Guest testy Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 Hi, I just installed Mandrake 10.0 on a 500 MHz AMD-K6 with 256 MB ram. It takes almost 30 seconds to get an Open Office word processing document open. I'm a total newbie, so: 1) Is this the right place to ask this Q? 2) Is it supposed to be this slow? 3) Any suggestions for speeding it up? The hardware is: Processor: AMD-K6 3D HD: Seagate 40 Gig ( jumbered to 32 Gig due to bios limit) Video: SIS 6326 Sound: Cirrus Logic CS 4616 I did manage to switch from KDE to IceWM in an effort to make the processor go faster. That is, I think I switched. I'm haunted by the idea that KDE is still running somewhere... Anyway, it still takes about 30 sec to open an OO document, and the system monitor goes about 1/2 red while it starts. Funny symptom: Under IceWM, the upper right window buttons (bigger, smaller, close) change if I mouse over them. The display a snapshot of the sytem monitor. Any help is appreciated, Gary Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 (edited) well, actually, it should not be toooooo slow. but some things should be mentioned: if your comp is not the newest, i would think of switching from kde/gnome to something like fluxbox or icewm. they are less memory-hungry and thus much faster. and openoffice LIKES lots of ram. in case that you don't really need the whole bunch of options included in openoffice but only a simple program for writing documents, i suggest you try abiword. it is more lightweight but also with a bit less features. although it is quite capable of adding footnotes, formatting, graphics and lots more. when you installed mandrake, have you made one swap-partition? i hope so. because a missing swap-partition will slow down your box significantly. in case you haven't done that, do a quick reinstall and partition your harddrive with one root partition, one home partition and one swap (at least double size of yor ram). the swap partition will act similar to a virtual ram-drive under windows, only better. remember: kde needs at least 80mb ram. gnome is similar. icewm uses only a very small percentage of this. and icewm and flux can look very nice, too. :) p.s.: the change of the icon in icewm is a bug in the theme that is selected by default. change the theme and everythign will be okay. Edited October 6, 2004 by arctic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris z Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 i ran Mandrake on my old AMD K6 333mhz right up to version 9.2. (it's still on there, as a back up system). it ran fine, albeit a bit slow, but Open Office never took 30 seconds to load & i ran KDE full throttle all the time. some other suggestions, in addition to arctic's advice.......... for an OOo speed tweak, open it & try going to tools->options->memory. up the graphics cache & memory per object cache a bit, but not too much, since it will use RAM. also, for a general speed tweak, go to Mandrake control Center->system->services & turn off any running services that you don't need. logging is a big CPU hog, for one. there are a few others. if you post what services you have running, i could let you know if you need/want them running or not. also, turn them off to start at boot in addition to just stopping them. each one has an "info" button that tells you what it does. if you're not sure, leave it be & post back here. Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
illogic-al Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 Hi, I just installed Mandrake 10.0 on a 500 MHz AMD-K6 with 256 MB ram. It takes almost 30 seconds to get an Open Office word processing document open. I'm a total newbie, so: OpenOffice.org will eat your RAM like nothing. 1) Is this the right place to ask this Q? yes :-) 2) Is it supposed to be this slow? yes :-) 3) Any suggestions for speeding it up? The hardware is: Processor: AMD-K6 3D HD: Seagate 40 Gig ( jumbered to 32 Gig due to bios limit) Video: SIS 6326 Sound: Cirrus Logic CS 4616 Get more mem and increase the swap size. Buy a new comp :-D I did manage to switch from KDE to IceWM in an effort to make the processor go faster. That is, I think I switched. I'm haunted by the idea that KDE is still running Nah. if you're in icewm kde is dead as dead can be. somewhere... Anyway, it still takes about 30 sec to open an OO document, and the system monitor goes about 1/2 red while it starts. Sing to the tune of Badger Badger. Memory, Memory, Memory, Memory, Memory, Memory, Memory, Memory, Memory... Funny symptom: Under IceWM, the upper right window buttons (bigger, smaller, close) change if I mouse over them. The display a snapshot of the sytem monitor. Any help is appreciated, Gary <{POST_SNAPBACK}> that's not a bug, it's a feature (really, it