Speeding up my Linux
 

Hi. I am running Mandrake 10.1. My computer is

Pentium 4 at 1.5 Ghz.
512 RAM
40 GB HD

Mandrake runs OK, but somehow slow. When running KDE or Gnome it is noticeably slower than Windows 2000. I am pretty new to Linux, and I noticed that my system is starting a bunch of services at booting that I am not sure I need. Could that be a reason for the slowness? If so, how can I solve this?
Also, previously I saw a posting about hdparm and I run it. I am not sure it made any difference. Should I run hdparm at boot?
Thanks

Hi there,

You need to define what is slow, for example, if it`s responsivness of things like GUI interfaces, web browsing scrolling, flash etc, then you can make it much faster by installing accerlated graphics driver, ATI or Nvidia. The default generic drivers for graphics are real slow.

Mike

When I said slow it meant to launch and run applications. Also to surf the web. I am working on KDE. Things are faster if I use windowmaker (that I am not familiar with) but still slower than Windows 2000. Is that because of the graphic drivers? If so, where do I get them? Thanks

I think it could be some other problem, as my system is similar spec to yours and I don`t see any slowness at all, I use KDE.

Accelerated drivers are available here :-

http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
They are easy to install, but if your new to linux you might find it tricky, but I¬m sure peopl ein here will help you.

but they wont help with speed in loading up applications, but will help in web browsing, and general feel of KDE

Nvidia driver HOWTO: http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...ake.2FMandriva

Also, have a look and see what services are running by typing from a console. You may find you have a load of network services such as Samba, NFS, Apache, MySQL running which you probably won't need all the time. When I told Debian to install Apache + MySQL for example, I had 90 procs running whilst sat at the desktop. Stopping these two services dropped it to 60. It all saves memory. Within the Mandriva control centre (am not familiar with Mandriva, sorry) there should be an area to specify services to load on boot. Simply disable any you don't need. You can always start them manually once your system is running if you need them for whatever reason.

What exactly is "hdparm"? I'm fairly new to Linux and am learning all of the commands, what does this one do?

It's a tinker's tool for tuning hard drive parameters: http://linuxcommand.org/man_pages/hdparm8.html

menu->System->Configuration->Configure Your Computer (gets you into control centre)
System->Services (control services)
:)

Thanks, I already stoped a bunch of services. Anybody has an idea of how to do the same in Slackware 10.2?

On another issue, I coudn't get the Nvidia drivers to install. I downloaded the kernel sources and (I think) pointed the installer to them, but it didn't work. I am not sure my card is supported. The control center shows that I have the "Vanta card by Nvidia Corporation", but since I already run the driver I don't kow if that is being dispalyed because of something the driver change (as you can see I am pretty new to Linux). Is that card supported? If so, how do I install the drivers?

Yet another issue (In Slackware, though): I did not ask me to create a user during installation (besides root). I created the user by myself later, but I cannot start X with that user, only as root. Any help?

Thanks

Bunch of random points. First, compared to Windows 2000, you probably won't get Mandriva to run as fast with the same hardware. Remember, Windows 2000 is a much older operating system and newer OS's tend to consume more system resources. Stopping services is always a good idea because there are many that you won't use, but newer versions of Mandriva tend to run at about the same speed as Windows XP not Windows 2000. This of course depends on the application... you can't really compare Amarok against Windows Media Player (WMP has a lot more features and content than Amarok so it probably should run more slowly) and you can't compare Open Office to Microsoft Office (Open Office for some reason is slow as heck to start up and always has been).

For slackware, you could check to see if there is a package called bum (boot up manager). There is a version for debian that does what you want, I'm not sure if there is a version for slack. If you want to log in as the user in slack, have you tried running kdm as root? If kdm is installed on the box, you should be able to then log in as any user. You could also see what the permissions are set on the startx command and on the Xorg file (maybe XFree? not sure what slack uses) itself which is usually found in /usr/X11R6/bin.