Debian is slow...

[chadders]

...on the "old" computer.

The OS is Debian GNU/Linux Etch Stable.

System Specs:
PII Processor
256MB RAM
20GB HD
Mostly generic parts.

It's an old PC, but it was running faster with Microsoft Windows XP, which I'm disappointed. Anyone have a clue?

Thanks in advance, Chadders.

[cuiq]

I think it depends on what you have installed. You might consider using lightweight software, such as Xfce or Fluxbox for your desktop instead of gnome or kde.

[devils casper]

Which Desktop Enviroment are you using? there are a lot of services that you can stop to increase performance.

[chadders]

Which Desktop Enviroment are you using? there are a lot of services that you can stop to increase performance.

I am using Gnome.

[antidrugue]

I you want a speedy system, the ideal is to install Debian selecting just the standard system, so not the desktop environment package. See what I mean.

Once you have a base system installed, you can tailor your own custom minimal desktop. So something like that would do:

aptitutde install -R xorg alsa-base xfce4 iceweasel

Or with Gnome:

aptitude install -R xorg alsa-base gnome-core iceweasel

[mahlerfan]

Gnome will quickly chew through your available ram, I second switching to xfce. There are other tweaks you can do.

Here is a good link for tweaks to do that I found helpful--
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=7314

Out of those I found useful:
* disabling unnecessary services with sysvconfig
* changing ext3's journaling to writeback
* prelinking apps (and see the post about setting it as a cron job)

If you want to stick with gnome, you might find useful changing file managers. Nautilus is slow, see the post on that in this thread http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.p...r=asc&start=15

I personally rec scrapping gnome altogether for xfce or icewm+rox or fvwm2-crystal+rox. You should be able to find these all in synaptic.

[antidrugue]

Also,

-mount your partitions with the noatime option
-use 16 bits color depth in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
-use preload for automatic prelinking of applications
-etc.

[mahlerfan]

Preload-- nice! I didn't know about that program. Well that's better than manually setting up prelinking.

[devils casper]

its very easy to disable unnecessary service in KDE ( kcontrol ) but in GNOME you can use 'sysvconfig' to do the same. nice tips by antidrugue and mahlerfan.

[chadders]

Also,

-mount your partitions with the noatime option
-use 16 bits color depth in /etc/X11/xorg.conf
-use preload for automatic prelinking of applications
-etc.

Thanks everyone.