Improve performance with Low/Small Memory
 

Hello All,

I am currently running CentOS 5.1 on a P4 1.8 w/ 128MB Memory 80GiG EIDE HDD with a 1GIG Swap partition. I have been desperately trying to improve the performance of this system. X is not even really usable as it stands. Thus far I have tried trimming down unnecessary system services with really no big difference. I have been debating recompiling the kernel to possibly 'weed out' some things, however would this even help as most add-ins these days seem to modularized? Is there anything else that anyone might suggest?

Thank you in advance for any help or suggestions.

So this would be a server or desktop ? What window manager are you using, it looks like you don't have much RAM, so likely using KDE and GNOME will be quite slow. But what specifically is going slow ?

Mostly X performs slow. Everything *seems* to perform ok when I leave the default runlevel to 3.

As far as X. I am using KDE and even just the simple action of clicking one of the application menu's takes a significant ammount of time. This system is currently used as a LAMP test 'server' but I would also like to be able (if possible) to use it as a desktop.

I would suggest installing a lightweight desktop then.. XFCE4 for instance..

Also for a LAMP server more RAM would improve your performance if you are running something like a CMS site..

I would suggest upgrading that RAM and it would address your desktop performance issues as well. RAM is cheap after all.

You might try a lighter desktop environment than kde such as enlightment or xfce4. The former is what EeePC is based on. The former is what xubuntu uses. Of course you could simply add more memory as well. I'm sure you could find old memory sticks on EBAY from people who had pulled a 128M stick and replaced it with a 512M stick on an older computer. Their new computer probably uses ddr2 memory now and so these sticks are useless to them now.

Thank you. I am taking a shot at xfce4 as we speak, but XUbuntu looks very interesting itself. Says 'older computers will feel lively again' .

I agree with Jschiwal adding RAM is the first thing to do.

Ubuntu with the XFCE desktop as default.. so right along our recommendations. you should be able to install xfce on your current system as well without too much trouble.

Yes sir I tried xfce4 tonight. While I did notice it works slightly faster it's still utterly useless even clicking the menu or sometimes even moving the mouse around is VERY delayed. I guess I will just have to fork out and upgrade the RAM in this machine if I wish to use it for anything else. I just find it frustrating a bit because I seem to remember a time about 10 years or so ago when XWin would do lovely on a system like this.

Besides the window manager, also look at the processes that are running. You might need to disable some features such as beagle which would be using up cycles & memory in the background. Some things running in the background may be new from your previous experience. Library sizes may have increased since you last tried Linux on a Pentium II machine which could lead to less memory being available. The kernel may even have increased in size since then. Compiling a slimmer kernel or unloading unneeded modules may help as well. Applications may have also have grown in size in recent years. A program like OpenOffice will bog down a Pentium III system.

Also, give the system some time because on a new install (also true for other OS's as well) there may be some onetime processes that take more time, such as the "updatedb" program. On a new install, it might be a good idea to let it run overnight. A program like updatedb will be scheduled to run around 2am when you probably won't run the computer. But if it hadn't been run, then it may run instead after you boot up.

Because a Pentium II is so old, you might need to even revert to an older simpler windows manager such as fvwm or a generic unadorned X windows install, if you want to run X windows at all.

I once tried the Windows 98 that was installed on Pentium III dell server before stripping it off. I couldn't believe how slow it was. We have become accustomed to much faster processors and have forgotten the wait time involved previously.

A base install of Debian with XFCE4 on a Pentium 133 MMX with 32 MB RAM and a 1 MB Video card ran decent.. the main issue I had was load time for applications. Once the web browser was open I could browse the net just fine.. With a base install of Debian you get ZERO extras, which obviously made a difference. Can you slim down your install a bit ? or try something like DSL, Slax, Vector, etc..

You know XFCE advertises that they are light, but they are only half as bloated as KDE, that's a lot of bloat still. Try fluxbox, icewm, windowmaker, etc. They are much lighter.

Well it shouldn't be THAT slow when everything is working properly.
A few years ago I was running on 128MB/650Mhz - debian /w KDE. It wasn't lightning fast, but perfectly usable.

What does free tell once you have booted to desktop? Is it already swapping badly?

If you using it as a lamp server do you really need X installed??

If your using X mainly as a front end to these services you might be better off with not installing X and using webmin to configure the services.

Ubuntu do a server distro which installs everything you need for a lamp server

/yep
apache, php and mysql will have you swapping all by themselves. If you put window manager on there, well you know what happens. Nothing can fix it but more memory. mysql is the big offender. It can't avoid it. Try the my-small.cnf file from the mysql distro, and tweak the memory options smaller. It's far better to put a leash on mysql and have it be slow than it is to cripple the OS.

For demos just keep a second file that gives it more memory and don't run the window manager.

-Viz