I think you can gain some performance by building your own kernel instead of using one of the "canned" kernels that come with the distribution. Those kernels are built to be fairly generic and aren't always optimized for the system you are running them on.
I'm running X-Windows on a 750 MHz AMD T-bird with 256M of memory. It feels much faster than my MS Windows machine (1 GHz T-bird w/256M) at pretty much everything it does. My Linux system is optimized with my own custom 2.2 kernel and I'm running DMA 66 disks with DMA enabled using hdparm. It's possible there may be some kind of hardware situation that's slowing yours down a lot. Big name machines like Dell aren't necessarily that compatible with Linux. They're really designed for Windows and I've seen performance problems with Dell's just running Windows XP. For that reason, I built my machines with hand picked components that are known to work well with Linux. Well, good luck and I hope you can get things up to speed. - Craig > On 12 Jun 2003, Eric Robinson wrote: > > > Like agent Mulder, I also have something in which I want to believe. > > Mulder's hope was to find the truth about aliens. Mine to to make my > > Linux desktop feel fast. > > > > I am composing this message using Ximian Evolution on a Dell GX260, > > 2.4GHz, 256MB RAM, running Red Hat 9. The computer never really feels > > fast, and at other times it is downright doggedly slow. > > > > To my right sits my venerable Dell GX150, 1GHz, 256MB RAM, running > > Windows 2000 professional. Until last week, it was my primary desktop. > > With much excitement, I replaced it with this Red Hat machine. > > > > I could hardly have been more disappointed with the result. My Linux > > machine acts like arbitrary timers and wait states have been inserted > > all over the place. If I get a couple of windows open, I can plan to > > wait 2-15 seconds for almost anything I do. Some comparisons: > > > > Launch Mozilla: 26 seconds. > > Launch Evolution: 15 seconds. > > Start New E-mail Message: 2.25 seconds. > > Launch Open Office Write: 21 seconds. > > Launch Gnome Terminal: 6 seconds. > > Launch Gnome Edit: 2 seconds. > > Launch Ethereal Gnome: 3.25 seconds. > > > > Compare this to similar operations on my less powerful Win2K desktop: > > > > Launch IE6: 4 seconds. > > Launch Outlook 2000: 8 seconds. > > Start New E-mail Message: 0.25 seconds. > > Launch MS Word: 4.5 seconds. > > Launch command shell: 0.5 seconds. > > Launch notepad or wordpad: 0.5 seconds. > > Launch Ethereal: 3 seconds. > > > > Meanwhile, Linux top indicates 99% idle CPU, with about half my RAM and > > 25% of my swap utilized. Go figure. > > > > What is making my Linux experience so slow? What can I do to fix it? > > > > I want to believe. _______________________________________________ RLUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug
