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Old 03-24-2005, 09:44 AM   #1
pfaendtner
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How can I improve gnome performance?


Hi,

I run an RHEL3 installation with gnome as my desktop. My computer is a P4 ( ~ 2Ghz) and 256MB ram. I find that the performance of gnome when using Evolution and Firefox and occasionally OO.org is a bit sluggish. Things take a bit longer than I'd expect to load and switching between windows takes just enough time that it's annoying. I haven't modified anything since my out of the box install, and I am wondering if this is as good as it gets or if there are some tweaks I can use to make it faster. Someone has suggested not using gnome but I don't know what's involved in switching desktop environments.

I'm looking forward to suggestions!
 
Old 03-24-2005, 10:15 AM   #2
atom
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You could use fluxbox, my friends are all very satisfied with it.

KDE and GNOME are the most power-hungry hogs around. You do get a bang for your buck though. They both come with a handful of useful apps (Kate not least), and eyecandy is not something to throw away either.

Seems to me that your major problem is RAM. 256 is a small amount, and by getting a different WM you could cut memory consumption. You can also cut it by using a minimalist theme, and by having as few apps loaded at a time as you can. You would still be better off with a different WM.

As far as I know, unless you are really dependant on apps, switch (and you can still run most of them on an another WM). Files are of no concern here, the only thing that will go is your desktop shortcuts and how your menus were aranged. That's basicly it.

As to Gnome related help, you will have to seek it from somebody else because I'm a KDE phreak all over (eyecandy... drool), and have no experience with gnome but for the 15 minute long usage, which was just long enough to figure out that it was GTK and all gray and ugly . (standard out of the box RH ).

Read up and switch to fluxbox, openbox or something like that. Cheers!

Gasper
 
Old 04-13-2005, 09:21 AM   #3
Nathaniel Firet
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Hmmmm... is it possible to give Fluxbox a trial run on Fedora Core 3 w/o trashing anything? I just migrated from RH7 over the last two days (yeah, I'm slow...) and had the same questions.

Thanx!

Last edited by Nathaniel Firet; 04-13-2005 at 09:23 AM.
 
Old 04-13-2005, 09:37 AM   #4
atom
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Hm... FC... sounds like you use yum or apt-get... Certainly .

I'd recommend gentoo but I know you wouldn't listen so I wont .

After pouring over freshrpms.net I found that fluxbox isn't compiled yet (or just added to the list of rpms) so as an alternative, I would recommend blackbox.

Here, you can start with it: http://blackboxwm.sourceforge.net/
or, you could just use these links:

what blackbox is (read this first): http://blackboxwm.sourceforge.net/AboutBlackbox
some cool themes: http://indecisions.org/prm/blackbox/
download site: http://heidelberg.freshrpms.net/list.html - click the blackbox rpm

Dunno if this is what you are looking for, but it just might be.

Oh, and does your nick have anything to do with the "the amulet of samarkand" book?

Last edited by atom; 04-13-2005 at 09:39 AM.
 
Old 04-13-2005, 11:12 AM   #5
Nathaniel Firet
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yum and apt-get: Neither. I'm behind a slow link at home so I use CDROMs.

Gentoo: You're right. Sounds like high maintenance to me.

Never heard of "amulet of samarkand."

There is an RPM available at the fluxbox.org site, and it may be on the distro.

Thanks for the info. My main question was how I could test-drive it without scorching the Gnome installation that's already in place. (I guess I could create a test account and play on that.)
 
Old 04-13-2005, 11:32 AM   #6
atom
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you most definitely could . Does the RPM work with FC3? You might want to check that.

The test account would probably not permit you to install the thing... You are probably going to have to compile it yourself. Don't worry, it's easy.

Download the source tarball.
copy it to $home/compile_tmp/ or something like that.
tar xjf [tarball] (if tar.bz) or tar xzf [tarball] (if tar.gz)
./configure --prefix=$home/fluxbox/
make
make install

that's it .

The thing is it should not break the gnome installation at all if you install it the normal way, through a RPM, because the worst thing that can happen (to my knowledge, i can never be 100%) is that fluxbox won't show up on gdm's menu .

Oh, and as usual with rpm, it's hard to uninstall (if I remember correctly from my RH9 days).
 
Old 04-13-2005, 11:35 AM   #7
atom
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Oh, and about the "Amulet of Samarkand" thing... The main character is Nathaniel something, and i can't remember what it was. Besides the book being a pretty innacurrate, but somehow esotherically smelling kaballah demonology study, it's a good read. Oh, and the main character is a badass

Oh, and if I misspelled esotherically and kaballah I appologise to anyone that might be offended, I'm not really into that kind of thing + it's not my native tongue

Last edited by atom; 04-13-2005 at 11:38 AM.
 
Old 04-13-2005, 11:54 AM   #8
Nathaniel Firet
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Thanks! It's been a while since I had my hands in X11. What would I have to modify in the test account to get fluxbox alive?

Nope, the name was a pun on this guy.
 
Old 04-13-2005, 12:06 PM   #9
CircuitSix
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I'd recommend xfce. Its fast as hell and still looks great. Very small memory footprint.


v. 4.2 also has a graphical installer which makes the whole process a hell of a lot easier

Last edited by CircuitSix; 04-13-2005 at 12:07 PM.
 
Old 04-13-2005, 02:25 PM   #10
atom
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I'm afraid that's too much to ask of me... Google is your friend here . I told you i'm a KDE guy. If there's any a bit more specific questions, i'd love to help, but about the installation in general... XF86Config (or xorg.conf) and other files I can edit and tell you how, but not *specifically* for fluxbox. Never had it on a machine I admin.
 
Old 04-13-2005, 02:45 PM   #11
Nathaniel Firet
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Well, in that case, how can I replace Gnome witk KDE? It'd prolly work the same way.

I managed to get home for lunch and changed the Gnome theme to the "plain Jane, runs fast." That seems to be Good Enough (tm) for now.

Back to the ol' design recovery now...
 
Old 04-13-2005, 03:27 PM   #12
atom
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correction: KDE would probably be slower. It eats more RAM but *drooooool*. Transparent everything(tm) [say to the tune of the EA's "challenge everything" + transparent is a verb]
 
Old 04-13-2005, 04:22 PM   #13
Nathaniel Firet
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Well, I had KDE in the RH7 installation that I just overwrote. What I meant was that replacing Gnome with fluxbox would involve probably about the same steps as replacing Gnome with KDE.
 
Old 04-13-2005, 04:43 PM   #14
atom
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Oh . Misunderstandings, misunderstandings...

Well, last time I checked you could have both running at once on the same system with 2 x-servers, of course.
 
Old 04-13-2005, 05:07 PM   #15
Nathaniel Firet
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Found this while slogging around the net:

http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/docs/en/faq.php#fedora
 
  


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