Linux Adventures Reloaded!

[Van_M]

I've installed linux on my 1GHz Athlon again last week,  after 2 years, and since I am a newbie, I decided to go for an easy to install distro, so come Mandrake 9.2. I was surprised to how slow my system became. I mean really sluggish!In order to open ANYTHING I had to wait for around 15 seconds or more. if I wanted to run the word processor of Openoffice.org I was relly screwed! It would take  around a minute to show up. Once the programs were up they would run at normal speed but the start up times were unbearable. The internet was slow as well. Not downloading stuff but getting response after I click on links (I'm on cable broadband).
Then yesterday, while I was playing with the lower panel on KDE 3.1, I accidentally turned off the taskbar function... Voila!!! Now it runs like a charm! It starts the programs in the blink of an eye.... Go figure... :lol:

[kd7ota]

Yea,

I couldn't see why Linux ran slow on even a good spec system.  Even though I had it running before, it ran slower then anything.  The worst part about Linux and basically rendered it 'crap' was when I went to go switch my video cards.......... The GUI could never be loaded up again....

Even though everyone flames out Windows XP, I have got to say Windows XP is the most stable OS I have ever seen in my life yet. I never had a lockup since switching to XP nor ever a 'blue screen'.  Windows 2000 was a fatal mistake though.  When I had that, it was blue screen, then an instant restart out of nowhere, so that incident made Windows 2000 poo.

Even so, you never know when the slightest configuration to your OS speeds it up like a beast. :-D

[HopperJF]

XP is certainly passable compared to other Windows releases,  but I prefer MacOS X.
Ridiculously easy to install, easy to use and fast... like AmigaOS!

[Cass]

Even though everyone flames out Windows XP, I have got to say Windows XP is the most stable OS I have ever seen in my life yet. I never had a lockup since switching to XP nor ever a 'blue screen'.

There`s always a first time for everything. ;-)

Anyway, the Linux is a well known bloatware (not the kernel itself -even if it`s getting bigger and bigger-, but the whole thingie), as you have to use it in replacement of the existing OSes solutions.

________
Honda ST series (minibike)

[kd7ota]

Yea,

Im not trying to raise up anything against any OS. At heart, AmigaOS is definately #1 on my list.  :-D

I know there is a first time for everything, but so far, Windows XP hasnt failed me yet.  :-D

But even though it works, here is a couple of fixes I hope they do in another windows release:

1.When your external Dial-up modem is turned off at startup, you wont have to go through the modem options to have windows detect it again..
2.Hang-ups in the bootup process. (Even though the icons and the whole desktop is loaded, there is always this lagtime, then your harddrive loads like crazy.)  :-)

But besides that, it has to be the first passable OS windows made so far.

But remember....

AmigaOS is best!  <---- Of course my opinion. :-D

[Van_M]

OK guys, but what do you think about my problem? Funny isn't it? KDE slow as hell with the taskbar on, and pretty fast and responsive without a taskbar! Apart from that problem, I have to say that linux is really lovely, especially in console mode. :-)

[that_punk_guy]

Maybe the taskbar has an over-zealous system monitor built in, or something like that?

OT, Regarding Windows:

Whatever works for you. Windows 2000 is great on my machine, whereas XP has proven to be nothing but a pain and not worth the effort.

[Floid]

KDE admits to having "QA" issues (both it and Gnome have their brokennesses).

My only guess would be that, however the WM protocol... or the WM itself, but the taskbar is a separate process in the KDE system, right?... communicates to the taskbar app (something I'd have to look up, and... that shouldn't really be rocket science, every WM has to be aware of its managed windows), perhaps it's trying to do a DNS lookup for localhost, or preferring to try IPv6 sockets that might be unavailable or firewalled incorrectly, before those attempts time out and fall back to whatever lets it work at all.

Or it could just be an old version of Freetype (or an old X server without accellerated or optimized XRender?) burning CPU to antialias text in the taskbar, or something completely different.

[samdu]

This is going to sound lame, but the first thing I would do is to update to Mandrake 10 and make sure to specify Kernel 2.6. Though I haven't really had any speed issues with either Mandrake in general or KDE in particular, installing Kernel 2.6 was like getting a new machine. I might have lucked out with the particular video card I have as well, even though it's a really old piece of crap, the drivers might be very good. Try finding updated versions of the drivers for your particular video card. The reason I started using KDE was that  Gnome was slower than dirt, but even Gnome is pretty peppy nowadays. Again, the first thing I would do is upgrade to 10 or at the very least, update your Kernel to the latest stable 2.6. If you absolutely need to, you can rebuild your Kernel, taking out all the crap you don't need as well. Another option would be to start shutting down unnecessary services. Linux comes standard with a ton of services running that you probably don't need (are you running a mail server? If not, you can kill the Sendmail/Postfix and POP/IMAP services, etc...).

