Thanks for the info. I tried using hdparm, but that really did not help make
it any faster. Timing tests revealed that altering the settings did not
really improve the performace. However I did learn that sometimes somethings
can be done with hdparm.
--Surya
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Tom Brinkman
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2001 8:43 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [newbie] Memory Question
On Monday 22 January 2001 08:11 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I have ML7.2 installed on my machine. I have about 128MB of RAM.
> After I log in if I see the mem occupancy using either Hard Drake or
> xsysinfo or one of the other X-utils, I see that only about 4-12 Megs
> appear to be free. Consequently the machine is horribly slow.
> Agreed that I am doing this on an old Cyrix 6X86 200MHz processor.
> But I still feel that 128 Megs ought to make the machine atleast
> launch an X-term quickly.
> Any idea why the machine is this slow?
(in an Xterm): 'free'
total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 255484 252656 2828 0 18276
60408
-/+ buffers/cache: 173972 81512
Swap: 184676 0 184676
You misunderstand memory usage. In my example above, I have very
little 'Mem' shown as free, but that's because Linux is keeping 80mb
available in 'buffers/cache'. That memory is readily available to any
app that needs it. Memory handling is much different (and much better)
than with Windoze.
If you're not using a lot of swap (-0- in my example above), the
slowness is prob'ly your hardware, particularly that Cyrix cpu. Have
you used 'hdparm' to optimize your HDD's ?
--
Tom Brinkman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Galveston Bay
