other packages.

Here is the output of lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8385 [K8T800 AGP] Host Bridge (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237/8251 PCI bridge [K8M890/K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller
00:10.0 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.1 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.2 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.3 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ISA Bridge
00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)
00:11.6 Communication controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 80)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 74)
00:13.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306/7/8 [Fire II(M)] IEEE 1394 OHCI Controller (rev 80)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV350/M10 [Mobility Radeon 9600 PRO Turbo]

robertjinx · 10-17-2014, 12:28 PM

Here is the output of xinput

Code:

robert@arima:~$ DISPLAY=:0 xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer                    	id=2	[master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer              	id=4	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad              	id=11	[slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                   	id=3	[master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard             	id=5	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                            	id=6	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                               	id=7	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                            	id=8	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                            	id=9	[slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard            	id=10	[slave  keyboard (3)]

P.S. There is no such thing as --get-props, only --list-props, but this doesn't really help

Output of id=11:

Code:

Device 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad':
	Device Enabled (140):	1
	Coordinate Transformation Matrix (142):	1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 0.000000, 1.000000
	Device Accel Profile (262):	1
	Device Accel Constant Deceleration (263):	2.500000
	Device Accel Adaptive Deceleration (264):	1.000000
	Device Accel Velocity Scaling (265):	12.500000
	Synaptics Edges (266):	1752, 5192, 1620, 4236
	Synaptics Finger (267):	25, 30, 0
	Synaptics Tap Time (268):	180
	Synaptics Tap Move (269):	221
	Synaptics Tap Durations (270):	180, 180, 100
	Synaptics ClickPad (271):	0
	Synaptics Middle Button Timeout (272):	75
	Synaptics Two-Finger Pressure (273):	282
	Synaptics Two-Finger Width (274):	7
	Synaptics Scrolling Distance (275):	100, 100
	Synaptics Edge Scrolling (276):	1, 0, 0
	Synaptics Two-Finger Scrolling (277):	1, 0
	Synaptics Move Speed (278):	1.000000, 1.750000, 0.039809, 0.000000
	Synaptics Off (279):	0
	Synaptics Locked Drags (280):	0
	Synaptics Locked Drags Timeout (281):	5000
	Synaptics Tap Action (282):	2, 3, 0, 0, 1, 3, 0
	Synaptics Click Action (283):	1, 1, 0
	Synaptics Circular Scrolling (284):	0
	Synaptics Circular Scrolling Distance (285):	0.100000
	Synaptics Circular Scrolling Trigger (286):	0
	Synaptics Circular Pad (287):	0
	Synaptics Palm Detection (288):	0
	Synaptics Palm Dimensions (289):	10, 200
	Synaptics Coasting Speed (290):	20.000000, 50.000000
	Synaptics Pressure Motion (291):	30, 160
	Synaptics Pressure Motion Factor (292):	1.000000, 1.000000
	Synaptics Resolution Detect (293):	1
	Synaptics Grab Event Device (294):	1
	Synaptics Gestures (295):	1
	Synaptics Capabilities (296):	1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1
	Synaptics Pad Resolution (297):	95, 81
	Synaptics Area (298):	0, 0, 0, 0
	Synaptics Noise Cancellation (299):	25, 25
	Device Product ID (257):	2, 7
	Device Node (258):	"/dev/input/event5"

Ihatewindows522 · 10-17-2014, 12:45 PM

I know it's an old machine, but maybe an SSD would speed it up a bit. It sped up every computer I put one in dramatically. If it is a harddrive issue, this would probably fix it.

robertjinx · 10-17-2014, 01:53 PM

SSD on ATA?!

SCSIraidGURU · 10-17-2014, 02:44 PM

64-Bit Linux needs 4GB of RAM. ATA drive could be slow for some apps. I use an ATA on my web server and its is not bad. How filled is your drive? You hitting swap hard? I would say more RAM to start.

robertjinx · 10-17-2014, 03:17 PM

64bit doesn't need 4GB of RAM, I don't get from where you got that info, really!

My point was that some things work slow, nothing to do with the HDD or CPU or MEM, as I wouldn't be able to watch a movie properly, like an mp4 or even an mkv.

Some of the rendering most probably is done by the graphics card for the movie, but still.

ATA disks are slow, I know that much, but still has nothing to do with a reaction of a mouse and stuck mouse when other things working.

Someone told me it could be problems with interrupts, but thats as far as I got.