On Tuesday 21 June 2005 19:34, Tom Olson wrote: > On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 06:13:35PM +0200, Benedek Frank wrote: > > Hi > > > > I am seeking info from other people who has slow laptops, or just know > > how to save memory and CPU usage on a Debian system. > > > > I am an owner of a Sony Vaio PCG-C1VRX/K laptop, that has a Transmeta > > Crusoe 600MHZ CPU, which is very slow in nowdays, but I refuse to change > > it as I love it. I have a Centrino DELL laptop, but I dont use that much, > > as I am just inlove with this thing, however I need it to be faster. > > > > I have a 2.6.11 kernel. I saw a major slowdown from when I upgraded to > > 2.6 kernel, from 2.4. Even disabling Discover, I now only have Hotplug, > > but boot time is still around 3 minutes. That is to console. From there, > > I booted KDM and KDE, and my full boot time was around 4 minutes and a > > little. > > > > I looked into smaller window managers, but finally I am using now XFCE, > > which is ultra fast compare to KDE. I dont use KDM now anymore, I rather > > log in with console and do a "startx" from there. > > > > However, still my boot time is unacceptable. Not even speaking when I try > > to open Kmail or Openoffice, and Firefox. They take a loooooooong time to > > boot up. > > > > Anybody has any more suggestions, how to make a speedy but usable Debian > > laptop? > > Running a lightweight window manager is absolutely a good idea if you > want performance. I usually like to use openbox, though if you're happy > with XFCE then by all means keep using it.
I am pretty happy now, but I am open for other suggestions. I kind of like having a battery meter, and a volume controll, etc on my desktop. That is why I settled for XFCE, but if there is a faster one, I am all for it. > > How married are you to kmail? A console MUA would help in that case; I > like mutt but there are others. Some people say they can browse the web > just fine with console browsers most of the time (like the various > lynx/links/elinks programs . . . I don't do that so I can't really > say). > Yes, I am kind of married to Kmail. One reason is that I have thousands of emails, and kmail doesnt have an export feature, so I cannot use my emails in a new client. And also I would prefer a GUI email client over a console one. Then I guess there is no help here. I tried Evolution but I couldnt convert my emails for evolution. > How do you use openoffice? You may be able to avoid using that as well. > There are utilities for converting word documents and the like to other > formats; maybe those would serve. Also, if you need to write papers or > other documents, there's always LaTeX. Finally, it's not just your > machine; openoffice is just slow. > Yes, it might just be it . I dont use it much, so that would be ok I guess. > Did you compile your own kernel? If you do so you can often remove > things you don't need and the boot time will improve, I believe. This > will likely take some research. Yes I do have a kernel compiled. I needed it for the Transmeta Longrun stuff, so I did a very thorough kernel compile, meaning that I went one by one and disabled what I didnt need, and enabled BLuetooth, Sonypi for the camera, and other things. > > You can also turn off services you don't use by editing the contents of > /etc/init.d/. This will likely improve your boot time quite a bit > depending on what you can do without. Could someone explain this > further? I don't really know what I'm doing in this area. > \For this I use "rcconf" that does the job somehow, but not very well. It modifies the things in the "rc2.d" but not in the "rcS.d" There are several things that I have no idea about, so I would like to post the contents of that folder here, and if somebody could help me with it, that would be great. K02mountvirtfs S05bootlogd S30checkfs.sh S48console-screen.sh K36discover S05initrd-tools.sh S30procps.sh S50hwclock.sh K36mountvirtfs S05keymap.sh S35mountall.sh S55bootmisc.sh K38pppd-dns S07hdparm S36udev-mtab S55urandom K39dns-clean S10checkroot.sh S39ifupdown S70nviboot K43portmap S18hwclockfirst.sh S40hostname.sh S70xfree86-common K45mountnfs.sh S18ifupdown-clean S40hotplug S75sudo README S20module-init-tools S40networking S04udev S20modutils S41hotplug-net These are the things there. SHould I change something? > Is your laptop's suspend/resume working? If so, you can save boot time > by not shutting down. :-] > Yes I have that running. That is one reason for the self-compiled kernel. But it isnt perfect, as even when suspended, the display isnt completely shut down. It makes a little noise, like electrical noise when sleeping. QUite annoying. WHen I tilt the LCD, I can see there is writing on the screen, but almost invisible due to the LCD is very dim, but I can see if I concentrate. SO the LCD seems black, but it isnt off. > Max out your memory if you can. That improves performance too. > 256MB, cant do more than that :( > These are most of the things I did with my Dell Latitude, which was a > mighty 333 MHz. I used it for "everything" until last year when the > screen finally crapped out, and it was certainly more than fast enough. > > Hope that helps. > > -T Great you had a working 333MHz laptop, and I am complaining about my 667MHZ one. Maybe the transmeta that makes it slow. Also my HD is slow I think, even DMA and such is turned on. This is what I get with everything set. This is the state it is now: /dev/hda: multcount = 0 (off) IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit) unmaskirq = 0 (off) using_dma = 1 (on) keepsettings = 0 (off) readonly = 0 (off) readahead = 6344 (on) geometry = 38760/16/63, sectors = 39070080, start = 0 ANd the performance under these conditions /dev/hda: Timing cached reads: 364 MB in 2.01 seconds = 181.12 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 44 MB in 3.07 seconds = 14.31 MB/sec Thanks again for helping, Bence -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
