My system has a 10-15 second delay when launching programs, especially konqueror.
I want to know if installing kernel-sources will improve it, im using kernel-headers-2.6.15-26-386.
Also what can i do to improve its perfomance, its slower than my XP, i switched for improvement. All updates and upgrades installed.

Specs
cpu-2.6 Ghz
ram- 512 mb pc2700
hdd- 60Gb/ 20Gb partition

there are a few tweaks you can try, first, try and get a bit more ram, also since your using KDE you should expect atlesat a litte bit longer of a delay considering it has a great deal of 'eye candy'. I seriously doubt installing the kernel source will do much of anything aside from take up space(unless you have other plans for it). how much swap do you have? try playing with the vm.swappiness(google it).

I've got kernel 2.6.15-26-386, which as far as I know is the most current version.

I use gnome (no kde) 2gig of swap and still things are a bit slow.

accually the most recent kernel is 2.6.17.6 :-p but anyway, gnome is just as much(maybe a bit less) a memory hog as kde, swap is not all you need to look at, RAM is a very important factor. generaly speaking about 1.5x your RAM is a good amount of swap space, too little and you bog down, too much and its just a waste of space

:P to you too! lol! I have 512 mgbytes of ram. so 2 gig of swap space should be plenty!

Also, it has occured to me that this problem only began to show itself AFTER updating the kernel.

But, then again... I have booted to older versions and still the same problem.

AND... if 17 is the most recent kernel, then how come I am not getting any update notifications?

oi, ok...
512mb of ram i would deem borderline insufficient to run KDE as(i have already stated) KDE is a memory hog. And if you have booted older versions and had the same probelms than its most likely not a software issue its a HARDWARE issue. As i said it doesnt matter if you have 10GB of swap, if you have 512MB of ram then its still gonig to swap the same as if you have 1GB of swap, which will equal the same lag you have been experiencing. Oh and 17 _is_ the most recent, go check www.kernel.org. You most likely havent recieved any notifications because you are waiting for your distro to pre-compile it and send it to you instead of you going and doing it yourself so :-p back at you.

HA! Got me! BTW, I am not running kde. I only use gnome. I'm fairly new to linux so I would have ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE as to how one would go about compiling his/her own kernel. So yeah, I guess I'm waiting for it to be 'cooked and served'

I AM going to go and look at www.kernel.org... see how bad I can screw-up my box! lol!

I went to www.kernel.org Got any idea how to install a .bzip?

well first you have to uncompress it

tar -jxf <archive>

then read this
http://mirrors.kernel.org/LDP/HOWTO/Installation-HOWTO/

or type make xconfig(or gconfig) and sift through and check off everything you need(drivers and the such. or you could copy the .config file from your old kernel (note the . dot before config, that indicates its a hidden file) into the folder and type make modules && make modules_install && make bzImage then install the image however you have it booting(lilo, grub) thats the quick and dirty way though...

Thanks! I'll give it a shot. Hopefully, I can roll it back if It Sucks or something!

It's not a tar. This is what i get when doing 'sudo tar -jxf patch-2.6.17.6.bz2

bigboss@bigboss:~$ sudo tar -jxf patch-2.6.17.6.bz2
tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Archive contains obsolescent base-64 headers
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors


I know it's me, but hey...I suck at linux!

This is a little too much over my head right now! lol! I have no fricken idea what drivers i need! I'll just stick with the pre-compiled kernel for right now.

Thanks aanarchyy!

well thats cuz you downloaded the patch instead of the kernel (all that does is update the last release to the most current release). Best teacher is experience, your not gonna learn how to unless you try.

to extract a bzip file you need to run
but that wont help because you downloaded the patch file not the kernel source

You need to download the source from http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kern....6.17.6.tar.gz
or you can download the tar.bz2 file (same address just replace "tar.gz" with "tar.bz2") which is about 10MB smaller, but takes longer and more memory (RAM) to decompress.
to extract the tar.gz file run:
and wait a while,
or to extract the tar.bz2 run:
then I would copy the config file in /boot to the new source directory (renamed to .config) and follow instructions from AAnarchYY post (#9)

I STRONGLY recommend against that.

You're WAY too new to compile a kernel. I'd start with easy apps like XMMS first.

However, you are using GNOME correct? If so, that is your problem. You are launching QT/KDE programs from within gnome. That's a Bad Thing(tm). The OS will have to load up the QT libraries before konqueror, which is exactly why you are seeing a delay.


Try switching to ALL GTK/Gnome apps. I would recommend Epiphany or Firefox over Konqueror for example. They will be MUCH faster.