I have a PII 400mhz with 64mb of ram. I just installed Redhat 9 and I tried using both KDE and GNOME but they are both too slow. I was woundering if installed XFCE would that fix my problem.

most likely yes. also, any light window manager would be even faster. is it just regular slow or i-can't-do-anything-whatsoever slow?

Dunno, but as both kde and gnome are resource hungry - big bits of kit with lots of facilities.

Go for XFCE or windowmaker or one of the smaller graphic facilities. Then once it's up and running, uninstall kde and/or gnome.

I suspect you'll see a difference.

regards

John

p.s. you could also try some more ram if you can get hold of it!

Its not so slow that its unusable, it takes a while for things to load. If you move a window over icons on the desktop they disappear for a second then come back. The one thing thats so slow to start up that you have to click on it and go do something else for awhile is the add/remove packages. I really hate that thing compared to gnorpm or kpackage. I would change distros but I already bought Redhat 9 and I'm still pretty new to this whole linux thing so I needed something newbie friendly. I just want to keep Redhat 9 for awhile but I want it to be faster than Gnome (thats what I'm using now).

if it's not virtually unusable, that rules out problems like enabling dma and such.

so yes, change guis. if you're comfortable with it, i would highly recommend not using a desktop environment. even on my fast machines i use a window manager instead of a desktop environment because i like it better.

now this is where the thread turns into "this is the best wm"....

...but i would highly recommend fluxbox, blackbox, enlightenment, or icewm. take a look for yourself though.

Sorry for this questions as it has probably been answered many times but can you please give me a brief description of the differences between a window manager and a desktop enviornment

http://markun.cs.shinshu-u.ac.jp/lea...e_h_09-02.html

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...x-clients.html

Why not add another 64MB to your system and try Slackware 10 that can be downloaded at http://iso.linuxquestions.org.

This is just a suggestion and I respect your choice of distro. I just want to share this with you because my first experience with Linux using RH9 is the same with you even this PII 450MHz of mine is already installed with 128MB of RAM.

The outstanding reviews and impressions I've read in LQ and a very encouraging one in www.osnews.com (but the link is now inactive but if you want, I can email to you the entire review), has really made me tried this distro. And the result, they are right and I agreed with them - Slackware is really fast.

Besides, this distro's administration style is very simple. This is so far the only Linux distro I'm using now together with OpenBSD for my network security needs.

It's for you to decide.

yeah, i have a pII 400 that can easily run with kde. i think the difference is that it has a lot of ram. if you can afford it, you might want to look into buying more ram for your computer.

I'm enjoying using KDE 3.3 with my Slack. So valdivrk, why not try Slackware?

And if you guys are looking for a good open source firewall, OpenBSD's PF is the one!

I'll probably just buy more ram, use Redhat for a few more weeks then since i keep hearing good things about Slackware ill end up buying some cheap iso's online (stuck with 56k for right now). I would like to thank everyone for helping me out with this little problem and for the quick replys.





Thanks, Rick.






GO RED SOX (SWEPT THE DIVISION SERIERS)

HI

I have 512 Meg of RAM, using KDE with mandrake 8.1 and i always keep running out of room - my hd does not allow DMA - tried to enable it - any other suggestions?

Regards
Shelton.

just use a lighter distro all the way around. Try vector is it's just a desktop system.

mepis ran fast on my 400mhz 128MB ram machine. i buy my Linux CD's here because like u i have dialup.

http://www.edmunds-enterprises.com/linux/

Yes Vector is intended to run even on old Pentiums.

MEPIS is also a good alternative as a desktop Linux OS.