qnr

Welcome to the board (from me too). Once you've been here a while, you'll grow accustomed to using the Search link near the top of the page. With it, you'll be able to find some reasons why Linux applications load more slowly than Windows apps. One reason is Linux is more modular, and Windows is more monolithic.

However, that can be done later. Let's look at one section. Let's see if your drives are slowing you down- You'd think that wouldn't be the case because Windows and Linux use the same drive - however, they might initialize them differently. Here is how you check:

[*]Open up a terminal

[*] su to root: type su, hit return, the type in your root password

[*] type hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

[*] We need to know what it says, so - while you have the post a reply window here open, take your mouse - go to the terminal window that you ran the command in, and while holding down the left mouse button, drag the mouse over the output. Then, select the post a reply window again, and click the middle-mouse button (wheel) and it will paste the output here.

do the same thing for your other physical drives, for example, replace /dev/hda Which I imagine is the 120 G drive, and you don't have any Linux apps on it, so this step isn't really necessary at the moment, but it will be useful for comparison.

here's an example from my computer

terry@timestorm: /home/terry

21:25:51 $ su

Password: 

root@timestorm:/home/terry# hdparm -Tt /dev/hda



/dev/hda:

Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.59 seconds =216.95 MB/sec

Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  1.70 seconds = 37.65 MB/sec

root@timestorm:/home/terry# hdparm -Tt /dev/hdc



/dev/hdc:

Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.61 seconds =209.84 MB/sec

Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  2.93 seconds = 21.84 MB/sec

root@timestorm:/home/terry# hdparm -Tt /dev/hdd



/dev/hdd:

Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.59 seconds =216.95 MB/sec

Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  1.38 seconds = 46.38 MB/sec

You can see that /dev/hdc is significantly slower than /dev/hda and /dev/hdd - that's to be expected, because it's a much older drive. But say it's the same model as the others, and I want to see why it's slower... I could use hdparm -I and check to see whether (U)DMA is enabled, for example::

root@timestorm:/home/terry# hdparm -I /dev/hdc



/dev/hdc:



ATA device, with non-removable media

       Model Number:       WDC WD307AA                             

       Serial Number:      WD-WMA111535835     

       Firmware Revision:  05.05B05

Standards:

       Supported: 4 3 2 1 

       Likely used: 5

Configuration:

       Logical         max     current

       cylinders       16383   16383

       heads           16      16

       sectors/track   63      63

       --

       bytes/track: 57600      bytes/sector: 600

       CHS current addressable sectors:   16514064

       LBA    user addressable sectors:   60074784

       device size with M = 1024*1024:       29333 MBytes

       device size with M = 1000*1000:       30758 MBytes (30 GB)

Capabilities:

       LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)

       Buffer size: 2048.0kB   bytes avail on r/w long: 40     Queue depth: 1

       Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum

       R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16  Current = 16

       DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 *udma4 

            Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns

       PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 

            Cycle time: no flow control=120ns  IORDY flow control=120ns

Commands/features:

       Enabled Supported:

          *    READ BUFFER cmd

          *    WRITE BUFFER cmd

          *    Host Protected Area feature set

          *    Look-ahead

          *    Write cache

          *    Power Management feature set

          *    SMART feature set

          *    DOWNLOAD MICROCODE cmd

HW reset results:

       CBLID- above Vih

       Device num = 0 determined by the jumper

So, lets see if maybe your drives are slowing you down.

But be careful with

$ rm -rf fun*

It will delete both the directory and the zip file for fun, but it will also delete the folder named functions, an ebook named fundamentals_of_linux.pdf, etc.

I haven't used KDE or Gnome for quite a while, but if I remember correctly, there are actually two different things you have to set in the KDE controls for the password saving to work. Perhaps someone that uses KDE will see this and respond.

Generally, your password will only be retained for a limited period. If it kept it so you didn't ever have to enter it, then there would be no reason to have a password at all :)

If you want to use particular programs without having to su

I was flipping through some floppies a little while back, and found I still had GIFs of friends from Chat in the early '80's. Monochrome... about 240x240 I think, maybe even lower resolution.

You might want to take a pencil eraser (gently) to the contacts on your cartridge and printer

Naturally, there is also the option of physically cleaning the print head, however, you said it happens even with new cartridges.

I take it you were getting great results earlier, and haven't changed anything ( thinking of when you were hinting about kprinter, which I don't use, so couldn't comment on - I paid for TurboPrint myself, and I get great results on all my printers)?

Glad you've got things working again. Just a quick note before those with Mandrake specific knowledge show up.

- Don't fall into the Windows mentality where you think you have to reinstall to get things to work. That is almost never required in Linux. But don't worry about having done it just now.

- urpmf is a find command for rpms. It searches the database to find which RPM contains a particular file. -- so, you'd install with urpmi

- If I were running Mandrake, I'd turn supermount off completely. Too many problems seem to arise from it.

