As for video, I use xine, and the libdvdcss, libdvdnav, and libdvdread libraries. You can find all of these linked from xine.sf.net, although all of these come with a dropline gnome distribution. I find that xine works very well for every video format - it even includes the codecs for DiVX and xvid. I tried MPlayer once, and was quite unhappy with the overall quality of the software. The UI sucked, and I couldn't even get to the dvd menus. Xine does these things right.

As far as speed goes, I have been quite happy with slackware. I usually use Gnome, mainly for its UI and usability, but if I need more speed, I just restart X with Fluxbox. It's way fast, and pretty clean, too.

As far as being faster than windows, I can't really tell. Once everything's instantaneous, it's hard for me to see MORE instantaeity. :-)

Plus, I wiped microsoft off the face of my system a few months ago, and have never looked back.

jtshaw...Read his post man, does it mention anything about running a server?? This post had nothing to do with a server. He is asking about X, gnome. KDE/GNOME is slower than windows, plain and simple. And like i said you can use a light WM like flux that will speed it up a little. And dial up is slower in linux also, has to do with the dynamic rwin that only high speed connections benefit from. Not to mention 75% of isps use some form of microsoft compression that linux of couse does not have. Somebody wrote a module for it but it doesnt work to well. You obviously have some wacked out setting if your windows gets 3.2 max, with linux getting 5.2. I and doubt what you are saying is even true.

"Linux is generally slower then windows" was the comment that I saw. And I responded to it, because it isn't a true statement. If the comment was "KDE is generally slower then the windows desktop" or "Gnome is generally slower then the windows desktop" I might not have disagreed.

Anyway, I have never done dial up on linux so I cannot comment as to if it is faster or not (and you will notice I didn't comment, that would be somebody else) because I have been on a college campus connection for the last 4+ years.

See, in case you didn't realize it, you used the term linux wrong. I was just mearly pointing out that anyone who makes a statement about linux being slower then windows and sites X as the reason is seeing only 10% of the picture (if even that much).

If you would like the technical reasons: Xfree86 is an XServer. By design it is made to run multiple instances of a graphical system at the same time (locally, or over a network, or whatever). And for this, it works wonderfully. And in fact, you will notice there isn't much of a performance decrease if you run two or three kdes versus one. The system is way more robust and capable which sacrafices flat out speed. The only fair comparison between XFree and a Windows graphical interface would be Windows Terminal Server. Even that is not truely fair because Windows Terminal Server gets the short end of the stick as far as total multitasking ability on the kernel side of things.

Well, I've been using a modem for over two
years, and the deflate/BSD style ppp compression
worked surprisingly well for me. Using the modem
on the Linux server/router/firewall I got nice
transfer rates of 5.6K/s on a free ISP... and
connecting the modem to a winDOHs box every
now and then for a game that didn't like to
be NATed ;) I got pretty much the same peaks
in winDOHs (98) but less constant averages.
I have to say that for me Linux was faster, too.
If your experience is different, so be it :) I'll just
assume that your Linux is misconfigured ;)

Cheers,
Tink

another thing one could do to the Linux-box
if it's primarily used as a single-user workstation
is get a patch
that modifies the kernels priorities/scheduling and
pre-emption...

AND: I have to second the notion that
comparing X to the winDOHs GUI isn't fair,
for the very same reasons. X *is* a server,
even though no one (hey wrecked! ;}) was
talking about the linux box being used as
a server ... :)

Cheers,
Tink

lol, mppc compression (microsoft point to point compression) != bsd compression. Not even close. There is 1 module written for mppc compression and you can read about it It doesn't really work. Anyone that uses dial up and dials into a earthlink, or qwest pop (these are the networks, not isp's. tons of isp's use these networks) these networks use mppc compression, you can try out this module. In windows i ping in the 80's to my first hop with dial up. Linux 110. Misconfiguration??? not even close. Its called lack of mppc compression. That is pings, now actual bandwidth. at www.bandwidthplace.com with windows i would get 46k. Now on linux i get 40k. That comes out to a 15% increase mppc compression adds. Same connect speed, same mtu, rwin now, linux is dynamic you cannot adjust to what you want so that is another thing i "believe" slows the dial up on linux down. Have no actual proof. Anyways, talk to anyone that has used dial up in windows and linux extensively, gamed on dial up in both, downloaded iso's on dial up in both. I would guarantee they agree dial up is faster in windows. Not a 3k downloads in linux to 5k in windows...no, i mean more like 5.2 in linux, 5.7 in windows. But its still faster and with 600MB downloads that cuts ALOT of time off.

