my linux exteremely slow
 

Hi,

I have just installed SUSE 9 a few days ago.
I have never seen Linux before. I was just too curious to try it.

I have a PII 400 mhz, 64 MB RAM computer. W98 was working on this machine at reasonable speed.
Now I installed SUSE linux alone, deleted Win.

Everything seems to be working, just extremely slowly.
That surprised me the most, as everywhere I read about Linux previously, I read it is faster than Win and does not need the latest hardware.


Starting Kmail takes about a minute, then adding a new email address to the addressbook another minute or more then saving the address another minute. I could do this on Win within a second without any waiting.

Internet browsing seems to be a bit faster than in IE.

Any Idea would be appreciated.


Thanks for all your responses. At least I don't feel I'm alone with that. :)
I have found something that may be important.

When I select failsafe mode at bootup,
I find the following warning highlighted in rows of stars.:
*******************************************
The DMA on your hard drive is turned off.
It may really slow down the FSCK process.
*******************************************

Then also :

IDE0: Speed warnings UDMA 3/4/5 is not functional.

I found the DMA setting in YaST ant it is ON.
Still these warnings do appear.


KSim (System monitor) shows:
64M ram, 44M Free
454M swap, 354 free
CPU: around 10-15%, but this jumps to 100, when I start any program.

I understand that DMA means Direct Memory Access with less CPU usage.
Is there a way I can see if it is functional or not?

You use SUSE 9 in 400 mhz and 64MB ram computer. It is not fair to compare SUSE 9 and Win98 in old computer because the programs packaged in SUSE 9 newer than programs that compatible with Win98.

I suspect you use KDE desktop manager. KDE 3.1 requires a lot of memory, more than required by desktop manager in Win98.

so, if you want to make it faster:
1. Don't use heave ( require a lot of memory ) desktop manager like KDE or Gnome. Instead use XFCE, WindowMaker.

Oh, yeah, KMail. KMail is a part of KDE desktop manager so I consider it a heavy program. For email client that don't require a lot of memory, try Balsa.

I think what almost people mean 'Linux is faster' is Linux as kernel not as distro. As default distro like REdhat, Fedora is slow.

Hi,
I'm facing similar problem.My KDE system guard shows 190 MB used out of my total 192MB RAM.My PC is P2 433 MHz 40 GB HDD 192 MB RAM. Won't compiling the kernel fix the problem ? Please help me how to go about it.
Thanking You

Similar situation here too.
Last weekend installed SuSE 9 - completely got rid of Win98 on a Compaq Presario 2292 with AMD K6 333MHz, 320Mb RAM & 40Gb disk.
I'm finding running stuff within KDE to be slow s l o w s l o w.....YaST in particular takes forever.

Running "top" from Konsole, I can see %idle dropping to zero anytime I try to do something within YaST - so on the face of it, looks as though it's a CPU issue.
I've also had strange occurrences like "cupsd" grabbing ¾ of my CPU even though I haven't yet got round to connecting a printer!

Will try Windowmaker and other environments as suggested to see if the same problems happen there.

Hi,
You can view the list of daemons running using chkconfig and stop unnecessary ones using 'chkconfig <daemon> off'.After doing all its a bit less slow.
i tried windowmaker , its a little faster.It shows 185 MB RAM used instead of 190 MB in KDE.
So maybe its not the desktop manager but something else.
Linux doesn't seem to be for normal users, i'd better switch back to my good old win2k.
Before that i'd try compiling linux kernel to check if it makes any difference.
Any tips/suggestions would be greatly useful here.

PS : I don't understand why it isn't fair to compare win98/win2k with suse 9.Win98/2k run fast on old as well as new machines unlike suse 9 which probably runs fast only on new machines.Why don't they make it backward compatible with older machines like windows ?

thanks

The memory consumption is just ok, because under Linux free memory is considered useless memory - it will always try to stuff as much into ram as is possible.

Yast takes forever even on my PIII/1100, but as we all know, a infinity loop will only take 5 seconds under linux to be completed ;-)
To be serious: SuSE9.0 is slow, a lot slower than 8.1/2. I'm not exactly sure what is slowing things down so much, but I'm suspecting KDE. Trying a lightweight window manager sounds like a good idea, remember that you're probably still able to execute KDE/Gnome programs as long as the QT/Gnome libs are installed.


