Joho the Blog
|
|
|
July 16, 2003
I'm continuing to poke around linux. I'm not finding the Gnome desktop I'm using to be very predictable, so I thought I'd install the Ximian version (free, of course, although they sell a pro version for $99) just to see what it's like. It's a multi-hundred megabyte download that's occurring even as I write this. I'm getting more comfortable with mounting Windows files. Tonight I almost painlessly mounted the My Documents directory of my XP laptop and moved some files over to the linux machine. (Important lesson: Linux expects the name you gave the Windows directory when you first marked it as shared in Windows, not the actual filename. D'oh!) Meanwhile, linux is still running like a dog on Valium. While looking around the Web for info on how to list processes (PS: it's "ps" and it likes a nice "-ae" as a parameter), I saw a reference to "top" which dynamically shows the percentage of CPU and memory consuemd by each process. It says that I've got nothing very intense going on, yet the system lags even when typing. So, something funny is up. And not funny ha ha. Posted
by D. Weinberger at July 16, 2003 08:15 PM
|
Comments
--- dog on valium ----
what video card and resolution are you using
start-->system settings-->display
lower the color depth and see it picks up
--- ooffice to view docz ---
--- ximian ---
tried kde desktop yet
start--system tools--more system tools-->desktop switching tool
Posted by: Greg | July 16, 2003 10:01 PM
RedHat 9 runs X with a nice value of 0. If I recall correctly, the earlier RedHat 8 ran it at -10. This is the 'nice' value recommended by XFree. Try this out (as root) ps -ef | grep X. In the second column you'll see the pid of the X server. Then (again as root) renice -10 pid, where pid is the value you picked up from the earlier command. There's also the x11perf utility if you believe that the slowness lies in the X Server. Other tools that come to mind are hdparm (well covered in O'Reilly's Linux Server Hacks) and the sysstat utils available at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/sebastien.godard/
Posted by: Sean | July 16, 2003 11:26 PM
I found that r.h. 9.0 had anti aliasing turned on by default, which was chewing away my cpu. When I turned off anti-aliasing, the machine ran a lot faster. I can't remember where I found the settings, but it was in a redhat gui config somewhere. I use ximian desktop at work, and absolutely love it.
-jamie
Posted by: j scheinblum | July 16, 2003 11:51 PM
The others have all made some good comments but I'd also like to point out another, often overlooked Linux performance booster. Make sure your using drivers for YOUR card. If you have an NVIDIA card download the correct drivers for it (read instructions first and if its SuSE pray!). If its ATI you should be ok, though the drivers aren't updated that often. Finally, if its onboard turn it OFF and switch to a PCI/AGP card. It makes a difference.
Also, using the hdparm utility make sure you have DMA turned on. Gnome should run pretty well on your machine, it runs great on my K6-300 w/ 64Mb of RAM as long as I turn the color depth down.
Posted by: Chris | July 17, 2003 12:03 AM
Thanks for all the help. I'll try it all. For now, though, I'm concerned that whenever anything close to a sound happens on my machine, my keyboard locks up. And it's a software thing because ctl-alt-f1 still works.
WRT graphics cards: great info. Thanks. It says that it's running an nvidia driver although I don't know if it's specific to the Creative Annihilator card that I have. The props for the card grays out "hw acceleration," which I think is not a good sign. Creative.com is such a godawful site that I'm having trouble finding the right driver. Oh well...
Posted by: dweinberger | July 17, 2003 12:49 AM
see you again..
Posted by: Danielle Frances | September 21, 2004 04:53 AM