Re: Extremely slow Suse 9.2pro

From: David Wright (david_c_wright_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 11/14/04 

Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2004 16:13:46 +0100

Sensei wrote:

> Per Schröder wrote:
<snip>
>> If there is none, continue to look at top to try to understand what the
>> system does when it is running slow. Paging? CPU? disk accesses? What is
>> the bottleneck?
>
> First, the kernel shipped with suse is NOT preemptible, as I feared.
> Second, I suppose paging is quite slow and X is really boring. The gui
> is slow, moving windows happen to leave a trail behind. Repaint is
> unbelievable slow.
>
> I can't think of a solution now... should lfs come back? I hope I won't
> need it...
>

That is not my experience, even on my 1Ghz notebook, which is several years
old and only has a boring non-3D capable SiS chipset and slow IDE drive, it
is certainly fast enough under 9.2. I don't experience any lag with moving
windows or noticed applications taking overly long to start.

Have you tried doing a default installation of SuSE 9.2 on your PC and
seeing if that runs OK? You say that you have built your system from
sources; it could be possible you have used an incorrect flag somewhere...
If the machine runs like a dog with the SuSE compiled kernel as well as
with your homegrown, then you know that SuSE 9.2 is too much for your
machine. On the other hand, if a default install does work at a reasonable
speed, try replacing one component at a time with your home compiled
packages until you find the one that is faulty and double check the flags
which were set during the compile...

Just out of interest, have you tried using a non-preemptive kernel with your
build?

As my laptop seems to be less powerful than yours (1ghz coppermine, 384MB
RAM, SiS graphics) and runs fine with 9.2, it would seem that something is
amiss somewhere with a package you have self-compiled. My guess would be it
is either somewhere in the Kernel or with the X server...

Dave

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