I have IceWM on an old nec with 16mb and BasicLinux3 (slackware based mini distro) its a very good light WM also with very little ram you'll be using swap and if DMA isn't on that will slow things down.

i run slackware 10.0 and fluxbox on an old compaq PII with 64mb ram, and i do not notice the kind of slowness you're talking about, so i think there is a problem somewhere. this is _not_ a heavy graphical environment, imo, and running firefox and changing between windows shouldn't take more than a couple seconds. unfortunately i don't know what to suggest, other than seeing if X gives any errors when you start it, or maybe reinstalling.

imo that setup should be running faster than you describe.

Thing, I dont know why and how did u come to the conclusion to run Slack on laptop lol..
best idea - use SuSE 9.3 pro! its also user friendly (u said u r new to all of this)
and also 9.1 and above are designed with laptops in mind (power saving, hibernation etc).
not sure if it is good for you since u got only 64mb ram lol..
cant u add a bit more ram? then u should be fine to run SuSE and enjoy it..

thanks but i want to use slackware.

"Vector-customized IceWM" whats that?

could anyone tell me how to change the resolution

moloko: as i said, i don't use kde or gnome, only fluxbox

thanks!

I tend to agree in general. I've tried three different distros (Debian Sarge with IceWM, Mandrake 10.1 with KDE, and Ubuntu with Gnome). All were set up with plenty of RAM (1.5GB system and 128MB video) and large swap files and none of them were ever as fast as my Windows 2000 installation. Of course of these three Mandrake was the worst, and Ubuntu seems to be the best.
EDIT: actually Debian with IceWM might have been a little faster, but I like the greater functionality of Gnome.

I did experience some type of video problem once on an entirely different system that caused the system to respond very slow as described at least one person in this thread. Even running a clean simple installation of Debian with IceWM or Fluxbox it took from 2-8 seconds to switch between windows. Obviously this was some type of incorrect setting or conflict and not just a slow distro.

Carmageddon where did you get the mistaken idea that Slack isn't good for running a laptop? I use Slack on my lappy and everything works perfectly including ACPI functions. Why run a bloated distro on a machine with limited resources when Slack does the job just fine without all the bloat?

Thing, while your machine really needs more RAM, take a look at your X configuration and make sure it's set up correctly as this can slow you down a bit if it isn't.

thing0:

What do you get when you run 'hdparm /dev/hda' as root (after doing 'su -')?

Dave

i will see that when i boot slackware.

so, i should use icewm, not fluxbox?

I've never used fluxbox so I couldn't tell you that one's better then the other but, iceWM works for me on my laptop with even less ram then you (16mb) and I find it easy to use and fairly configurable.

try
Ctrl Alt +
or
Ctrl Alt -

that could work (depends on your xorg.conf file...)
if that doesn't work, then find in google how to edit that file
Cheers!!

bash-3.00# hdparm /dev/hda1

/dev/hda1:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 3648/255/63, sectors = 20974431744, start = 63

why are things so hard in linux!!!

i can't even know what my screen resolution is...
alt ctrl - didn't work to change it

and i cant start icewm

when i try to "icewm-session" i get lots of errors with

cant open display <none> x must be running and $display set


errr.... why... ... ... ...

take it easy and just take a look on how to edit your xorg.conf file...
(it is easer that it seems to be! )

well... i removed slackware, now, what should i install? what distro and window manager, icewm i think.

in my experience computing always works in tradeoffs. do you want security, or ease of use? do you want it to be fast, or user-friendly? as far as i know, the fast linux distros like slackware and gentoo (note: i've never used gentoo but this is my impression) are fast because they keep most things simple and uncluttered. unfortunately, this means more work for you in setting up your system (although "more work" is somewhat misleading because in many cases editing the appropriate text file is faster and easier than finding the right check box in a gui config utility, once you know where it is and how to edit it).

so...i'm not sure what to suggest. to me, it seems like you want to have your cake and eat it too.