Ok, I've been playing with Ubuntu 6.06 for a while now and have gotten pretty familiar with it, but I am having a very strange issue with overall performance on a system that should be screaming. First, I'll start off with my hardware:

Dell Inspiron 9200 Laptop
2.0GHz Intel Centrino
2GB of DDR Ram
100GB of Hard Drive space
ATi Mobility 9700 256mb Video Card

Alrighty, the only thing that I have found that could possibly be the problem is that my cpufreq selector is consistantly set on 600MHz(30%) and cannot be changed. I've gone thru all the "fixes" I could find within my Ubuntu Hacks book and the various linux forums, but none have proved fruitful. I've upgraded my kernel to the latest version, updated all of my processor intensive drivers (video card primarily), etc...but nothing is working.

Description of the problem:

When I boot up my laptop, it begins to boot normally...no issues with post. But once Grub initializes the 2.6 kernel and Ubuntu begins to load, everything grinds to a snail pace. It takes almost five minutes to get to the log-on screen. When the log-on screen starts loading, the screen slowly paints and typing into the user-name/password box is laggy. Even upon loading into GNOME, nothing speeds up...

The truly strange thing about this (at least to me) is that I can turn off my laptop for about 5-10 minutes, turn it back on and everything is groovey...boots in under 2 minutes and operational speed is great. Does anyone have any clues? I have yet to find a cause in this problem other than the cpufreq selector, but not even sure if that is the issue. I love Ubuntu and really want to make it my primary distro, but if I can't fix this I'm going to have to go back to Slackware (not that there's anything wrong with slackware ).

Thanks...

This sounds like some sort of hardware issue, or maybe some severe software issue that I wouldn't understand. I run Xubuntu 6.10 on a laptop with half those specs...(1ghz, 768mb Ram, 64mb dedicated to video, 20gig hard drive,) and it works absolutely flawlessly. No lag at all, from off, to desktop, probably takes 1min, if that. I'm not a heavy gamer, but I suspect Id have problems with games due to the shared video ram and lack of processor muscle, but it runs basic stuff(Office, Web, email, etc..) perfectly.

My PC is a pretty similar experience(2.4ghz, 1gig of Ram, 250gig hard drive, 256mb ATI 9550). With Ubuntu 6.10, I have absolutely no issues and had no issues with 6.06 either.

Well, I guess my first question, is how did you come upon your 6.06 install? Did you upgrade from Breezy, or was 6.06 a clean install? If you can't fix it, make notes of system settings, how you set things up, etc. and try doing a clean install of Ubuntu 6.10 (newest version). I doubt that would make much difference, other than definitely deleting whatever problem you're having now.

Hopefully some will be along with some better suggestions...

Good luck

IGF

As far as the 6.06 install, I got it from my brother who ordered an actual hardcopy from Ubuntu's site, and I installed it from a clean harddrive. I've tried using 6.10, but for some reason it will not install...issue I have yet to work out. Weird thing is that I had Slackware on this laptop beforehand and it worked great as far as I remember, but if I can get Ubuntu working it will be my primary distro.

Strange you got 6.06 to work, but couldn't get 6.10 to work. I have some hardware that requires special configuring under Ubuntu, and I use instructions to set it up under 6.06, to set it up under 6.10.

Sorry, I have no idea what your problem could be, but I suspect its hardware related. Is it possible you have a bad memory dimm?

What was wrong with 6.10?

IGF

It seems like a power management problem has clocked down your CPU. The laptop must think it is in low power mode. Try to pass the kernel an acpi=off option (on bootup) and see if performance picks up to what you would expect.

If it does then you know who the culprit is

cheers

i think you should back up your data and try edgy eft after formatting the old partitions its much faster than dapper (at least for me)