Running FC3 on a Dell XPS, having RAM issues
 

Hello all, this is my first post so please be nice...
I have googled around and found nothing on this.
I have a dell XPS laptop, and am running Fedora Core three, I am very very new to linux and was wondering about ram usage. I install gDesklets, and one of the little widgets is a guage that tracks how much ram is being used. (oh yea, I have 2 gig of ram) most of the time when it tells me I am using about 450-500M of my ram, but other times it tops off at 1.97 (1.98 is max) and the system slows down, I am not doing anything intence when this happens... any suggestions?

Thanks alot,
Nick

*edit* also, am I correct in that there is no support for ATI mobiltiy 9800 in FC3? *note*

Hi, and welcome to LQ, I think you'll find most people are pretty nice here.
As to your problem, it's hard to say what's using up all the ram, but it's easy to check. You can either fire up a terminal and use `top`, or if you prefer the GUI way, and you're using gnome (since you use gdesklets that sounds likely) try gnome-system-monitor. Either will give you a nice list of processes and how much memory they are using.

IIRC, fedora and Red Hat don't include non-free stuff as a rule, and the ATI drivers are non-free. If ATI supply the relevant drivers it should be a cinch to install them, however. There are probably even rpms (I don't know, I don't have ATI hardware nor do I use fedora). If you run into any problems just start another thread!

Thanks alot, I guess that the gDesklets modual is incorrect, asd the system monitor fluctuates with actual use of ram. Thanks alot, so is there another distro that support the 9800 mobility? does anyone know?

Good morning,

I have an XPS running SuSE 9.2 Pro and have the same issue with the ATI Mobility 9800 video card. The card works with all display modes available (1920x1200), but there is no OpenGL support. :eek:

According to ATI, they rely on the manufacturer (ie. Dell) to provide drivers for laptops since apparently the configuration of the driver needs to be customized for the specific platform. :rolleyes: According to Dell, there are no drivers for the 9800 yet: but, they do support Linux drivers for other laptop models, so perhaps 9800 drivers will come soon? A list is available here:

Dell laptop drivers for Linux

Cheers, good luck!

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Please don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that. -Anonymous