As for my wrong "usage" of the word linux. I could care less. I have been using linux for 6 months. When i think of linux I don't think of 10 people connecting to my computer. I think of a single workstation with X. Sorry if I don't see the BIG picture like you see jtshaw. What I do see is you been using linux for over 2.5 years and still asking stuff like this.

BTW, this is probably a really stupid question, but where does sshd log to?

Then you come into a thread and make lame comments about something a semi-newbie said. You could of just said. Hey, look...in a single user enviroment windows is faster, but in a multiuser linux is supreme. Instead of saying..your comments are rediculous. You don't see the big picuture, etc.

please. Seems like after a year you could barely compile a kernel. rofl. The guy who helped you could have been a troll like you and said "type '2.4.14 compile error' in google ya idiot.

Actaully, I could compile a kernel from just about day 1, because I stared with slackware and learned the shit. In fact, the first time I installed linux I had to manually address the ide buses because I was using an external ide controller that linux didn't support. And yes, I did ask that question, because after changing the log level of ssh and greping for ssh logs in the /var/logs directory I saw no knew enteries besides the startup enteries in syslog. Of course I realized later it was because deamon tools was purging the logs, but I doubt you even know what daemon tools is so I won't bother explaining.

Anyway, if you had really done your homework you would realize most of my posts on this board were explaining how to do kernel stuff to people, happens to be the area I know the most about.

I certainly don't know everything, and I am certainly willing to admit that. I am however am expert in many areas of linux and my entire point in posting to this was to show a person that I believe didn't realize the strengths of linux what they are, because they are definitly not the single user desktop. My point was never to get in a flame war about who knows more, because that is certainly pointless.

I have said all along if all you want is a single user desktop prehaps you shouldn't bother with linux.

Thnx for all the replies, i am going to try to install the kernel hack... is it this one linux-2.5.9.tar.gz? and wat is the patch for? Also i was just asking about the tweaks because when i was using windows i could find a lot of sites that gave me tips and tricks about tweaking the version of windows i had... and i wanted to do the same for linux but could not find such a site.

and one more quick question.. fluxbox? i dont think i have ever seen that when i ran xwmconfig... i saw kde, gnome, window maker, fwvm95, fwvm2... hmm.. dont remember fluxbox but i will check again.

I don't think you want to install linux-2.5.9. That i s a pretty old development kernel. If you do decide to go the 2.5 route to get some of those features discussed above you probably want to go with the latest and greatest 2.5 kernel which is 2.5.69.

As far as tweaking linux, what exactly are you looking to tweak? There are patches all over the place for a lot of the software you run but much of it might require compiling from source, which for some packages can be a daunting experience the first time.

i basically want to run a fast and effecient system... where my gnome or kde (preferrably) run fast clean and efficient and also where i can view movies download files and listen to music efficiently... wat peer 2 peer program do u guys use? i have been having so many little problems with slackware... such as i use gtk-gnutella... and it takes me hours to find a file i am searching for... and also when i download a music file... sometimes i get a bad version of it.. i dont know how that is possible but i have to download the same song over and over again b/c MOST of the files i do download it does not play the whole song.. maybe like 20- 30 seconds of it and then stops.. even though it is the exact same size... so i have to download the song i want but like 5 -6 different files and check which one just stops after a few seconds... kinda annoying.. am i the only one having this problem? is it gnutella or gnome?

As far as tweaking KDE or Gnome goes, you can run through there control panel interfaces and disable stuff like systems sounds or any funky window animations or transparency you have going if it is running too slow. Beyond that, like others like wr3ck3d said, there are more efficient windows managers then KDE or Gnome like fvwm that are installed on your slackware system.

For movies I usually run mplayer from a text console and use the vesa output switch (mplayer -vo vesa <file>). This allows me to play most everything just fine on my PIII 550 box. Only things I have trouble with because of speed are really really high res. movies like the highest quality matrix trailors were.

For audio I use xmms, which has the same look and feel as winamp and I don't notice a performance difference.

As far as P2P programs I will leave that to somebody else, I don't use any.

But filling the gas takes some work...

Check this how to on the command hpparm. It worked for me.

http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/li...29/hdparm.html

paul

Few p2p, I use kazaalite 1.72. There are tons of instructions on this site to get it working.

Fluxbox you have to download. Doesn't come with slackware iso.