Re: Why is my Linux so slow?

Seriously though, why are you using such antiquated hardware? You
could probably get something better for free if you asked around a
bit.

It's not that antiquated. The best machine I had as an IT developer was a
PII 300MHz. And I volunteer some of my time setting up old free/used
computers for the elderly on limited incomes. It's certainly better than
some of the 100MHz boxes I've setup. At least it meets the 166MHz minimum
system requirement for a win-modem.

But the topic is a bit ambiguous. What exactly is slow? X? The boot
process? Launching apps? Browsing the web? File I/O?

X? - you're probably not configured with DRI for your video cards chipset.

boot process - you probably have too much loading at boot, you really
don't need that many things and you can reduce/limit things to increase
your boot speed. Along with a custom kernel.

Launching apps - You probably shouldn't be using KDE on a machine like
that. Try using IceWM, or some other lighter and less bloated window
manager.

Browsing the web - You should optimize your network. Which might just be
changing your MTU size. 1500 default, 1492 for cable, 576 for dialup.
Varies to some degree depending on the ISP. But can make a difference
between 2K/s to 5K/s on dialup. 400K/s to 800K/s on cable. Other things
like listing the most responsive DNS server first in /etc/resolv.conf. So
it doesn't have to timeout before checking a DNS server that actually
works. Plus other stuff.

File Input/Output - Make sure your bus speed is at your bus speed and not
defaulting to lower one. idebus=66 (or whatever applies). Make sure DMA
is enabled. cat /proc/ide/hda/settings

So if you want help correcting the issue, then you probably need to be
more specific. And otherwise appear to have a higher IQ than a windows
marketing exec trying to muddy the waters.

There's many ways to optimize a system, that probably isn't
setup/configured by default. Which also applies to windows. You need the
latest or best graphics driver, network driver. Optimize your filesystem,
boot process, and run versions of apps best suited for your chipset.
Optimizing the kernel, graphics and media players can make a world of
difference in how fast or slow your machine feels. Running nine million
apps is obviously a lot slower than running just one. Especially if one
of them is stuck in a loop and hogging all of your cpu resources. (java
applets are pretty darn good at that)

At a minimum "man top".

HTH
.

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