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Not really a problem but I am not really comfortable with the speed my system is having now. I running at P4 1.5GHZ mainboard is Abit TH7II with Raid and RAMBUS PC 800.
When ever I click on Mozilla or other application it took about 3-4 secs to luanch, but I have been looking around and people with lower specs than mine are able to have their program open instantly when they click on it. I am running on dropline Gnome. Services started are quite common ones like CUPS, Samaba, openssh and proftpd Server. My friend has a same system as mine as we bought it together, he is using windows XP and when he click on IE it luanch instantly. So I was not really happy about it I using geforce nvidia ti 2 and of cause slackware install the generic driver for me "nv".
So I think I need suggestion from you guys how to speed up the system. By the way I do not have the speed of my harddisk now will post when I get home but as what I said my system is the same as my friend who is running windows XP.
And my swap space is more than enough I suppose. I have
PC800 384mb of rambus with 2 swap space with 768MB each for the swap.
My friend has a same system as mine as we bought it together, he is using windows XP and when he click on IE it luanch instantly.
You can't compare IE under Windows XP with Mozilla under Linux for god's sake! It is pretty normal launch time to be 3-4 sec. After all Mozilla is not part of the operating system as opposed to IE. When you click on its icon it loads only one shortsighted interface and that's it. Most of the necessary services/components are already loaded one way or another. This is not the case with Mozilla (both Windows and Linux).
Other than that check if DMA on your hard drive is enabled and wait 'till early May when i686 optimized Dropline GNOME will be available. This in conjunction with Slackware 9.0 probably will speed things for you. So cool down and get a rest
Distribution: Slackware 10, Fedora Core 3, Mac OS X
Posts: 617
Rep:
You may want to look into disabling a load of those services that are running. Unless you are logining in remotely to your box from somewhere else (openssh) or running an ftp server (proFTP) or serving files from your GNU/linux box to other windows machines in a network (SAMBA) you may want to switch these off. They'll take up resources that could be used for other things.
Im not sure that you can use the DMA trick since its a RAID device and therefore doesn't need it. The drives should be bloody fast as they are (just make sure they are raid as if they are not there are a load of little tricks that can be done to speed up the hard drive).
Mozilla always takesa ages because of the amount of stuff that needs to be loaded into memory (its a large browser). IE is minisule in comparison and you must remember that IE is only slightly different (if at all different) from the file manager that XP uses so technically the browser will be already open and raring to go. On my pIII 500 mhz it takes me a good 8-9 seconds for mozilla to be ready. If the speed bothers you try phoenix, which is an offshoot of the mozilla project which is attempting to create a slimmed down browser (without the mail, news reader, web creation and chatzilla bits which slow it down). They also boast a quicker start up time and ive noticed it is damned quicker off the hard disk than mozilla.
HTH
Alex
P.S. you may want to download the NVidia drivers for your card off their website. Its just a executable which you run as root and it should install things on its own. You'll need to alter the XF86Config file so that X will use the drivers but there's plenty of help in the README file that comes with it. That should help speed things up and gives you decent OPENGL. You should be able to show off with this coz I find its faster in GNU/Linux than windows.
Im not sure that you can use the DMA trick since its a RAID device and therefore doesn't need it.
First, he doesn't say anything about RAID in usage, just that his motherboard has RAID controller (and given that this is Abit I bet that controller itself is some sort of HighPoint 37x); second, note that he says:
Quote:
By the way I do not have the speed of my harddisk now
See? I don't know any RAID system based on just one HDD. You'll need at least 2 for "0" or "1", 3 for "5", 4 for "10" and so on, so most probably HDD itself is connected to motherboard's chipset controller and not to the RAID capable one; forth, you don't have a clue what DMA does mean, correct? It means Direct Memory Access and without this "thing" your CPU usage will be tremendous because HDD itself will rely on CPU to do data transfers (we speak about IDE devices). Just give it a try with and without enabled DMA if you have RAID controller and at least two disks handy. Then speak again
Thanks webtoe for your advise. pesho_p is correct Iam using an IDE harddisk although I have raid controller. Thanks pesho_p also for your advise. How do enable DMA?
Distribution: Slackware 10, Fedora Core 3, Mac OS X
Posts: 617
Rep:
pesho_p, actually I do know what DMA means thank you very much and I also know that it isn't the be all end all of hard disk performance. It was never used in older hard drives and some of my disks don't support it. DMA was never meant for storage devices, it was intended for accessing peripheral devices such as sound cards and network cards (being such a God of computing science you must surely know that the CPU just sees everything outside of itself as a great big memory block).
There's no need to be so bloody condescending. A simple "I think you may be wrong" would of been fine. I don't know much about RAID and information is always nice but you could try being polite.
