On Sun, 2009-11-22 at 08:15 -0800, Paul Simon wrote: > The system has only 256 MB with few resources being used. That's a big > difference > between 12+ hours and 3 minutes! Maybe I should invest in more RAM :-)
Yep, if you see swapping, more RAM is probably the single most effective performance enhancer you can possibly throw at it. The slowdown from swapping to a spinning disk completely swamps all performance differences between CPUs, for instance. FWIW, the next thing to improve depends on your common tasks: a solid state disk and a better video card are usually the best bets. The SSD is great for compiles, program startups, and other disk-intensive processes. (Get a good one, the cheap ones are awful.) The video card is most useful if you do 3D, watch videos, or have a desktop that uses a "compositing engine". If you just use twm to run xterms, it's not all that valuable. :-) Still, both of those are WAY further down the list than getting enough RAM to do the compile in main memory. -'f