BTW AFAIK the KDE development team claims some speed increase with version 3.2, so it might be worth a try; or wait until SuSE 9.1.

Hi Melinda,

Thank you for your reply.

I think, it maybe unfair, but for people who never seen Linux before, don't know anything about distros....

I just seen on SUSE home page that it supports processors PI through PIV, biut not 386 and 486.
They do not say the kernel or whatever, but SUSE.
You know, that "simply chanege" it will be faster and more fun.

Here is what they write:

"Don't Get Mad - Get Moving!
When was the last time you got mad about your PC? Spare yourself the annoyance and get down to the most frequent source of PC problems: the operating system. Do your PC a favor and migrate to SUSE LINUX! If necessary, you can do this carefully and gradually. No previous experience is needed to install SUSE LINUX on any common PC - even alongside an existing Windows operating system. Our installation support will gladly assist you in tackling obstacles. So what are you still waiting for? "

http://www.suse.com/us/private/index.html

So, I think, my PII machine is that "any common PC" and not even the worst.
For sending email, browsing the web etc. even a 486 machine was fine 8 years ago.
I would understand if I wanted to do some supercomputing, 3D movies or whatever you need PIII for. I do not do anythinhg the like.

I really love Linux, even if I have tried it for a few days only, and I still hope, that there is a way to make it work at a reasonable speed for such simple tasks. I have also found amazing the huge amount of software they packed on those CDs Just for the price of the 2 books.
I really don't believe that I should have a PIV for sending a few emails.

answer to memory full, slow system in Xwindows
 

Though this trhread ended over a year ago, I did not see the actual answer to this problem, which I also experienced just recently with SUSE 9.2.

The SUSE website explains that there is a problem between Xwindows and the KDE font aliasing. This occurs even when not using KDE (I use FVWM). Their solution works and is simply:


"Switch off Anti-Aliasing in the KDE control center."


their relevant page is:

http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2002/0...uming_mem.html

-Don

Re: answer to memory full, slow system in Xwindows
 

Xwindows and KDE are used in many distros, does this mean other distros are also affected?

I think that the comparison or confusion stems from comparing different generation OSes. SUsE 9.2 is a fairly current version of the OS. Windows 98 is nowhere near current. If you compared Windows 2000 with SUse 9.2, then that would be a fair comparison. You would find that Windows 2000 probably wouldn't even load onto that machine. But SUsE not only loads, but runs. It's slow, but it runs.

F_M

edit: Sorry about adding to a thread this old. I didn't seen the date until after I posted.

the thread is old but the relevance isnt

the main point is that "modern" desktop enviroments (the bit you can see) are heavy on the ram in older computers. They really need more Ram to run. icewm is a userfriendly lite windowmanager (like desktop environment) - like win 98 or os 9-

recompiling the kernel won't do much, probably.

distro: the bit around the kernel. a collection of software packages around the kernel.

If the problem is too little RAM for the heavy de's (gnome, kde) then yes, it could be a problem in other distros.

titanium_geek

EDIT:
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Distribution (the lq encyclopedia [wiki] page on distribution)

Just skimmed over the thread, but comparing a modern (and argueably bloated ;) ) distro like SuSE to an old OS like Win98 is a little unfair. Perhaps put WinXP on that computer and see how it's doing after a month (or heck, even how it's doing without graphic drivers). I imagine that Slackware with FVWM, Fluxbox, Openbox, Windowmaker, etc. would just fly (then again, that's my answer to everything).

Hi,

I'm the one who originally started this thread.

Well, in the meantime, I have upgraded my machine to an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ with 512 Mb RAM and SuSE 9.2

Now, some things go a bit faster, but there are still some that are almost as slow as on the old machine. I'm already getting used to it. :)
Starting Kmail still takes almost a minute.
I tried Evolution, but it crashed often, so I returned to Kmail.


By the way, a friend of mine has Win 2K on such an old PII 400 MHz 64Mb machine.