In respone to the poster, this is from the hdparm man page. Its the program you need to change hard drive settings.
Quote:
-d
Disable/enable the using_dma flag for this drive. This option only works with a few combinations of drives and interfaces which support DMA and which are known to the IDE driver (and with all supported XT interfaces). In particular, the Intel Triton chipset is supported for bus-mastered DMA operation with many drives (experimental). It is also a good idea to use the -X34 option in combination with -d1 to ensure that the drive itself is programmed for multiword DMA mode2. Using DMA does not necessarily provide any improvement in throughput or system performance, but many folks swear by it. Your mileage may vary.
if you really want to play with your new system and squeeze out some speed) then you may want to look into kernel compilation. Its sometimes seen as a daunting task but is rewarding and you can create a kernel which has only what you want and is optimised for your type of processor (kernels that come from distributions are always compiled for i386 processors and do not take into account the special bits and pieces that newer chips have).
You're absolutely right, but I had a very hard day Sorry!
Take a look here now:
Quote:
***
Lesson Number One:
A crow was sitting on a tree, doing nothing all day. A small rabbit saw
the crow, and asked him, "Can I also sit like you and do nothing all day long?"
The crow answered: "Sure, why not."
So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the crow, and rested. All of a
sudden a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.
Management Lesson:
To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.
***
Lesson Number Two:
A turkey was chatting with a bull. I would love to be able to get to the
top of the tree, sighed the turkey, "But I haven't got the energy."
"Well, why don't you nibble on some of my droppings?" replied the bull.
"They'repacked with nutrients."
The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him
enough strength to reach the top of the tree. Soon he was promptly spotted by
a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree...
Management Lesson:
Bull**** might get you to the top, but it won't keep you there.
***
Lesson Number Three:
A little bird was flying south for the winter. It was so cold, the bird
froze and fell to the ground in a large field. While it was lying there,
a cow came by and dropped some dung on it. As the frozen bird lay there
in the pile of cow dung, it began to realize how warm it was. The dung was
actually thawing him out!He lay there all warm and happy and soon began to
sing for joy. A passing cat heard the bird singing and came to investigate.
Following the sound, the cat discovered the bird under the pile of cow dung
and promptly dug him out and ate him.
Management Lesson:
A) Not everyone who drops **** on you is your enemy.
B) Not everyone who gets you out of **** is your friend
C) And, when you're in deep ****, keep your mouth shut.
***
Lesson Number Four:
When the body was first made, all the parts wanted to be Boss. The brain said,
"I should be Boss because I control the whole body's responses and functions."
The feet said,"We should be Boss as we carry the brain about and get him to
where he wants to go."
The hands said, "We should be the Boss because we do all the work and earn all
the money."
And so it went on and on with the heart, the lungs and the eyes until finally
the assh*le spoke up. All the parts laughed at the idea of the assh*le being the
Boss. So the assh*le went on strike, blocked itself up and refused to work.
Within a short time the eyes became crossed, the hands clenched, the feet
twitched, the heart and lungs began to panic and the brain fevered. Eventually
they all decided that the assh*le should be the Boss, so the motion was passed.
All the other parts did all the work while the Boss just sat and passed out the
sh*t!
Management Lesson: You don't need brains to be a Boss - any assh*le will do.
Distribution: Slackware 10, Fedora Core 3, Mac OS X
Posts: 617
Rep:
You want the IA32 ones not the IA64. Graphics drivers will only really speed up the drawing of windows and all the fancy bits that the window manager can do such as animated icons. Obviously games will be better as well.
However, it does take some of the strain off of the CPU by utilizing the graphics hardware. What is the bus speed of your ide disk? Im assuming that since its a new machine its got quite a new speed and therefore you may want to make sure that the kernel is running it at maximum. Look in dmesg for something along the following lines:
Code:
ide: Assuming 66MHz system bus speed for PIO modes
You can easily look by typing
Code:
dmesg | grep ide
One of the lines written to the console should look like mine above (though it may have a different speed). If it is something stupid like 33mhz then you will want to change it. Once you know the speed of yours then you need to put the relevant append command in /etc/lilo.conf.
This is what my section looks like for my current kernel.
Code:
image = /boot/bzImage
root = /dev/hdb2
label = Linux
append = "idebus=66"
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends
for you lilo.conf you'll need to change the 66 to whatever your bus speed is.
Hopes that speeds things up. You may also want to take a look at using hdparm to speed up your hard drive since its new it should support most of the options (though don't hold me to that).
HTH
Alex
P.S.pesho_p: yes peace. Alex just needed a fag and has run out of his medication so is jittery.
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I using geforce nvidia ti 2 and of cause slackware install the generic driver for me "nv".
