boyce1 Posted July 13, 2004 Report Share Posted July 13, 2004 Hi all - Total Noob here... I have an old PII 400 with 64M RAM. I have been able to install Mandrake 10 and all of my hardware works. I was also able to install Firefox and access the web. My problem is that EVERYTHING is excruciatingly slow. I do realize that this was installed on a VERY old PC but was wondering if there is anything I can do to increase the response time. For example would adding some more RAM be worthwhile? Would I be better off trying an older distribution or something or is this just too old to be even worth playing around with? I don't really have any plans for what I am going to use this for... I am mainly just setting it up to learn a bit about Linux and play around some. Thanks for your time and any suggestions! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest permittivity2 Posted July 13, 2004 Report Share Posted July 13, 2004 While I don't think you will ever see blazing fast speed, I do think that an increase in ram to 128 or even up to 384 megs would see an appreciable increase in speed. I run Mandrake 10 on a 400 mhz pc with 384 megs of ram. I also suggest using a "light weight" windowing system. Although KDE can be configured to run very lightweight, you may want to try Enlightenment or someother windowing systems. You might find that they use less memory and therefore increase some response. There are some other browsers available than Firefox/Mozilla. You may want to try Dillo (www.dillo.org). Althought it doesn't have all the featurs of mozilla, it loads and runs superfast. I hope this helps you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feralertx Posted July 13, 2004 Report Share Posted July 13, 2004 (edited) I also suggest using a "light weight" windowing system. I agree, I have a 400 mhz system too (we can create a club :P ), its a pentium celeron. Its running XFCE as window manager which is very light and works great, try it and you will see that everything runs far smoother than with kde. Its true RAM will help a lot, on that system Ive got 384 MB RAM too, but i think itll run fine with far less since i only use it to run a P2P program and FTP progs, cant comment on office apps -as OpenOffice- since dont use them on that pc. In short i recommend you the same as permittivity2, I would first try a lighter window manager and if you still find it slow, get more ram. Hope it helps Edited July 13, 2004 by feralertx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boyce1 Posted July 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 14, 2004 Yikes feralertx & permittivity2, I guess we are now the 400 Club – wasn’t there some religious cult named that… Oh well… I was rummaging around and actually found another stick of PC 100 ram so now I have a whopping 96 Meg! Of course now I am out of slots LOL. It really made a very noticeable difference. I have a friend that might have three sticks with 64 meg each so I might be able to TRIPPLE my RAM whoopee! If that works well I might have to spring for some denser chips – at least the price of RAM is coming down some. It is a bit of a steep learning curve for me. Like I will install a program then have to search all over to even try to find where it installed and what the executable (is that the right term?) is to run it. Oh well, it is fun anyway! The amount of free proggy's available and the quality of them is just awesome - sourceforge is my friend Now I just need to figure out what I really want to do with this thing LOL Thanks guys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xbob Posted July 14, 2004 Report Share Posted July 14, 2004 Yikes feralertx & permittivity2, I guess we are now the 400 Club – wasn’t there some religious cult named that… Oh well… I was rummaging around and actually found another stick of PC 100 ram so now I have a whopping 96 Meg! Of course now I am out of slots LOL. It really made a very noticeable difference. I have a friend that might have three sticks with 64 meg each so I might be able to TRIPPLE my RAM whoopee! If that works well I might have to spring for some denser chips – at least the price of RAM is coming down some. It is a bit of a steep learning curve for me. Like I will install a program then have to search all over to even try to find where it installed and what the executable (is that the right term?) is to run it. Oh well, it is fun anyway! The amount of free proggy's available and the quality of them is just awesome - sourceforge is my friend Now I just need to figure out what I really want to do with this thing LOL Thanks guys! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> try this, open a terminal and type whereis programname i.e. whereis firefox your new best friend until you get really comfortable in the file system. Hope this helps. B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boyce1 Posted July 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 14, 2004 Thanks xbob - worked like a champ. What characters can you use as variables i.e. like * & ? in DOS when searching? Is there some FAQ you would recommend for someone that is familiar with DOS/Windows that is trying out Linux? Stuff like using F3 to repeat text etc? Tells what type of files are executable, ie .com .exe .bat in dos etc? All the little stuff people need to know... Thanks again Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TopDog Posted July 14, 2004 Report Share Posted July 14, 2004 I have a question in the same alley... I have a laptop (266Mhz, 128RAM, 6GB disk) running Fedora Core 1 with Fluxbox. This runs quite smoothly today. Will I notice any difference installing MDK10 with Fluxbox? Will it run better/worse? I'm espesially thinking about kernel 2.6 vs 2.4 ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sapphiron Posted July 15, 2004 Report Share Posted July 15, 2004 Be carfull when buying new ram for you old p2. Some of the newer SDRAM does not work in older MB's. (HINT) I run Mandrake 10 on a P3 667 with 128mb RAM. And It runs better with mandrake than My AthlonXP 1500 (384mb Ram) runs with Win XP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xbob Posted July 15, 2004 Report Share Posted July 15, 2004 Thanks xbob - worked like a champ. What characters can you use as variables i.e. like * & ? in DOS when searching? Is there some FAQ you would recommend for someone that is familiar with DOS/Windows that is trying out Linux? Stuff like using F3 to repeat text etc? Tells what type of files are executable, ie .com .exe .bat in dos etc? All the little stuff people need to know... Thanks again <{POST_SNAPBACK}> There are many options from the command line and we could talk about grep all day, but try this link for a good place to start, * is a valid wild card, and don't forget you can take any command and look at it's man page by typing man commandname i.e. man grep And many keyboard shortcuts from Win work in KDE (although not always in the console window) such as Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, etc.... More to come, have to go to work for a few hours, later... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xbob Posted July 15, 2004 Report Share Posted July 15, 2004 I have a question in the same alley... I have a laptop (266Mhz, 128RAM, 6GB disk) running Fedora Core 1 with Fluxbox. This runs quite smoothly today. Will I notice any difference installing MDK10 with Fluxbox? Will it run better/worse? I'm espesially thinking about kernel 2.6 vs 2.4 ? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I haven't tried any of the Fedora releases yet, but I have read more than once that Mandrake is fast, specifically on older hardware, but again, I haven't tried it so it's just hearsay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted July 15, 2004 Report Share Posted July 15, 2004 Upgrading Ram would definately help. You'll be amazed at the performance increas you'd get on that machine by upgrading to 256MB+ ram. Also try using Fluxbox - a very lightweight but competant WM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boyce1 Posted July 15, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2004 Good advice Sapphiron - I will make sure to check before I purchase. Be carfull when buying new ram for you old p2. Some of the newer SDRAM does not work in older MB's. (HINT) I run Mandrake 10 on a P3 667 with 128mb RAM. And It runs better with mandrake than My AthlonXP 1500 (384mb Ram) runs with Win XP. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boyce1 Posted July 15, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2004 Good link xbob - bookmarked! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boyce1 Posted July 15, 2004 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2004 OK SoulSe I have seen a couple of mentions of fluxbox so I think I will give it a try. Edit: OK now I'm confused (again!). There seems to be several versions i.e. Debian, NetBSD Slackware etc - which one do I get or does it matter? Once I get the correct version - how do I envoke it instead of KDE? Is there a way to just end KDE and run fluxbox and/or switch between them? So many questions... Thanks for everyones help! Upgrading Ram would definately help. You'll be amazed at the performance increas you'd get on that machine by upgrading to 256MB+ ram. Also try using Fluxbox - a very lightweight but competant WM. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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