I am running Mandrake 9.0 on a laptop. My laptop is a 1.1 GHZ, 256 MB of RAM, 20


GB hard disk, but im dual booting 50% to windows xp.
i have a 250 MB swap file, 7.8 GB /USR partition, 250 MB / partition,
and a 1.4 GB /home partition.


I am having lots of trouble with linux, but i wont give it up.
First off, i can't use wine. I like the version codeweavers has, because its the
only version of wine i can actually INSTALL. but, when i go to run something, i
type in 'wine winimage.exe', and it acts like its going to open, but it comes up
with an error window saying "I cannot find xmessage, blah blah blah." i ran
winesetup to configure it, but that doesnt work. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE AND HOW
TO INSTALL WINE
ON MANDRAKE 9.0 ?

Second, everything runs way way to slow, even for my computer's speed. MANDRAKE
9.0 takes about 7 whole minutes to boot. thats way too long for me.
Also, i click on terminal, open the home dir, some simple things, and it takes
it a
few seconds to open everything. open office takes about 1 mintue to load. its
way to slow or laggy. is there any way to speed things up ? i do UPTIME, and my
load average is 0.22, 0.16, 0.16. I know it sounds like i want things to happen
at the snap of my fingers, but i actualy don't. i just want things to go faster
than they currently are.

Also, i downloaded the latest AfterStep Source file and binary, and whenever i
"finish" installing afterstep, i can never run afterstep. Afterstep installs and
makes fine, when its all done, it says "to run afterstep, type in afterstep." so
i log out of KDE, and type in afterstep in the X windows FAILSAFE mode. it
doesnt do anything. its as if i had just his ENTER. Which Window Manager is
best, GNOME, KDE, AfterStep, WindowMaker, or what ? What do "you" think is best,
i want the most PERFORMACE (RAM efficient) out of my WM or Desktop.

Also, whenever i try to MAKE, or MAKE INSTALL something, i almost 90% of the
time get an "ERROR 1", meaning, i cant never build something. Also i can NEVER
EVER EVER uninstall an RPM that i install.


that's about it. Linux runs too slow, i can't use wine, and afterstep won't
install, and programs won't make, install, or uninstall. Is it mandrake 9.0, or
is it my computer.

*****SOMEONE PLEASE PLEASE
HELP ME WITH THESE PROBLEMS. I DON'T WANT TO USE WINBLOWS ENYMORE.*****

Welcome to LQ.
1. xmessage does not come as part of Wine, so running winesetup won't do anything for your problem. What you need to do is open up your software installer (Software Management --> Install Software from Mandrake Control Center). In the 'find' section at the top, change the selection from 'in names' to 'in files', and then add 'xmessage' to the text box next to it. Click search. You should find it is part of the 'X11R6-contrib' package. Install it and run your wine program again.

2. Is that the time it takes from turning the computer on to getting to a useable GUI? The problem is that if you're running KDE it can take ages for that to start... also, you may have some 'services' running that you really don't need. If you're not going to be running a web server from this machine, then you really won't need stuff like proftpd (or similar) running. You can check what is running, and disable what you don't need from the Mandrake Control Center --> System --> Services.

3. There are far too many threads on these forums about 'which WM is best' to bear thinking about. If you really want some opinions, then do a quick search and you'll find loads. My preference is in my sig.

Sounds like you do have some fun.
I got a box with about the same specs and it takes about 1 min to boot into kde.Something is definitely wrong there and I don't think that it has something to do with MDK.What part takes so long?The boot process or logging into kde?When you boot your box check the messages - if you can read it it's too slow.You can check /var/log/dmesg for errors with the boot process.

I found that if you're attached to a LAN, and there is already a dhcp server on the network, and you set yourself up to be a dhcp server (or indeed, if you give yourself an ip address that is the same as another's on the network), then the 'loading eth0' bit can take a while. Older versions of Mandrake used to hide the bootup process so people would not see this, but I believe that Mandy 9 doesn't hide it away anymore. Just a(nother) thought.

Thanx THYMAX I was just checking threads and tried your advice and it worked! I'm a wiser man for switching to Linux!

Ive found something that speeds up Mandrake significantly is using hdparm to tweak the hard drive. By default on my machine the settings werent optimized (16 bit I/O instead of 32, DMA5 not enabled, etc.). It made a BIG difference optimizing the HD.

i found it. got it working. took a long time to reply to this one huh? typical newbie thing. my friend registered here and posted one thing, and never looked at it again.

to fix my problem, i did edit the runlevel, took out things i didnt need. since i was using a laptop, i wasnt going to be adding new hardware, so i took hardware scan off. i turned postfix off since i dont even have internet access, and everything else that wasnt esssential for linux to run, which mean practically anything that doesnt say "do not uncheck". i also added hdparm to me /etc/rc.d/boot.local.

NOTE: i recomplied my kernel with minimal support for my computer, and it ran slower than the stock kernel for each distro. recompiling isnt a recommendation of mine to gain speed...unless you're an experienced (3 years maybe?) linux user.