On Wed, 5 Dec 2018, Mike Squires wrote:

First, it seems that I need at least 768MB and very likely 1GB of memory on the video board to avoid the problems I had with the 256MB All-In-Wonder Radeon board I used previously.  Displays are two HD displays; I couldn't display some windows, such as "Terminal Emulator", over the right-hand two-thirds of the second monitor.  With a 1GB card, no problem.

Ok. That does sound odd. I haven't had that problem with only an i5 using default video (intel on chip) with dual monitors.

However, the system was incredibly slow.

After login all functions were very slow; for example, burning a DVD ran at less than 1X where the same hardware runs at more than 7x using 16.04.  The system was unable to keep the buffers filled, with 16.04 that is not a problem.

Yikes! have you tried ctl-alt-F1 from the login screen and do SW upgrade from there? is it any faster?

A clue, I think, is that the "wa" (processes in wait state) percentage in "top" stood at more than 30% all of the time; currently running 16.04 on the same hardware it is 0.0 to 0.2%.

OK.

Running the version of XUBUNTU which is the base for 18.04 didn't show this issue (running from the DVD).

Hmm, then maybe try installing the generic linux kernel alongside and run that to see what happens. You may wish to chmod -x /etc/grub.d/09_lowlatency first though so that you don't default to lowlatency. Of course I would really like to know if adding lowlatency kernel to Xubuntu kills that too. It may be something else we do that Xubuntu has found and fixed that we haven't that has caused that... or one of the tweaks we have added besides the extra kernel.

My guess is that there is something about the low-latency kernel that causes my dual Xeon quad core to slow down dramatically.  I wonder if it

That _should_ be faster than my i5 for sure.

The fact that you are running an ice1712 audio card suggests that you do audio work where the lowlatency may be important. I should ask anyway, how you use the machine. If you are doing recording with external monitoring and can run with a higher latency the generic kernel may work fine for you.

I have purposely stayed with the intel video because I know that the drivers are "open" and just work with most kernels (or get fixed pretty quick). I understand though that the xeon chips just don't have that option. (last I looked) I have next to no experience dealing with other video types.

BTW have you tried 18.04?

The differences from generic to lowlatency is very small (one switch that can actually be turned on in generic at boot time I am told).

--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net
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