Faster boot

[Dalani]

I'm currently using the KDe 3.2 GUI with MDK10 which I installed on my Pentium2 in dual boot mode with Win98. I noticed two items that I don't quite understand.
1/Linux boot boot up takes twice as long
2/There about 63! services running on my computer and even when I use ICEwm,
my 128meg of memory is 3/4 used up. (in comparison Win2000 runs about 25 services in normal use).

I use my Linux mostly for web browsing and I don't use it as a webserver. I think on boot up my computer is configured for things I don't use or need. ( i might be wrong)

Could someone tell me how I can reclaim more memory for applications and maybe have faster boot ups?

[loft306]

well if you are running the kernel that was installed on the original system install probably uses an initrd (meaning that it looks for the hardware on boot instead of a recompiled kernel which has just what is needed in it) and thuns boots faster

[sarumont]

1) Tune down the services starting at boot. You should be able to do this from the Mandrake Control Center (I think...). If not, it's doable from the command line as well. Just check out the various /etc/rc.d/rc[3,4,5] dirs (files?) and take out what you don't need from there.

2) Don't run KDE (or build your own lite KDE). IceWM is an excellent choice of WM for such a limp system.

3) Build a custom kernel, trimmed down to fit your system's hardware.

[valan]

even when I use ICEwm, my 128meg of memory is 3/4 used up.

That's quite normal, "free memory is wasted memory", so the kernel uses free memory as a disk cache of sorts to speed up disk access. If something needs the memory, the kernel will give it up (actually it keeps a buffer so there's always free memory for whatever needs it). A lot of explaining can be done about that, but in short as long as you're not swapping a lot then memory usage shouldn't be a concern.

[jeremy1701]

To configure the startup services, go to MCC > System > Services. From there you can select which ones to start at boot.

Jeremy