I didn't see anyone else respond to this. I can't be of any immediate help
to you, but perhaps I can pose a few clarifying questions.
A P110 system with 48 mB RAM should be performing better than what you
describe. The speed problems sound like the result fo heavy swapping ... but
I wouldn't expet heavy swapping on a typical, one-user system with as much
memory as yours. So I wonder if you are unintentionally running a lot of
unneeded background aps.
Take a look at the output of "free" -- the second line -- the one that says
"-/+ buffers/cache" and see if it shows a lot of swap space used. If it
does, use "ps ax" or "top" to see what the most active and largest processes
are. Some background processes, like syslogd, crond, and inetd, are pretty
standard, but you may be running a lot of unneeded stuff.
You also say you installed the system "with the gnome and KDE desktop".
Gnome and KDE are distinct (dare I say "competing") desktop environments; I
wonder what you are actually running. In any case, both use a lot of system
resources; consdier the possibility that your X environment is using a lot
of memory (or CPU time) running processes you don't want running. Once
again, "ps ax" and "top" will get you started identifying the processes.
Relatively slow startup of Linux systems, compared to Windows on the same
equipment, is normal. Linux does more fresh setting up at boot time; WIndows
remembers more from the prior run. A custom kernel, with only the modules
you actually use included on the system, would shave a bit of time. Also
notice if there is a long delay (around 2 minutes) after the "starting
syslogd" message -- that can indicate a DNS setup error.
The consistent 10-second delay in starting applications that you report does
puzzle me. I don't even know what more to ask.
At 10:04 AM 2/2/00 -0000, Vangrieken, Peter wrote:
>
> I'm finally getting the way linux works! But I have a performance
>problem: I now have a laptop (P100, 48Mb ram, 1.2 gb ide harddisk
>partitioned like this: 500 mb windows98 (hda1), 100 mb swap, 600 mb Linux
>(hda2)). I installed redhat 6.1 with the gnome and KDE desktop, and lilo as
>the bootloader on hda1. When I start windows up, everything goes very
>smoothly (like a normal P100 would do - even office 2000 runs like a
>breeze), but with Linux everything goes abnormally slow (eg it takes about 6
>seconds for the popup menus to appear, and yesterday it took me over an hour
>to install a 2.3Mb RPM file! When the computer starts up, it stops for about
>30 seconds when the message 'checking module dependencies' appears while
>total startup-time exceeds 4 minutes! When I start a program (anything at
>all either from the desktop or a terminal) the computer does nothing for
>about 10 seconds before the hard disk reads something even though the hard
>disk is not powerd down (power management is turned off in bios).
> Is this normal? Did I install something wrong, or is this laptop
>just not powerful enough do run a decent OS? I noticed that when I start the
>gnome desktop (without any applications running), memory is 91% used. I
>guess I could just reïnstall Linux to solve this (the first time I used
>linux on my home pc - a PII400 with 512Mb ram and SCSI hd - I had a similar
>performance problem. I reïnstalled Linux, and the problem was solved), but I
>want to know what exactly is wrong (can't learn anything if I just take it
>the easy way and reïnstall).
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----------------------------------------------------------------
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs
