i dl'd slack 12, and also slack 12 current, just in case something better was included. once installed, it's sluggish. horribly sluggish.
my box is rather quick, 512 of ram, 2.9g processor, and plenty of harddrive space. what i notice is that when i run top in a terminal, it shows that X is consuming about 70% of the cpu, and firefox bin is taking another 25 to 28%, topping out often at 99% and slamming my system into slo-motion.
i'm multi-booting with XP and also slack 11, and both run amazingly fast.

below is my xorg.conf file, if that would help...

any ideas on why? i'm sort of stumped here...

thanks,

jay

***edit
i use fluxbox as the wm, so it's not kde bloated...

kernel 2.6.23.15-smp

Are you running a default kernel?

A custom compiled kernel can make a big difference.

yeah, it's the default 2.6.23.15-smp, which i'm assuming is going to be bloated as well. the thing is, i've never compiled, because the default kernels always seemed to work fine. i am using 2.6.18 on my slack 11 with no problem at all, and it's the vanilla kernel put out by patrick at the time. i'm wondering if there is so much built into the default kernel now (sort of a catch-all kernel) that it's finally outgrown it's usefulness, and compiling is the only way to go...

I'm running slack 12 with the hughe 2.6.21.5 kernel on an AMD2800 with KDE and it's running very quick, much quicker than mandriva (for example). I didn't notice a great deal of difference in desktop performance with the 2.6.23 custom trimmed kernel I tried. I haven't booted the 2.6.24.3 kernel yet.

I would not be suspecting the kernel for major slowness.

Also I'm running KDE with 12 desktops and several apps and not seeing X use any major cpu and firefox with a dozen tabs spikes about 9% use.

You have some X issue by the looks...

i kind of thought that. at first i used xorgconfig, as i did with 11 and previous versions as well. then i used xorgsetup, just in case i was missing something, but both ways resulted in pretty much the same config file. i'll have to go back and look again at X, and see if something needs tweaking. i searched for threads on this topic, and found very few, which indicates to me it's...well, ME and not slackware at this point, although suggestions/ideas/and stuff are sincerely welcome and appreciated.

i'll be sure to post back with a resolution, should i find one, in case anyone later comes across the same problem...

I had the same problem. Add this to your xorg.conf

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

Also it is recommended to use the generic kernel.

adding that section made no difference, however when i ran xorgconfig again, i chose the generic vesa driver instead of the generic i810, and that fixed it for me. just one of those quirks, i guess.

thanks all for your time and suggestions!

jay

It was the vesa driver that got me. I hear bad things about intel drivers.

I am running the generic i810 intel driver and fluxbox runs just fine. maybe what you need is to update the driver and see if that helps. Otherwise vesa should be good enough if you don't do anything in 3D.

i never even thought of updating the driver...i'll give that a try.
vesa isn't working out so well either.

i'll google to see if i can find an update...meanwhile does anyone know of a quick place to grab it?

thanks

jay

problem solved!!! apparently when you install 12, it replaces the i810 driver with the intel driver and creates a symlink. you actually need to go back and upgrade --reinstall the i810 driver.

the thread that helped me fix this problem is here if you're interested....

thanks to all...

jay