Pat Bradshaw wrote:
>
> Hi All
>
> I have a pentium 90 with 16 mb of ram running Red Hat 6.0.
> Performance for anything not requiring x windows is quite good,
> but anytime I try to run anything with a gui, the machine just
> crawls along, and I hear the hard disk thrashing like crazy.
> This isn't just bad I'm talking about here, its completely
> unusable. Staroffice takes 5+ minutes just to launch. With KDE
> performance is slow but acceptable. With GNOME - forget it.
The problem is that you are trying to run too many graphic-intensive
things at once. try a less resource-intensive window manager like fvwm
or fvwm2. Also, check and see how many processes are running Vs. how
many you actually need. All of these things take up memory, and if you
have a low-end video card, then they are taking up a lot of CPU cycles
as well. The sound of the hard drive cranking away is because there
isn't enough memory to handle everything, so the system is trying to
swap out processes as fast as it can.
As for StarOffice, it is loading so slow because 1) it is a monster
app, and it is a resource hog of and by itself! and 2) With everything
else loaded into memory, you are probably bringing the entire thing up
in swap space, which is far slower than RAM.
> I know that the best answer is to stick a crowbar in my wallet
> and add RAM, but are there other parameters that might
> significantly affect performance that I could tweak to make
> performance at least bearable?
Not really. You need to cut down on the processes that are using up all
of your memory, swap space, and CPU cycles. You can tweak the window
manager settings to cut down on the size of the footprint, but you will
still have problems. The newer GUI's like KDE, GNOME, and E weren't
designed for the lower-end systems.
> I'll probably get flamed for admitting it but Win95 and Office95
> run just fine on this machine.
I believe this. But try running Win95, Excel, Word, Access, PowerPoint,
netscape, and and E-mail client all at the same time. That is about the
same load as the newer GUIs, all of the back-end processes, and
StarOffice at the same time. Under Linux, you have a lot more processes
running than you do under Windows. Also, when StarOffice crashes, you
don't have to reboot ;-)
Kenny
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