Hi everybody,

I have tried linux distros (redhat,suse) on my celeron 450mhz 192mb ram , but none is as efficient as windows 2000 prof..
Almost everytime i boot into linux (dual-boot system with linux and win2k) there's a new problem waiting for me.Sometimes the startx won't run, often there's some problem with sound and always the programs run slow.
I can run more programs in win2k simultaneously than in linux.
Its not only me but my friends as well who experience the same problems.

Does linux have to be optimized to run as fast as windows ?

Thanks

Hi

I think it does have to be optimised what helps is to recompile i hear , also to disable a lot of the services.
One thing is for sure if you are running mandrake it will definately be slow as (wel u get the pic)
For the fastest distro out of the box (IMO) i say u should try slackware , you will definately notice the difference.

cheers

I have disabled most of the services..but still i don't see any noticable difference.I wonder why i always hear linux is faster and stable then windows.I never encounter the so called blue screen of death in win2k...my PC runs win2k 24hrs and doesn't ever freeze or hang up.

For once i would like to see linux work as efficiently as my windows 2000.

how much does recompiling help in improving performance ? How do i start doing it ?

thanks for help.

If you don't know how to compile something forget about doing it for a whole system.Things will get mighty screwed up.
That sounds more like a problem with xfree and the configuration of your graphics system.What graphics card do you use?
With that box thing won't be flying by but it should be stable and as fast as w2k.

I have windows2K and it sucks compared to fedora.
Games Like Unreal-Tournament, Unrealtournament2003, Half-Life, COunter strike
run with an extra 10-20 frames per second under linux with the latest nvidia drivers.

Yeah, remove everything u dont need.
for example, few people ever use the ssh daemon, but it runs by default.
things like HID and USB mouse and keyboard.
smtpd

remove what you dont need.

also turn off kudzu, reactivating it only when you plan to add/remove hardware.

today Linux is using the Kernel 2.6.3 and you say that Linux is slow!!!!!!!!!

Are you talking about a slow bootup? Or a slow-running system? I've found that every distro I have tried has worked faster. Some take longer to boot, but working is all I care about. Even the "live-cds" I have tried are faster running off a cdrom drive. But my Mandrake 9.1 and Debian Woody installs did take a while to boot. I am not saying this without comparison. I've tried dos 4,5.1,6,6.2,Win3.1,95,98,98se,me,2000,xp pro,FreeBSD5,5.1,NetBSD1.5.,1.6,BeOS 5, BeOS Dev ed,linux-mandrake6.1,9.1,10beta(rc1now),debian woody,sarge,sid,connectiva,vector 4,mepis,pclinuxos,storm,morphix(game and gnome ed),damn small,and slax(which boots really fast). I left out what I didn't boot. Wow. That's a lot. Never really listed them in one place.lol.

Speed is relative. I remember that when I switched from Windows 95 to 98SE on my p-133, it seemed to respond more slowly to my requests (thought I needed ram), but it actually got things done faster. Mandrake took a lot longer to boot up than Debian but it worked faster, as it was compiled for my pentium instead of a 386/486. Nothing booted faster than BeOS, but it didn't work for me.

A real life today test: my box - p-iii 700 256mb ram, 2-5400rpm hds(ata33 only). Running Windows XP(installed now on /dev/hda1),Mandrake10RC1(with 2.6.3 kernel),Morphix. XP has all services I don't use turned off and a few speed tweaks I learned from www.tweakxp.com. Mandrake is how I installed it (I run 24 of 28 services, according to my list). I cannot do the same tasks with both without incident. The other day, I was installing a 200mb update (I am running Cooker sources, after all) while I was running a web browser in two X-sessions running KDE (which is way more graphically intensive than my XP install). The mouse didn't even flicker. I cannot do two sessions (you know, fast user switching) with XP without sluggishness. Another side effect is that I closed the other session and got back to all the apps I was running in the other session. With XP, I cannot even lock the screen and expect my apps to respond when I get back. I find there's a difference.

Nowadays most graphical programs depend on one or more sets of external libraries like GTK2 or QT3. These are both excruciatingly slow but provide the eye candy that a lot of users obviously want (me included, at least sometimes). Just compare the load time between gvim 6.2 compiled with GTK2 and the exact same source compiled with GTK 1.2/1.3. It's amazing.

You may also want to run a lightweight desktop environment. Look into Blackbox, stable Fluxbox (recent development versions of Fluxbox focus solely on eye candy and performance takes a huge hit), IceWM or even XFCE4. XFCE4 provides a full desktop environment while Fluxbox and IceWM both are window managers only, but XFCE4 manages to keep it at a sane level of functionality and speed (quite unlike Gnome or KDE).


Håkan

I am also finding my system slow, running the newest kernel. I had to recompile it to add in the usb wireless support, when I finally got the wireless network running I notice that it takes upwards of a full minute to open a browser, if I want to open file roller I give up before it ever opens, waited 5 minutes one day, now I use ark but again it takes like 2 or 3 minutes to open. Using the Gnome gui. updated the video drivers from Nvidia and installed them no change, I dont have any stability issues tho and computer is an athalon 1.8 Ghz with 512 RAM running linux on a 40 GB HDD with about 30 GB free. would changing the swap file size do anything ? if so is there a way to do it without destroying the contents of the drive? oh yeah Mandrake 9.2.

You got something well beyound screwed up.I got a 2.6 athlon (which shouldn't make much of a difference) nvidia graphics and 512 RAM and mozilla opens in about 4 secounds.Forget about swap with 512 RAM it should hardly touch it anyway.Dunno about gnome but with kde things get slow as molasses if you don't have the network connected and your localhost setting is wrong.

Well, do this from a term window.........

hdparm -Tt /dev/hd?
fill in ? with drive number, this will tell if DMA is enabled or not
and also test the I/O of your hard drives if DMA is enabled.

My computer does what I said it does. Yours is better. There is definitely something holding you back. BTW, I have 384mb set aside for swap and usually I don't touch it (and I'm a KDE guy)

I agree with one of the first posts - Slackware 9.2 is super-fast compared to Fedora and Mandrake.

I have since dumped Mandrake in favor for SuSE 9.0 it is screaming fast. I still like Mandrake, but I like SuSE much more, it just seems like a dream it runs so smooth, I have managed to 'convert' a few diehard Windows fanatics to SuSE it is so smooth..

I experienced the same affects before I changed some features to modules instead of in the kernel. (An update put them in the kernel for me.)