Hi i installed Mandrake linux 9.1 yesterday and already i have a few concerns and questions which i would like answered. I am running Mandrake on a Compaq 1700T Laptop, it;s speed is 866MhZ and it has 256MB RAM. All my hardware works fine and is detected by Linux so i am sure that my questions and concerns have nothing to do with my hardware. I am also running a Dual boot system with Windows XP on my 30 GB HDD.

First of, Linux seems a lot slower than my windows XP system and also a lot less stable which comes as a suprise to me. I installed linux under the assumption that it was a stable system and would like to have it running rather than M$. The speed concerns i have are related to the windows explorer equivelant in GNOME and the time taken to open new folders... This is very frustrating. Another speed issue is with opeining apps such as open office which takes a lot longer than M$ office 2003. I experienced a lot of crashes with my programs when i tried to open a text file which was mounted on my windows partition which is annoying but not nearly as annoying as the system lag that i sometimes experience. Last night when trying to install prorams of a CD i would double-click a package and try to rin it. Many of the time nothing would happen and sometimes the explorer would freeze? However theere were times when about 1-2 minutes later my commands were finally processed by the system and all the unroller windows would pop-up at once as if caught in lag... this also occurs with Gedit, a message will tell me about 1-2 minutes later that the application has crashed.....

On a side note i, i connect to the internet via network card (cabe internet) and it is only connected to the internet when i need to go online. Hence, when i am working offline, during the boot up procedure, the system spends a lot of time on the line

Interfacing with eth0

or something like that. This is fine when i am connected to the internet as i assume it enables my internet connection and checks the ip address or something. However when i am working offline, it takes a lot of time and i was wondering of there was any way of stopping this. I was also wondering if there was any way of accessing the internet when later on in the session if i suddenly plugged the cable into my ethernet port....?

Thank you in advance for your help. I am sorry for being a newb but please help me!

as for your lag... your running GNOME? id suggest KDE but thats just me.. theres like 10 file managers for linux and a lot of choices for applications and i think KDE is a bit faster / better [inMHO , no flames plz ] ... like konqueror is the best file manager [imho] and mozillas great for web surfing... etc etc. if you surf with nautilus or .. galeon itll be slower i think ... and its much more stable but "crashes" could be unstable programs or bugs or stuff.. linux doesnt crash and if somethings messed up control alt backspace.. normally when it "freezes" its a hardware issue kinda... like whenever i tried to run a screensaver with the settings all the way up id freeze so if i open the screensaver box ill freeze now... but it should be stable as helll... and in microshaft, it opens a window, then loads.. in linux it loads, then opens...

i switched over from linux too... and i hvae to admit i still like using my windows ME .. partly because i can play WC3 on it and partly because i spent 3 years and it was my first system ever, but linux and windows are different classes of operating systems, not meant to compete like mac and windows... kinda.

my advice-- take your time and try everything.. you might want to run blackbox or flux or some other WM but coming straight from windows those can be relaly intimidating [they were to me!!] but yull learn to appreciate them after a while and mabye even use them...

For lighter Window Managers:

http://www.plig.org/xwinman/

Don't forget hdparm!!!

http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/li...29/hdparm.html

Also, check the services. I believe Mandrake defaults to running everyhing up to and including the kitchen sink. You probably have apache, 3 or 4 databases, sendmail, 2 or 3 ftp servers, telnet, and my gradma's dentures running as daemons. Kill some of that stuff.

A lighter windowmanager might help, but the cost of convenience might be too much.

Also, look for lighter apps. Mozilla is deathly slow to start? Try firebird... OpenOffice sluggish? AbiWord is 80% smaller! There are a lot of ways to juice up your performance. Don't give up hope.

Ok thanks, i am running fluxbox now and the speed has improved somehwat. However i was wondering what you meant by killing "daemons" etc. How can i see a list of processes running? it's not like in windows where ctl+alt+del would show you everything....

ps -ae will show you what's running. I'm sure mandrake has a control panel for services. If I was a bettin' man I'd guess it was called service-drake or something like that. You should be able to get to it most easily from the kde menu. It'll show you a list of all the ser vices and you can stop them, start them or restart them, and make sure they don't start again when you reboot.

I'm not sure about Mandrake but on my ver of RH when first installed I had the same bringing up eth0...as it took it's sweet ass time to boot.
In RH under network device control i deleted eth0 and added the xdsl option which i think includes cable it tells you while you are picking it...anyways prob gone boots right up much faster than when i boot xp

I installed Linux more than 1 year ago. First of all, the goal was to test this OS for which I had heard lots of good things. I have to admit that it took me some weeks to be able to use it 'easily'. Clearly speaking I had no experience before in having to compile application to run them. Redhat is not able to read NTFS partition, not able to read MP3 files, ... I had to understand the problem, locate the solution (thanks to site like this ones) and apply the soultion either by compiling or updating with rpm file. All of that was new for me and it takes time. Now I can do whaterver I want with Linux (at least all what I was able to do with my XP). Linux is more stable, more secure (less virus attacks than on Windows platform) nad open source is a very good source of efficient (professionnal level) program. I do not regret this change and plan now to remove Windows from my PC

yeah vincent... i installed linux a month or so ago.. [i think..] and i love it, dont get me wrong but i thikn windows still has its place.. My pc wouldnt be complete without windows and i have to admit it, even though i hate it ! because like.. wanna play a game with your friends? windows... wanna umm... freeze? windows... wanna use some program like photoshop or something.. windows [i know gimp still kicks ass and i liek it but its not at the same level as PS.. the 700 dollar program] ... but by the way about your mp3 files.. i had a large collection i downloaded on windows long ago.. i wanted them on linux in XMMS but.. well they were on my windows partition so im like.. aww man what to do?!?! but then i was just browsing around all my files and in mount i saw windows ... i opened it and wow.. alll my windows files!! so i dragged over all my folders and copied them into linux and now i have my music on linux.... im not sure aabout ntfs though i have fat fat 32... [which ones better?... and the difference? i know ntsf is windows NTfile system or something]...