Hi,

What are the min specs needed to run a decent Linux Box?

I have tired different spec machine with different distros of Linux and they all seem to run much much much slower then XP (which I didnt really think was possible).

The current box im running Fedora 3 on is:

PIII 933
512Mb Ram
30Gb 7200RPM HDD
Nivida GeForce 64Mb GFX

But have tried different combinations of:

AMD 1800+
Celeron 300
PIII450
PII300
128, 256, 512 Mb
Nivida and ATi GFX Cards

With:

Mandrake
SuSe
FC3
Slackware

Cheers

Any of the combinations you have mentioned would make for a decent Linux box. Much of what makes a linux box decent or not depends on what you want to do with it.

I am curious as to how you have determined that the linux system is slower than the XP system. Are you using some benchmark standard, or are you making that statement based on a subjective perception? Not trying to be confrontational - just curious.

One possible cause of a difference in apparent speed would be video performance. What drivers are you using with the graphics cards under linux? If you are using accelerated drivers under XP and non-accelerated drivers under linux, that would probably make a difference for games and other graphics-intensive applications.

If the apparent speed difference is perceived during the start up of a GUI, you should be made aware that different desktops load differently, and therefore have longer or shorter load times. Which desktop were you using? KDE? Gnome? XFce4?

Give us some more information, and we can perhaps help you to identify ways of speeding up your linux box.

Have tried Gnome and KDE. (Prefer Gnome)

First is the booting that takes much longer. But that dosent really bother me. Althought I would like to speed it up by taking out some of the service I wont use (Printing, networking - which someone has told me how to do in another part of the forum)

But its just the day-to-day running of the whole thing that seems slow, ie opening OpenOffice Apps & Files, loading the small pre-installed games, searching the HDD, Formatting disks etc..

At this stage im just wanting to try out Linux for a bit of fun see what its like.

If you use Mandrake or Fedora, I have noticed that boot time can be slower than other distros (don't know about XP). This is because they start a lot of services at boot time, that you may or may not need. The first thing I do is disable everything I don't need. On my system Slack with a custom kernel and FreeBSD boot the fastest compared to Ubuntu, Mandrake and Fedora Core.

Okay, I have to admit that OpenOffice.org isn't exactly "snappy" on my box either.

KDE and Gnome load a number of additional resources when they launch. If I remember correctly from an article I read a while back, KDE loads many of these additional programs as it starts up. Gnome loads them as they are needed. Someone may correct me on this. Its been a while since I read the article, and I haven't kept up on Gnome or KDE development. I like Xfce4 because it seemed subjectively quicker to me, and there are others who feel the same. Fluxbox is also pretty quick, and I use it on an old laptop because it is not as resource intensive as some other desktops.

You are right that keeping services that you won't need from starting will speed up the whole boot process. There are some people who prefer slackware because they say it boots faster. (I am one of them, but it's not the only reason. Besides, my box is almost always running, so boot time is not a major consideration with me.)

Anyway, I would suggest trying some of the other desktops/window managers to see if one of them more closely fits your preferences. Another thing I can suggest is using multiple workspaces. I routinely use five. In the first one I have three terminals open (one is 80x52; the other two are 80x25). Workspace 2 is my browser and 3 is for email (Thunderbird). The other two are "spares" that I used when I am compiling or playing Mahjongg.

What distro are you running now? Generally, how long have you used each of the distros you've tried before trying another?