Edit: typo buster

I was going to mention the telnet/ssh but held off for a while since it appeared that part of the problem was network related anyway, which would seem to preclude a remote solution.

From DistroWatch Weekly:

How not to fork Gentoo Linux

It discusses the fork - there is also some discussion of the Mandrake fork from Red Hat in the comments.

I'm just "bump"ing this thread up, so hopefully a Mandrake user will see it and be able to help with the problem.

Well, you only specify Fluxbox for LFS, so I'm going to mention something about KDE. If I remember correctly, KDE had the Keep Password option. I think you have to explicitly set it, so I'm sure you'd remember if you had.... Anyway, it remembers your password for a set period of time (i.e., 10 minutes, 2 hours)... so that if you had su'd to root, or otherwise given your password within that time period, you wouldn't need to enter your password again.

Very hard to find here in the US.

Not so hard for me. I can pick it up at Borders any day. It's $13.99US there I think, though. I can't find the DVD issues, though. Are they separate by any chance?

Depends on where you live. No Borders in this area, for example. The Borders in Reno didn't have any, neither did the Barnes & Noble, or Best Buy (didn't have a chance to check out any smaller outfits).

It was sometimes available at the Borders in Bangor (Maine), but normally, they'd only get 5 copies, and if you weren't there when they came in, you were out of luck.

Locally, here in Winnemucca (Nevada), one supermarket carries Linux Magazine, and they only get 2 copies a month., and that's the only Linux option available.

Steve's usage sounds like just what you need - just an indication that it is spelled correctly. To comment on the " No suggestions at all as to how to spell it, though. ", there is an option in ispell, so I imagine aspell has it:

terry@timestorm: /home/terry

21:45:56 $ echo "loooser luzer lazer atari linux" | ispell -a

@(#) International Ispell Version 3.2.06 08/01/01

& loooser 1 0: looser

& luzer 2 8: luger, lurer

& lazer 15 14: blazer, gazer, glazer, hazer, lacer, lager, laker, lamer, laser, later, layer, lazed, lazier, mazer, razer

& atari 1 20: Atari

& linux 2 26: Linus, Linux

Note that it will show you proper capitalization, too

Please note that I dropped out of HS after 3 months, so any grammatical recommendations I make are probably suspect:

s/payed/paid/g

-----------------------

assure to be able to

I'd use "ensure the ability to"

There were a couple of others, but they weren't as "jarring."

Nice work.

s'ok, I knew what you meant - just wanted to ensure that what I had said wasn't misinterpreted.

Must be nice :) I get about 400 fps with mine, but I have four different video cards that I use for video, and rarely for games.

Edit: corrected typo

You want the setterm command. If you write a program that uses setterm, you need to ensure that stdout is set to /dev/console

setterm -blank 5

Other options might be (check man setterm):

setterm -powersave powerdown

setterm -powersave 5

This tells the text console that after 5 minutes of no activity the monitor can be powered down. This wll work no matter what your APM settings are (or even if you don't have APM loaded).

To save the changes:

setterm -store

Um, Ok   

 

I really don't see a reason for me to make that up, do you?  I didn't spend the night 

 

A + B x C / D - E = Y = FPS 

 

To feel good about my self.

:banghead:

I wasn't making any assumptions about you at all, actually. I was questioning whether the systems were doing something screwy - and asking why in the world anyone would need 18,000 fps.

I can't see it being too much of a security threat, might want to keep it out of root's $PATH, of course. It's only changing filenames in a directory. I'd be more worried about accidently typing replace_anything with_blank (but at least the report would be grammatically correct :wink: )

The magazine is still around, just hard to find in the US.

http://www.linuxformat.com/

...still remember that old religious mag they used to put out: "ST Amiga Format" :lol:

18,000 frames per second? OK, saying for a minute that I take that to be correct (note that I didn't say "true" - not claiming you're fibbing), what's the difference between 4,000 fps and 18,000 fps (well, besides 14,000 fps)? I mean, movies only need less than 24 fps to fool us into thinking they're full motion.

Just a thought, is BIOS initializing things? I mean, did you use "Non Plug and Play OS"?

You're welcome. Might be due to my kernel (2.4.21)

default configuration differences perhaps? Can you get closer to the settings you like in Red Hat using xgamma?

I think I know what the confusion is. If I remember correctly, during the Mandrake install, you have the opportunity to state where you want your bootloader to be placed (MBR, a particular partition, a floppy) and, seperately, an option (possibly only in Expert) to make a boot floppy, for emergencies.

I think it's probably the same. I have an 8x AGP, but a really cheap video card (Radeon VE) since I don't really play any games and BIOS will only let it go up to 4x.

bvc: Well, to clarify, that CPU clock speed and host bus clock speed was actually further down in the dmesg output, my post makes it look like it is right next to the "Initializing CPU#0 section" when it's not, so perhaps you have it too (although probably not, I'm sure you've gone over the whole dmesg output)