Linux runs slow?

[brokendreams]

Hi guys.

Me again. Typing from LInux this time though....


Why does it seem as if my Linux is slow?

Specs:

2.26 ghz Pent 4
512 megs Ddram
5 gig Linux partition
500 megs of swap space
Running Mandrake 9.1 with KDE


I am not running a server of any sort, and I only have one desktop in use.

It seems that applications take a little longer to boot up then they should...


Is there a way to turn off applications that run in the background? Is there a graphical way to do this? I don't want to mess stuff up...

Thanks.

[Dolda2000]

Usually, application aren't running in the background; they are just sitting idle waiting for input, so that don't do any harm. And in any case, Linux's multitasking is good enough that you won't even notice if you have a couple of processes running in the background.

What kind of slowness is it? Does it slow down when the hard drive is accessed, do programs take a long time to start, does it slow down whenever graphical elements are updated, or is it just slow all the time?

[brokendreams]

It takes a little while for programs to load...

Of course, web browsing is fast, since I'm on cable.

Konqueror seems a little slow most of the time...

I use Mozilla for my browsing of the intarweb...

And some stuff like Licq (KDE) takes forever to load, and then doesn't at all.

[Dolda2000]

Konqueror, Nautilus and Mozilla are probably the slowest programs you will ever find on Linux. As for both KDE and GNOME, programs do seem to be slow to start. For me, it seems even worse with KDE than with GNOME, but GNOME is bad as it is. I don't know why this is, but it is really a shame. Some time, when I get some time over for such things, I will try to figure out what is making it take so long.
Non-(GNOME|KDE) programs, however, are as fast as any to load, but I guess that the programs that you want primarily are GNOME or KDE ones, so I guess that didn't help much, right?
I'll check a bit on this, though, and hope that I can get back with good things to say.

As for the things that take forever to load or don't load at all, try launching a terminal and start them from there, and see if they give any errors.

[shownuff001]

Im no guru but i know some commands you can use to investigate the slowness. Try the "top" command to see what processes are running, I believe it shows them in order or resource hogs, the ones using the most resources are shown first. This may give you a clue on your slowness.



regards


show :

[andutt]

sar,vmstat is also good to look at for systeminformation