I have got one 233 mhz celeron with 4 gb of harddisk, 32 mb of memory and other 500mhz celeron with 20gb storage, 128mb RAM. I run windows 98 on first and XPwith98 on second, work fine.

But when i installed RedHat8.0 on 500 mhz celeron, performance was very slow(as compared to XP). Then how much slow machines can i expect with 233 mhz,32mb?

how do i speed up?

I want to try linux, but I must accomplish my job too!

I need to use GUI, (nubee).

Here's a few suggestions:

1. Get rid of KDE and GNOME, they use a lot of resources. Use Blackbox or one of the other smaller window managers.

2. Shutdowm / remove services, daemons, etc. you don't need

3. Use hdparm to tweak your hard drive's performance

4. Look at the amigo linux page on this site. They have an excellent tutorial on minimalistic system configuration. (Written for Slackware, but should still be useful to you)

A properly configured, streamlined Linux system will generally run rings around a Windows system on any kind of hardware with the added pluses of being more secure and more customizable to your particular needs.

You could also try an older version of RedHat. I thought 5.2 was pretty quick on older architectures.

the mere fact that you can run xp on only 32 mb ram... mind boggling.. my amd athalon xp had trouble runing 98se on 64.... you got lucky....

I suggest Slackware. BTW RH's min memory requirement is 128MB.

i just had a thought along with the slackware... you should use knoppix... i belive that it requires 32mb.. and you can run it from a live cd, wich will save you valuble hard drive space. i belive that the only way that you can get it is to download off the net, but it is definitly worth the time. i only use it to troubleshoot, but i really like the preformance that it has... as far a gui goes.. i havent every used one on knoppix, but it comes with one, however that uses more mem. but i belive that the totall used is along the lines of 94 mb.. so still better than slackware. then you can just have a single config file inside of you window and run from cd the nessesary comonentes.. i belive that it has grub...... and it comes with a crap load of other stuff.. i belive that it is compressed so well that they have 2gb of info crammed on a 700 mb iso image.. it has gimp and open office and loads of other good stuff.. that is how i used to do it before i upgraded my computer.. i also used to have only a 4 gb hd.. and win 98 took up 3gb so i really didnt have enugh room to have a fully installed verson of linux..... ... so.. well that is about all i have to say on that issue.. i would definitly check out knoppix if i were you.

Thank for the replies, i'll try all the suggested methods, But:

joe83!
what's hdparm?

michaelk!
I'll try Slackware. thanks for suggestion,

obscure shadow!
I'm using knoppix now (our views matched about it).


I'd not ever expected so fast reply, this site is cool, you guys are cool, thank u all again....

From slackware website:

hdparm (read/set hard drive parameters)

hdparm provides a command line interface to various hard disk ioctls
supported by the Linux ATA/IDE device driver subsystem. This may be
required to enable higher-performing disk modes.

hdparm was written by Mark Lord.

I've gotten some good performance gains on older systems using this. manhdparm has more detail or google "hdparm"

sure, no problem. i am also quite amazed at the results that i have gotten from this site.

Yeah, this is a really good site. I'm a "tweaker" by nature and every time I've gotten in a jam because of it, someone here has had the answers I needed, no small feat considering I'm the poster child for the old "you can't make anything idiot-proof because they'll just invent a better idiot" line

hehe.. well yeah, i know how that one goes...... that is why i came to linux, i couldn't stand not being able to tweak windows. and it was near impossible to find the file extensions..

Well I have a suggestion for you on both systems. You can run KDE or Gnome on either system. right now this system I am using is a PII 266 overclocked to a 333 and with a good video card a lot of the system resources are freed up. Seeing my usual system had a MB fry happen and fundage is tight so I have to make due. This system with a radeon 9000 in it is still compeditive. It plays 90+% of the movies i backed up in divx on the downed system. I am using it to refresh myself in c++ and it compiles like a champ. I robbed a few things from the usual system, what it ran before for video with 8mb was a lil slow comparitively. It had an ATI Mach 64. Linux is a matter of trying and seeing. The whole trial and error thing. Oh and this is on a system running Mandrake 10.1 Community updated off of official's mirrors.

Today I tried to install Slackware 9.0 in my 500mhz system. The setup with text mode went smoothly.But But ! it had only LILO and no grub(which i always use). The installation process provided me with 3 options:
1. Setup lilo in MBR ( dangerous)
2. Make a boot loader floppy
3. Setup lilo in / disk (have some tweaks: make / bootable with fdisk)

I tried all of three.
Opt 1 erased my mbr and removed win98 from my system (i had to recover it).

With Opt2 i could start the system.

I don't know what Opt3 did.

Again there was another solution: loadlin (to load linux from DOS). With this also I was able to start the system.

But the problem is that from both solutions: booteable floppy and loadlin i cannot get the gui.

Help me to get my gui + write lilo in mbr.

jchance!

are you telling me to upgrade my vdo card or what?

Another question:
how do i choose to start only those services which i need. (e.g. in my desktop single pc, i don't want to start smb service, dhcp stuffs, etc..)so as to minimize startup time.
help plz

Well it couldn't hurt on an older system to have a half decent video card on it. The proof for me is this system here which I think will keep the Radeon 900 in it unless I repair my downed system and build a new one to boot to replace this one. Then the Mach 64 will be back in it. It isn't necessary to use linux but I am shocked in the performence gains this system got from it.

On th note of lilo and where to put it, I would write it to the master boot record myself. All you need to do is add you win98 to lilo and its config file. Then you can boot either from lilo.