Remember, though, ain't no way Linux or Windows is EVER going to by as spry as our beloved AmigaOS. It's just not going to happen.

On a Windows note, I have had XP crash. I've had XP Blue Screen. It doesn't do it as often as previous Windows releases, but it can happen. And when it does - WHOA NELLY! It usually is extremely bad news. If you've ever had XP automatically reboot, you've actually gotten a blue screen. It is set by default to automatically reboot on a critical error. You can turn that off if you please (the comment about Win2K automatically rebooting is the same thing - a setting that can be changed).

To the comment that it takes forever to get to a useable desktop in XP: It has been this way with Windows for a very long time now, they simply moved the "location" of the wait. You'll notice that XP loads seemingly exponentially faster than Win2K. They're fundamentally the same OS, so how could this be? Well, when you boot XP, it pulls up the login as quickly as possible and then loads all of the internal system crap and drivers after you've logged in (or, more accurately, after the login is displayed - all that stuff will load if you leave the machine at the login prompt). Windows 2000, on the other hand takes for fricking ever to get to the login screen, but comes up to a useable desktop very soon after you log in. It's a perception thing. XP seems to load faster because you get to interact with it much sooner. It still takes forever to become useable, though.

[crystall]

Anyway, the Linux is a well known bloatware

Linux is not bloatware, most distributions are though. With a minimal install and some patience to recompile whathever you need you can end up with small and extremely fast installations. Mine boots in 10-15 seconds on a 600 MHz P3 with 128 megs of RAM and there is not a single bit of it which I haven't recompiled by hand, including the kernel.

[GreggBz]

I have to agree here, linux does not have to be bloated.
It just takes a lot of work to get a nicely configured minimal instalation. During the mandrake instalation, you can saftely unselect about 80 percent of the recomended packages. If you are not a developer, you can get away with gcc and not much else. Also, try Gnome, it's a little faster than KDE from my experience. And yes, on my Mandrake 9.2 installation I noticed that turning off a signfigant amount of eye candy really speed things up. At first I was horrified at how slow it was.. I was used to the 2.4 Kernel patched onto an old Turbo Linux 6.0 installation, But like any linux installation, it improves with age.. Unlike Windows, which seems to get worse with age. There is SO much you can do to tweak and improve the typical Linux installtation... that's half the fun.

[Floid]

The thing I remember about really old versions of Gnome was that it expected the local hostname to resolve before it could get anything done... which for all I know, might even work 'seamlessly' on a Linux system with whatever resolver library's linked there, but on BSD, it induced about a 50-second wait at startup before anything could be done at all.  (Obviously installing tinydns would've been a quick fix, but at the time, I didn't know what the hell I was doing yet.)

Bluntly, both are Really Big Environments, and just like MacOS or Windows, they suffer the same problems.  The upshot is that things like twm, AmiWM or even XFCE are available and 'supported' just as well as the big offerings.  (Well, if you want dock or tray apps, you need to pick something subscribing to one of the major dock or tray standard(s) around.)

[Karlos]

<-- No comment ;-)

[lame_duck]

I gots me a dual-head box with Gentoo. Useing the 2.6.5 kernel with Fluxbox as my WM. I can boot into the consol in about 15 seconds, give or take time for me to enter 2 passwords and hit the enter key for Eden's gate, and 5 seconds for consol to Xfree. It's all in how you compale yoru kernel. If you add junk that you don't need it's going to take longer. Working on getting mine down to 15 even.

As for linux being bloatware, I think your talking about things like Mandrake and Red Hat. They do get bigger and bigger but if you build your own then it's not bloatware.

 :-D

[Hammer]

I've had XP Blue Screen.

Check your hardware drivers if you have a NT’s BSOD i.e. WinXP (pre-SP2)doesn't apply memory protection on drivers.
With SP2, memory protection will be applied on network related infrastructure.  

You'll notice that XP loads seemingly exponentially faster than Win2K. They're fundamentally the same OS, so how could this be?

Note that there are some difference between NT 5.1 and NT 5.0. With Windows XP (NT 5.1), it speeds up system boot by observing the code and data needed each time the system is booted and prefetching the necessary file contents early in the boot process. This particular prefetching scheme doesn’t not occur until the third boot of the system, or when sufficient information is available to make the prefetching most effective.

 Well, when you boot XP, it pulls up the login as quickly as possible and then loads all of the internal system crap and drivers after you've logged in (or, more accurately, after the login is displayed - all that stuff will load if you leave the machine at the login prompt).

It doesn’t load all of drivers during after Login prompt i.e. NTLDR looks for drivers that are marked as "boot". NTLDR is after the NT's kernel load(NTOSKRNL.exe). In another words, core services is loaded at boot time.  

Type in "/NOGUIBOOT" and "/sos" switch in boot.ini(as shown below). This causes NT Loader (NTLDR) to show the names of modules while NT devices load.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINXP
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINXP="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NOGUIBOOT /sos