Help the newbie...:D Got some questions...
 

Hey everyone... I just set up my internet connection successfully on Fedora Core 4(never mind the profile) And am looking forward to a great life with linux ;). But there are some points I really don't get. Having used WinXP for the last 2 years these are the things I can't get used to..

First off, the performance. The load times and reflex times are very long compared to Linux. For example, when I click a song it takes XMMS 3 seconds to start playing it. That is with XMMS being already open. Booting is yet another problem. It is also too long. And sometimes in the middle of everything, the computer starts acting slow. The music stops and the mouse freezes, the typing is also pauses. Other than that, it takes almost half a minute to open Openoffice Writer. Is this all normal? What in the world can I do to improve the performance? I use GNOME desktop 2.10 I think. I have a P4 1.6GHz 128 MB RAM, 32 MB Nvidia RivaTNT2 computer. I am running WinXP and FC4 on different partitions.

Secondly, net performance. I just can't manage to open KDE-look.org or GNOME-look.org. It just hangs there only showing the top left logo of the site. But when I run a speed test, my 512 Kbps ADSL line shows 49 KB/s download speed. Which is quite good. I don't understand if these are caused by plugins that are not installed.

Thirdly. What programs are a need for a beginner. Please tell me about cool programs. And please help me on the performance issue please.

Thank you.
C.T.

Computer has to be carefully designed not to have apparent bottlenecks. Unfortunately your 128 MB of RAM has to be at least doubled to get most out of your PC. Add another 128 MB and come back if you still have some issues.

If you are going to run KDE or GNOME (which are good desktop environments period, but especially so for the beginner) I would recommend having at least 256 MB. They are obviously runnable with less than that, but I think the added memory will counter some of the speed issues you are having.

You could also switch to a lighter-on-its-feet window manager, something like IceWM (which I use). IceWM is quite easy to run on Fedora Core 4. You can go to http://dag.wieers.com/packages/icewm/ and download the package for Fedora Core 3 (it will work on Fedora Core 4). After you have installed it ("rpm -ivh icewm-1.2.22-1.1.fc3.rf.i386.rpm"), you can type "switchdesk icewm" at the terminal, and the next time you log in, you will be looking at IceWM.

One of the better quick references for IceWM that I have found is http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7774&page=1 . IceWM is very easy to configure, and tweaking it is a god way to get familiar with some of the basic features of your Linux system (simple shell commands, text editors, etc.).

What web browser are you using to try to load http://kde-look.org/ and http://www.gnome-look.org/ ? I just loaded them in Firefox (firefox-1.0.7-1.1.fc4) on my Fedora Core 4 machine, and they worked fine. Another option is to go to http://opera.com/ and download the Opera web browser, which I have found is faster than Firefox in loading some sites.

Hope that helps.

kde or gnome with 128mb of ram?!? i'm running a P4 2.4 1024Mb ram and I don't even run kde or gnome try xfce4.2. or fluxbox. you will always see some lag with that small amount of ram but there are some things you can do. boot time can be reduced by removing seervices that you don't use or changeing the window manager (xfce takes me about 3 sec to load) but how often do you reboot your computer? is it that important? I speant lots of time reducing my boot up time (got it down to 1:25) but I find that I only boot the thing like once a month anyways. it probably starts running slow because at that point it's probably just using swap as your ram is long gone. if you install jack and run it in realtime mode your music won't skip (works for me even when recompiling the whole system). but this won't keep other things from slowing down (and could actualy make them worse). openoffice has always taken me forever to load. what you need is more ram. if this isn't an option you need to set things up so you don't need as much ram. gnome or kde are about the worse choice for that. How do you come by such an unbalenced combo of a realatively fast cpu and almost no ram?

Try clearing your browser cache.

XFCE... Yes I thought about that.. One more thing.. Wont it work if I download an older version of KDE or Gnome? And one more thing. I really can't remember the domain but when I try to access the sites I told you about, it starts sending and receiving info from a domain that included the words "ad" "google" "syndicate" What is that?

Older versions won't help.
Those 'ad' and 'google' are parts of domain names. Webmaster of the given site is using ads from other sites. Nothing to be worried about.
Try running 'top' in a terminal window. If you see swap growing over 10 MB you need more RAM. If it gets close to 100 MB then you need more RAM badly.
Right now running Gnome and browsing this forum with FF my RAM usage is around 225 MB. I'd be in trouble with only 128 MB.

I looked it up... Well my swap is almost always around my RAM. 50 MB is the lowest value swap ever gets... :D And according to what you guys have written, I need RAM badly..
johnson_steve asked so I'll answer. My RAM's are RD RAM modules which as you know had brought revolution to RAMs. So my plan was to upgrade them later. But DDR came over them, and wiped the RDs out of the market. So when I ask about RD modules, they say they are almost impossible to find + they are way too expensive. So I'm stuck like this. But my plan is to get a brand new computer so no problem.
I am trying to install both XFCE and Fluxbox... I'll be around when I do. And one more thing.. Can mounting Windows drives effect the CPU / RAM load?

There is quite long list of RDRAM in eBay.
A P4 1.6 GHz can serve you well for years to come (depending of course on what you need it for, not for newest games perhaps).
I don't think mounting has considerable impact on performance.