is) :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest testy Posted October 6, 2004 Report Share Posted October 6, 2004 Thanks for all the helpful replies. Swap disk: I let Mandrake setup the default swap, which was about 500 MB. Processes: I recall that there are 45 running, but most I think were "sleeping". I think this is whats running : top - 12:10:28 up 1:42, 0 users, load average: 0.53, 0.32, 0.16 Tasks: 46 total, 1 running, 45 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 8.1% us, 1.3% sy, 0.0% ni, 90.2% id, 0.0% wa, 0.3% hi, 0.0% si Mem: 256120k total, 189348k used, 66772k free, 9996k buffers Swap: 506008k total, 0k used, 506008k free, 138756k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 2110 garyi 15 0 27500 16m 24m S 4.6 6.8 0:06.10 xvt 1191 root 15 0 21380 12m 10m S 3.9 4.9 0:51.59 X 2124 garyi 17 0 2116 1000 1916 R 1.0 0.4 0:00.53 top 1 root 16 0 1524 492 1372 S 0.0 0.2 0:02.57 init 2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0 3 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 events/0 4 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kblockd/0 5 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kapmd 6 root 25 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush 7 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.06 pdflush 8 root 25 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kswapd0 9 root 10 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0 11 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod 15 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.10 kjournald 113 root 15 0 1980 1212 1536 S 0.0 0.5 0:02.95 devfsd 265 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kjournald 670 rpc 16 0 1656 540 1488 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 portmap 684 root 16 0 1584 616 1416 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.10 syslogd 692 root 16 0 2524 1532 1364 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.59 klogd 732 root 22 0 1656 696 1488 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.00 rpc.statd 1115 xfs 17 0 5196 3672 2464 S 0.0 1.4 0:00.41 xfs 1167 root 17 0 2628 664 2452 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.01 mdkkdm 1183 daemon 16 0 1560 508 1404 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 atd 1202 root 16 0 2116 876 1780 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.02 xinetd 1235 root 16 0 5056 1756 3408 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.07 cupsd 1500 root 16 0 2828 1060 2644 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.13 master 1509 postfix 16 0 2952 1156 2764 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.04 qmgr 1510 postfix 16 0 4188 1500 3984 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.24 tlsmgr 1588 root 16 0 1568 600 1408 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 crond 1711 root 18 0 1512 416 1356 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 mingetty 1712 root 19 0 1512 416 1356 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 mingetty 1713 root 20 0 1512 416 1356 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.00 mingetty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chris z Posted October 7, 2004 Report Share Posted October 7, 2004 (edited) from that list, i'd consider stopping the following if the info doesn't apply to you............ portmap............used for servers, ntfs file systems. syslogd.............system logger. will keep logs of various system activities/info. can be useful for troubleshooting, but it's not neccessary. if you're system is running fine & don't need to refer to logs for anything, you can get rid of that. klogd.................same as above, for KDE apps. atd & crond.......sorta like task scheduler, in windows. used to run various tasks specified by you, at set times. if you don't do that, or don't know how you do that, you can kill those. xinetd................another server related/scheduling type app. again, if that don't apply, kill it. by saying "kill", i just don't mean kill the PID number. that will kill the process, but it will start up again upon boot. again, check in Mandrake Control Center->system->services. that will show all running apps & what's set to start at boot. there may be some others there you don't need/want that you can get rid of. use the info buttons there to see what they do. if you have any other questions, please feel free to ask. Chris Edited October 7, 2004 by chris z Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted October 7, 2004 Report Share Posted October 7, 2004 (edited) that's not a bug, it's a feature (really, it is) who coded this nonsesne if it ain't a bug? you, illogic??? :P Edited October 7, 2004 by arctic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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