Ubuntu very slow
 

I have an older dell (2002) laptop with 1 GB Ram memory. I decided to install Ubuntu on this computer so I totally wiped Windows off and installed only Ubuntu. It is now so slow. It takes forever for anything to happen. And most of the time, I have to restart so that I can try again since it freezes too. I managed to get my wireless network up and running but I can't surf cuz it's so awful slow and freezing.

I had Windows XP pro on it and it ran fine with 1 GB. Since I am new, I don't know what's happening, what I should do or even where to start looking. I really want to learn this OS.

I hope someone can help me. And thanks in advance to any and all who answer.

Kit

Hello Kitbelle and welcome to LQ,

what is slow? the internetconnection or the whole system?

Could you please open a terminal and post the output of andand andMarkus

slow workings
 

So long as it boots up try the following:

goto a terminal

type; sudo apt-get update
(it will ask for a password)
type; sudo apt-get upgrade
type; y
let it run after each instruction.
Fred.

Ubuntu runs slow
 

Hello and thanks to Markus & Fred

In reply to Fred: I got an Update Manager window with plenty of updates available! Wow! I thought this is a great start, but when I tried to d/l those, Ubuntu froze. Unfortunately, I only got the update window once and I can't replicate it. It tells me the passwords I am typing are wrong. There are only 2 passwords that I input in this system. One for my network, the other when I installed Ubuntu. I have tried both to no avail.

Here's the problem and what I mean by slow/freezing. Ubuntu starts up very quickly. The prob is once it's started and when I try to do anything, the window I open dims and then freezes or the whole computer freezes. Sometimes I can shut the frozen window down, and then open another application, i.e. Firefox, but I can't do anything in it. For example, I might not be able to type anything in the search box b/c as I hit the keyboard, no character appears as I am typing. Or if I am able to type something, then I can't get results b/c the window freezes.

I am totally ignorant abt. Ubuntu and really want to learn it. I teach Windows Instruction & advanced OS repair at our local college. So comparing these Ubuntu prob. to a Windows machine, I'd compare it to a Vista/W7 OS trying to run on 512MB of ram memory. I would also diagnose a video driver problem b/c sometimes as I try to close down a window, I will get a fairly good-sized black block somewhere on the screen. I also get funny, squiggly lines sometimes across the screen. This laptop ran fine wieh XP Pro and 1 GB memory but it is a nightmare with Ubuntu. I am using one of my other Windows machine to post this as Ubuntu is pretty much unusuable as is.


To Markus......this is what I found by following your instructions: free -m:
total 1002 used 374 free 627 It appears that I have plenty of memory left for use.

df -h:
size: 18G Used: 202G Avail 15G udev: 502M Used: 236K Avail: 501M (other info in this window< I believe, isn't needed by you)

lspci:
This command talks about USB, Host bridge, ISA bridge, Multimedia audio controller, Modem, etc. If this info is needed, I will post in more detal.

cat /etc/resolv.conf: It says "Generated by NetworkManager"

Maybe this laptop is too old, hence no correct drivers for some things? Is there another flavor of Linux that might work better? My neice at college, who cut her teeth on XP, now swears by her Linux machine and I figure if she can learn it, why not me? And again, thank you to all that are helping!!!
Kit

Well, in the file /etc/resolv.conf the DNS-server is configured, if there is no linewhere xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is of course the ipadress of your DNS server, there is something wrong. As you know from Windows, a wrong or missing DNS-setting may slow the system down.

Could you please post the output of You can as root (with sudo) try to edit the /etc/resolv.conf file and add a nameserver and insert a line as I mentioned (nameserver ipadressofnameserver).

Markus

What is your graphics card? ('lspci' will tell you)

Ubuntu runs slow
 

Markus, Snowpine,

What specific info would you like me to post from ifconfig? I am getting lots of info back (ipaddress included) but it's much too long to retype since I can't copy/paste from Ubuntu machine. Unfortunately, I only know enough about networking to get by as it is not one of my strong suits.

Graphics Card: ATI Radeon Mobility M6

This is a Dell Lattitude C510/610 laptop. I wish I could figure this out without having to pester anyone but I sure am glad there are ppl out there who knowledgeable and are willing to help.

Thanks.

Kit

Well, then let's test the basic networksettings.

Are you using DHCP?
Are the IP-adress, subnetmask and broadcastadress (you'll find out with ifconfig) valid settings for your network, you may compare with your Windowscomputer.
Can you ping the ipadress of your router?
Can you ping www.google.de?
If you can ping ip-adresses but no www.adresses, edit the /etc/resolv.conf and insert a correct nameserver.

Markus

Google tells me your laptop is a Pentium 3 with integrated graphics. I would not expect Ubuntu to run well. It is a full-featured distribution designed for modern hardware.

Have you tried a "lightweight" distro for older hardware such as Puppy Linux?

Well, I've used PIII with 512 MB of RAM and Archlinux, it runs properly with Gnome. I don't think that a PIII with 1GB of RAM can be as slow as the OP wrote. Maybe there is not one single issue slowing the machine down.
But I second your idea to try a more lightwight distribution.

Markus

Ubuntu runs slow
 

Markus, Snowpine,

Markus: I can surf the internet but FF runs like it is going thru molasses and once I type in my search term (if I can get that far), it brings me back a listing, but freezes if following any, so I can't get very far into any of the links. Sometimes I can't get that far and it freezes from the get-go right after opening FF. So I believe networking is working OK.

Snowpine: I was thinking that Ubuntu doesn't have the bloat that a Windows OS has so therefore I wouldn't need a very powerful computer with lots of memory to run it. So PuppyLinux might be a better bet?

Are most of these distros similiar in the way they work and how they look? Any other distro suggestions based on this old laptop? It worked great as a windows XP computer just as is, so I thought it would be a good computer to learn Linux on........I think I was so totally wrong!!

As always........thank you so very much. I hate to seem like the helpless female but in this area, I am totally out of my element and any pointers, tips, suggestions are greatly appreciated.

I really can't help but think this is a display/video driver problem. If there is 600MB of memory free, the system shouldn't be that slow, nor should it be locking up. Is there an easy way in Ubuntu to reconfigure the X-Server? I've always done it the old-school way (editing the XF86Config).

Ubuntu is bloated, actually. Linux is not necessarily faster than Windows if it's clogged up with lots of useless services and applications.

Anyway, I still don't understand, are only internet-related applications slow or is everything slow?

Hello Kitbelle.

Try appending acpi=off and nolapic to your kernel parameters.

Step-by-step instructions:

- Boot your system as normal and open a terminal.
- Type in in the terminal and press [ENTER].
- It will ask you for your password. Type it in and proceed.
- A text editor will come up with the aforementioned file. Look for this line: and change it to look like this: - Save the file and close gedit.
- Type into the terminal . Type in your password and let it finish.
- Reboot and observe any changes in behavior.





If the system continues to hang up, repeat the above process, adding acpi=off to the relevant line so that it looks like this: Reply back with your observations.

leopard :)

slow/freeze
 

Disabling acpi is always worth a try, as is installing Xubuntu with its lightweight desktop (xfce, or similar) but older circuit boards can wear out, especially after major stress/changes as I'm sure you know. I've had Xubuntu work on some venerable old machines but try it on another and it just won't have it. I am no expert but wonder why it will start to work on a network connection if it was not correctly identified?

Fred.