Hi,

Yesterday i had an idea to install a couple of linux computers for a classroom at our faculty - but it can't be done because of something I've never seen before!

The basic installation lasted for about half an hour or even longer and it looks to me that it was about 3 times as long as other installations (the problem was in the package installation part which I guess needs processor power). But the worst part came when I tried to install MS office with Crossover. I managed but it takes about 15 seconds for Word to launch. Firefox launches in 6 seconds, OpenOffice Writer in 15-20 seconds. When synaptic (apt) is installing packages you barely run anything, sometimes applications wouldn't even launch!

The wierd thing is that the processor seems to be the narrow neck - in all cases it jumps to 100% and remains 100% until the program is launched. But when looking at the processes and add all usages up it is below 40% (if that is even possible)!

RAM: 256 MB
PROCESSOR: Celeron 2.4 GHz
CHIPSET: i848
HD_DMA: on

Can it be something to do with the kernel and it's inefficient job scheduling because of some hardware problem? It looks like it's wasting time. I'm not using some well known motherboard (First). Is there something I could look at?


Thank you.

hmmm, word will be slow to load - the only reason it's fast in windows is because it is part loaded when windows boots up. so you are getting a true reflection of how long word would take to load if ms hadn't (IMHO illegally) itegrated word into windows.


open office writer, is slow on most systems. sorry, just the way it is. again internet explorer is part loaded into windows at boot time. firefox is not. although i believe you can do this.

synaptic shouldnt' be slow though. that said you're RAM is a bit of a problem - only 256 mb...

are you sure you've got the correct kernel for your processor and that it's being run ok?

if you cd to /proc there should be something about cpu info.

what's your kernel??

Thank you for your reasoning but behaviour this is not normal this is abnormal, like, totaly insane!

I know how it should perform on that configuration. And it performs like it has a Pentium at 300 MHz!

The kernel is 2.6.10. I'm convinced that the kernel doesn't handle something on the motherboard well and I would blame the motherboard not the kernel.

yes, it seems like something is wrong...

You may run out of RAM, why don't you run top to get a clue what's going on?

I did that. But 256MB is not 64 MB

256 mb is not really ideal for ubuntu though.....

Ok we'll find out that now, I have a computer at home, AMD Athlon 1.7 with 512 MB RAM and I'll take out 256 and tell you what happens. But I think it will be nearly the same...

are you sure dma is working ok??

Yes it is memory! It doesn't work well with 256MB! Processor keeps jumping to 100% (when Synaptic is downloading packages for example) and when there is 512MB the processor is at 3-4%

I guess that the Ubuntu's kernel is optimized for 512 MB or more?

Has nothing to do with Ubuntu's kernel. It is a heavy distro, designed for desktops for mid to high end home and business users. It is just the amount of stuff it runs, and the programs, and how it handles them. It is supposed to have a lot of ram for this. The kernel means nothing, you could compile your own from source, and it would help the issue only because you compiled your own and streamlined it by removing features and modules your systems don't use.

You need to either upgrade the ram in those things(which you need to do anyways. 256 was a good amount 10 years ago. Even 5 it was enough for most things. But currently you really should have 512 in everything, but frankly I don't build a computer without recommending it has 1 gig now. There is just no reason not to. But I flatout won't use, sell, or recommend one to anyone with less than 512.

Theese computers are 4 years old... Hmm... "heavy". XP is also heavy and you don't see the difference for basic opperations between 256 MB and 1G of RAM! But if it needs more than 256 MB for Synaptic to download packages I would call it inefficient. I'll clean up some memory. What do you think, would other distributions behave the same?

Here is X running with Firefox
Mem: 515368k total, 173948k used, 341420k free, 12556k buffers

Now I opened Openoffice
Mem: 515368k total, 293100k used, 222268k free, 13536k buffers

And now I started Avidemux with FF and Openoffice still open, loaded a 4.5 GB MPEG file and started x264 encoding.
Mem: 515368k total, 359920k used, 155448k free, 13868k buffers

This is the heaviest load my desktop ever gets. Why should I waste money buying additional 512 MB?

For you, maybe you shouldn't. And buying one more 256mb stick is different than getting a 512 or a 1 gig at buy time, because there is usually all of 10 bucks in cost difference from a 512 to a 1gig stick for most users(not high end people with dual channeled corsair, but most users just need buffalo, or corsair value select, or other lower end ram). Which means, for the 10 bucks at build time, it is well worth it to get 1gig rather than 512. Down the road, for consumers, buy costs between a 256 and a 256 + a 512... not so worth it now.

My main point was that 256 made sense years ago, but that time has come and gone. But yes, some distros still run adequetley with 256. Things like Damn Small Linux, Gentoo, and flat Debian will work just fine with 256. But the bigger, prettier, heavier distros like SuSE 10, Mandriva 2k6, Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu/Ebuntu, and others are much meattier especially with the basic installs. You can strip out a bunch from any of them making them much lighter weight, but the default settings and package selections are not 256 friendly. And it isn't synaptic that causes the need for heavy ram, it is synaptic plus everything else running.

well, you should also note that the amount of ram used in linux is disengenuous. most of it is being used as a cache to improve performance. try the 'free' command....

512 should be okay for most things. i've upgraded to 1gig, but that was more for xen. i wouldn't say it's improved performance appreciably.

also this is a school pc , so money is usually tight....

maybe you could try something like vector linux or one of the lighter distros.

ubuntu is a bit of a resource hog....