Why is it so ******* slow?

[boxxa]

I finally got my laptop setup with FC4 and runs everything I want to but for the life of me I can not figure out why its just so slow. Granted, its a 2.4 ghz mobile celeron processor and 256MB of RAM and I hate bringing up the Linux vs Windows argument and comparing the two, however, any linux distro I put onto my laptop seems to run painfully slow. Windows 2000 and XP both fly on it for things such as document editing, Instant Messaging, and even coding but on linux, just entering text into this box or an email is lagging really bad. Also launching Firefox with GAIM running just spikes up my CPU and it seems like its always running pretty fast even when idle.

Does anyone know of any speed ups or common problems that could speed this thing up?

I even disabled cpusped and see if that helped but still no go.

[techieMoe]

What desktop environments are the distributions you tried using? Some use more resources than others. Keep in mind that there is only one "desktop" for MS Windows, while there are dozens for Linux, all with different strengths and system requirements.

KDE is popular, and probably won't run very quickly on 256MB of RAM, so that might be one issue. GNOME is about the same in my opinion. You might look at using a different desktop like IceWM, Fluxbox, Xfce or WindowMaker. They're going to look different than the "standard" MS Windows theme, but they'll use a lot less system resources.

[oosterhouse]

I agree with techiemoe, and I recommend IceWM. It looks great and runs fast. I have KDE running on my 256 pc though, and it runs faster than Windows ever did. Good luck trying out these new desktops, you won't regret it.

[boxxa]

I agree with techiemoe, and I recommend IceWM. It looks great and runs fast. I have KDE running on my 256 pc though, and it runs faster than Windows ever did. Good luck trying out these new desktops, you won't regret it.

Thanks for the replies guys. Can I ask your settings and such to get your KDE running fast?

I will also look into other window managers. Thanks.

[aysiu]

KDE runs fast on my machine, but I have 512 MB of RAM.
Maybe you should try XFCE.

[Weedman]

ive had kde running on 128mb ram b4. but open up yast in suse and you wont be able to do anything else.

i am not so sure that fc4 is suited to laptops. kde should run pretty much well fine on 256mb ram. and you processors not slow either.

if your looking for speed distro wise, slackware or even gentoo might be a go-er.

i am not so sure that kde is to blame for the speed decrease. do you have the cpu speed turned up or is it really low. i know my mum's got a laptop and you can adjust the cpu speed (but, of course, its in windows, although im guessing cpuspeed would do the same).

i think i may give gentoo and slackware a head-to-head speed test tonite.

/weed

[bryansmith]

You should test those results against Arch if you have an i686 processor. Its very fast.

Bryan

[oosterhouse]

You should test those results against Arch if you have an i686 processor. Its very fast.

Is Arch hard to install/understand for a newbie?

[Roxoff]

Thanks for the replies guys. Can I ask your settings and such to get your KDE running fast?

I will also look into other window managers. Thanks.

Try doing:

yum groupinstall xfce

and you should have the much lighter XFCE4 available in your desktop selection. You can give this a go and see what effect it has before taking the plunge and moving to a lighter distribution.

[boxxa]

Ok sounds good.

I will try to run XFE tonight on it and see if that does anything for me speed wise. If not I will try another distro.

Thanks again for your help.