Stutter every two seconds

[JoeWright]

I've just recently installed OpenSuse 10.1 (remastered DVD version) and I am having a strange stuttering problem.

Every 2 seconds the system stutters (small pause). Sometimes this is minor and sometimes more noticeable. At first I thought it was just with sound but I've sinced noticed that it is detectable when moving the mouse pointer in circles. It also affects games quite significantly. Looking back this problem existed straight after installation - with no extra programmes installed.

I did once have Suse 9 on this computer (partition wiped since then) and did not have these problems.

My specs are: Athlon 800, 384 MB Ram, 0.5 to 1GB free space in Linux partition, dual boot with windows, Hoontec DSP24 Value, 3COM usb wireless, KDE GUI.

I'm not a linux expert. I hope someone can help.

Thanks, Joe

[bryansmith]

You may want to check system requirements for Suse. KDE (especially) and GNOME have grown quite a bit since Suse 9 and you may be a little to low for the system requirements.

According to the opensuse website, you are just over the requirements, which may account for the "glitchiness". See here.

Bryan

[rong]

Is it audio stutter or video stutter?

If video, what is your video card brand?

[Wifi_is_evil]

What is your processor clockspeed? 384mb of RAM is FINE, but anything below 1.1ghz doesn't run too crash hot.

[JoeWright]

Thanks all.

My clock speed is only (only?) 800 MHz but this problem occurs even when I haven't opened any programmes (e.g. I can see it if I move my mouse cursor in circles on the desktop).

As to whether its an audio or video problem, its an everything problem. Visual stutter, audio stutter. Also, in that game that's a mario copy (with the penguin) it can get very freaked out. If you're moving along when a glitch happens, sometimes the screen jumps to much further down the level (as if the internal timer registered more than the glitch time).

My video card is an NVIDIA FX5500. I've installed the NVIDIA driver but the glitches happened before and after the driver installation.

Its almost as if there were a background programme that is doing something every 2 seconds but I cannot work out what.

Thanks, Joe

[bryansmith]

What window manager/desktop environment are you using?

Bryan

[JoeWright]

KDE

Cheers, Joe

[rong]

I doubt that it is a specs issue. I've run suse (9.2) with kde on 800mhz/128M systems and while noticeably slow I've not had the symptoms you describe. I'm just guessing but I'd bet on the video system.

Have you considered trying another distro? Perhaps running one of the LiveCD's, e.g. ubuntu, to see the results.

[padriaan]

Try the boot-option acpi=force.

[JoeWright]

I haven't tried another distribution yet. I'm a windows developer and I want to get on with some cross platform development but I don't want to have to learn too much linux stuff to get on with it. I quite like Suse because the setup was straightforward. Could anyone recommend another distro with a similarly easy installation?

In general I'm not actually too bothered by the speed of the system, its just this stuttering that's wierd.

Thanks, Joe

Edit: padriaan, I'll try that, thanks.