just installed ubuntu 10.10 - slow download speed
 

hi!

i have just installed ubuntu 10.10 and i have noticed that my download speed is quite slow. i have an excellent connection to the internet and i didn't have any speed problems when i used windows vista. (i'm using a friend's windows 7 os right now and everything is fine.) how do i modify the download/bandwidth feature that is naturally a part of the ubuntu package so that it's not a problem anymore? the most i think i saw it download packages and files was 37 kb/s.

basically, the kind of downloads i'm doing are for installing new packages to ubuntu, and that took ages. i even tried to download ubuntu 10.04 from ubuntu.com and it would have taken almost 3 hours to complete!

i looked on this site already for answers and much of what i came across didn't apply or i didn't understand it (so it might have applied but i'm just to clueless right now). if there is a post here about the exact same thing and you know where it is, please direct me to it and i'll look through it.

thanks for any help!
brad

Perhaps, you're using a mirror that is geographically distant to Belgium. You need to choose the server that is closest to your location.
Check the following tutorial on how to select the appropriate mirror:
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/select-fas...c-upgrade.html

i thought the one i was using was from belgium. i just did a test right now to find the best server and it chose one in italy! lol! i ran it again and it picked the netherlands! now, it's choosing romania! lol!

does this mean that i should run this test each time before i decide to download something?

thanks for the suggestion. i won't mark this one as solved yet until i test my options for a bit and see how things download.

i just tried to download ubuntu 10.10 from the ubuntu website and it says it'll take at least 2 hours to complete. with my previous os, if i remember correctly, it only took a matter of minutes at the most.

i tried downloading it on the current computer (using windows 7) that i'm using while i set up ubuntu and it also says it'll take a few hours. so maybe it's just my imagination that it went faster before.

still, is changing the server the only real way to get a good, fast download speed?

(oh, and thank you for the link to ubuntu geek! now i have another website to explore to help me learn how to use ubuntu!)

I don't think so. As long as the mirror is somewhere in your part of Europe you should be fine.
You could do it a few times over a week, see which one comes up most often and stick to it.

I'm sure thare must be a script to automate the selection of the fastest mirror.

loading web pages also seems to be a bit slower than before on a different operating system. when i used ubuntu inside of windows i didn't have speed problems. now that my system is fully ubuntu, i have the problems.

thanks for your help, i appreciate it. i'll keep fiddling with things and see how they turn out.

if anyone else reads this and has any other suggestions, please offer them. :)

If you're using Firefox, then get some extensions that measure how quickly a page loads (SenSEO uses the Page Speed plugin, or you could use YSlow). Then compare them to the performance in Windows.

You may also want to check that your Xorg server isn't running at too high a load. From a command line, type top, and if Xorg is routinely at the top of the list and using 15-25% of the CPU, then you may have have an issue with graphics acceleration. You can maybe fix it by adding

Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"

under your graphics device in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. Mine looks like this

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
EndSection


Akin

thank you for your reply, netmar. what you wrote is a bit over my head, actually. i'm a newbie newbie and am not familiar with what you've just told me. i will try to sort it out (how else can i learn?) and report back on my progress.

as for comparing the speeds to what i have in windows, i no longer have windows. (the recovery disk saw to that.) i do have access to a friend's computer which uses windows 7, but in general things seem to load just fine on that computer on the same internet connection. i even tried to use other browsers in ubuntu (seamonkey and epiphany) and they run just as slow or slower.

incidentally, i tried to load this page using chromium in ubuntu and it took me forever. everything loads very, very slowly and i would certainly like to resolve this problem so i can work on other problems that will require internet access.

thanks for your help. :)

update: i just tried top in the command line and xorg is regularly at the top but is only using 3-6% of the cpu.

Hobomystical download time is reflected by hardware, location and the way we setup our network. I have 1 machine that downloads data or iso's in 10mins but the same iso may take an hour and a half on my other especially if I do it through wireless connection.
There are ways to speedup transfer rate, none of which I know how to, but after getting your system up and running, it may be worth researching.
Linux is definately customizeable so stick with it and learn all that you can.

thank you, eddy1. i'm trying to figure it out as best i can but it's so frustrating when what used to take just a few seconds online is now taking several minutes to hours. i don't understand why my internet connection on this computer using ubuntu is running so slowly. i have another computer right next to me using windows 7 and i used it to go to the exact same site and it loaded in a blink of an eye, and that was after i deleted the cookies. i believe that open source systems are better, but having a closed source system right next to me working like a charm really frustrates me and discourages me. not only do i have to look for answers that were given as part of the previous package, it's also taking me an extreme amount of time to find those answers.

i will stick with it but part of my life is now on hold until i get this thing sorted out. i use my computer for work and it's not so convenient trying to sort things out while i have work to do. :D even when i had ubuntu imbedded in windows it worked much better than what it's doing now. that's one of the main reasons i made the switch.

To me Ubuntu uses a lot of resources, but is customizeable.
Debian doesn't run on so many, unless you add them, and is also customizeable.
Since squeeze, it has almost installed all the necessities and everything has run right out the box.
Also it's a lot faster than my ubuntu machine.

well, i was just looking at debian today, actually. (i like the name and the source of it!) :) so maybe i'll switch to that instead. but i want to give ubuntu a try before leaving it behind. at this stage, i'm really just looking around until i find something that meets my needs.

Always try distros and see if you like it before installing, you can always dual-boot.
Alos they both use grub2 so it'll be easy

i did a dual boot with ubuntu. i had it in windows. but when i tried to get my windows back to its factory condition using the recovery disk, the disk failed and wiped my system and didn't put anything back in it's place. it totally removed my windows os. so all i had left was the ubuntu installation disk, and since i need a computer, i decided to go ahead and install ubuntu. so now i'm trying to make it work for me. i liked it enough when i was using it in windows. i just hadn't spent enough time with it before the windows recovery disk annihilated my system. i'm forced to use it much sooner than i'm ready to.