Hi all,
Thanks for the tips and hints - it did make a difference to me and I
appreciate the help.
Below is my original question and a summary of the answers posted:
How do I speed up Redhat 8.0 on my older (but not ancient) machine?
I'm running a Pentium II-350 with 128mb ram and an average video card (I
don't do any 3-D stuff). I'm using KDE as a window manager. My overall
experience is that the operating system seems sluggish, nothing at all
like the Win98 installation that I am dual booting with on this
machine.
As a complete linux newbie, I'm wondering what direction should I
take... more ram, different window manager, leaner apps, new video card,
or something else?
Responses:
1. Add more ram. Everyone suggested that 128 mb ram was not enough to
effectively run KDE or Gnome on Redhat 8.0. The recommended requirement
for a GUI installation of Redhat 8.0 is 192mb With ram being cheap and
the fact that I had an available slot I added another 128mb chip. This
brought me up to 256mb and I am now satisfied with the performance I'm
getting under KDE. Yea!
2. Choose a leaner desktop. Several people mentioned that both KDE
and Gnome are fairly "heavy" desktops with lots of memory intensive
bells and whistles and suggested trying a leaner option such as IceWM or
BlackBox. Over on the IceWM list-serve I was given a link to an RPM
package for icewm-1.2.2 that adds IceWM as a session choice in the
Redhat login manager. It can be found at
http://www.uber.com.br/romildo
Here's one other comment that I received: "I have found KDE3 requires
as much firepower as Win2K/XP. If you want good KDE3 performance, you
probably need to be above 800 Mhz with plenty of ram. Gnome2 needs as
much or more. Generally, I use KDE because I like a lot of the bells
and whistles and my system is fast enough. But when I want to get
maximum work done, I fire up Icewm."
For the record - I installed IceWM but I'm not using it as the learning
curve is more than I can handle at the moment and I don't relish the
thought of re-creating my KDE customizations in a new desktop
environment.
3. There was disagreement as to whether a new, more powerful video
card would help my situation since I don't do any 3-D or gaming.
However, should I decide to replace my graphics card, one suggestion was
to try the Radeon 7500 card - apparently it is touted to be the most
compatible card with Red Hat linux for 2D/3D use. It was also noted
that for maximum compatibility if you buy a Radeon card, make sure it is
manufactured by ATI not "powered by ATI" .
4. See if you can tune your IDE disk with hdparm (see "man hdparm").
You can set hdparm options easily in Red Hat
using the /etc/sysconfig/harddisks file. Two variable/value pairs that
were suggested:
USE_DMA=1
EIDE_32BIT=3
5. In KDE, you can turn off a lot of the animations and full window
dragging, etc. See KDE Control Center / Look & Feel / Launch Feedback,
Window Behavior.
6. Some of the monster apps like open office are going to load slowly
in any environment. If you use them a lot, you might want to consider
loading them once when you boot and not closing them (if you can spare
the ram). You can find lean replacements for most apps if you look
around. Some suggestions for leaner apps that I received were: AbiWord
(to replace OpenOffice), Phoenix or Opera (to replace Mozilla), Rox
Filer (to replace Konquerer).
7. Make sure you have an adequate sized swap partition defined. A
rule of thumb which I can't defend is 2x the size of your physical
memory.
8. Turn off Magicdev. This is an applet that automounts media when
inserted (CDs etc). Some people find that removing it helps. Try going
in on the command line as root and enter the command kill all magicdev.
See if your GUI experience improves (in the same session). If so then
remove the magicdev rpm- (rpm -e magicdev).'
9. Finally, here is the link to "Building a lo-fat linux desktop"
which has some great tips.
http://users.netwit.net.au/~pursang/lofat.html
Thanks for all of the help folks - this list-serve is a great resource!
Perhaps this summary is a candidate for the FAQ... ?
- Hal Watson
--
Psyche-list mailing list
Psyche-list@redhat.com
https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
