I have heard a great deal about "pre-linking" problematic software, can anyone explain how this works, and if it would help in a situation like this?
Wh
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -----To: Triangle Linux Users Group discussion list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: Magnus Hedemark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 02/16/2004 10:11AM
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] My slow linux machine
On Sat, 14 Feb 2004, James McDermott wrote:
> I am running RedHat 9 on a Micron Millennia Mme box that has a 233 Mhz
> procesor, 256 MB RAM (Max Allowed), and an IBM 6.4 GB Ultra DMA /33 IDE
> hard drive. The machine only has linux installed (no windows, no dual
> boot).
Before I start, it's important to have realistic expectations when dealing
with older hardware. Your memory cap may become an issue, and your hard
disk is certainly going to be a performance bottleneck.
> When I start an application, it takes considerable time to load the
> application. Mozilla(1.2.1) takes about 8 seconds, GIMP(1.2.5) takes
> about 15 seconds, OpenOfficeWriter takes about 25 seconds. The system
> monitor is showing that memory is using about 246MB out of 250MB and
> swap is using 29MB out of 510MB.
If you install the systat package you can run "iostat -x 1" and see what
your hard disk utilization is like in real time. Though I imagine a drive
that old might be loud enough to give you an audible indication as to
whether or not the disk was thrashing.
> I think that my problem is that I am a slow linux machine because I am
> CPU bound?
>
> What is the recommended CPU speed to get decent performance? I would
> like to see OpenOffice come up in less than about 5 seconds.
Note that the applications you're starting are known hogs. On my P4 OOo
starts up rather slowly.
Check this out... FC2t1 ... 383MB RAM, 1.5GHz P4
Mozilla - 5 seconds
Gimp - 6 seconds
OOo writer - 12 seconds
Note that my CPU is many times faster than yours, and a couple of
generations newer. And yet I still have to be patient. These load times
were higher still when I was running RHEL 3 clones on this box.
There are some other things you
really ought to do to squeak more performance out of this low-end
machine. Go into /etc/rc5.d and see what daemons are set to
start. Do you really need them all? You'll find a lot of cruft in there
right from the getgo.
Look into other Window Managers. KDE & Gnome are both rather resource
hungry. Your machine probably has icewm installed or available. That
wuold be a good starting point to lighten up the resource load on your
machine. Also look into using a lighter weight browser, like Mozilla
Firebird (or Firechicken, or whatever it's called today). OOo is never
going to be fast to load on that box.
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