New2MDK Posted February 22, 2005 Report Share Posted February 22, 2005 I have no idea what is going on. I installed Mandrake 10.1, mainly to learn the command line and to have a more smooth running/stable environment. I only use Internet, email, OpenOffice, CD Burning (although K3B is giving me issues), finances and as I said I want to learn more of the command lline. But the main reason was, to hopefully scrap M$ eventually altogether. As of Now, I feel like I never left Windows. I don't know if it's KDE itself, or just not enough RAM. I use 256 which I know isnt a lot, but it ran XP Pro pretty darn well. I was told Linux handles memory much much better. I have yet to see that. If anyone has any ideas/pointers to why I'm having this problem, please advise me. I use a P3 930, 256RAM, 2 20GIG hard drives. I don't want to rely on M$ anymore, please help me. Let me know if you think a different distro might work better, please Thank you, NEW2MDK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted February 22, 2005 Report Share Posted February 22, 2005 Kernel 2.6.8 which comes with 10.1 is a mess... suggesting using some 2.6.7 from contrib or rolling 2.6.10 yourself. Most K3B problems are kernel related. "Fast and stable" is the definition of Slackware, which ain't terribly noob friendly, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted February 22, 2005 Report Share Posted February 22, 2005 (edited) It's all about perspective. Sure, Linux handles RAM a whole lot better, but Linux has a GUI running on top of an OS, whereas Windows is a GUI running as part of the OS. And, of course, you picked the most bloated DE (Desktop Environment) to run. :D First go into Mandrake Control Center and turn off services you don't need. (Do one at a time and reboot, so you know which one stopped you from being able to boot if you disable a needed service). There's a Help button there to give you an idea of what each service does or if it is necessary to run KDE or X or Linux. If you're unsure, post here the services you have set to start at boot and someone will tell you if they can be turned off. Secondly, maybe try a lighter DE, like Gnome. Believe it or not, I actually like KDE better than Gnome....but I have to be honest about which one is lighter. Edited February 22, 2005 by Steve Scrimpshire Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New2MDK Posted February 22, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 22, 2005 Since I had no clue what was going on and my system was running like crap, I decided to do a clean install using GNOME. During installation, I was able to pick and choose what services started at boot. Most were obvious, but several I wasn't sure of so I left them at the default to run. Bluetooth, crond, dm, fam, hotplug, keytable, kheader, mailman, messagebus, ntpd, rawdevices, xfs and xinetd. Are those best running? I'm not running any servers at all. finally, I booted up for the first time on this install and after login I got the following: Could not look up internet address for gianluca. This will prevent GNOME from operating correctly. It may be possible to correct the problem by adding gianluca to the file /etc/hosts. LOG IN ANYWAY TRY AGAIN so I logged in anyway. Everything seems fine, I haven't done anything. Although I've done nothing, I can honestly tell you, gnome seems to run better than KDE. If you could please, assist me with those serviices from above. I guess I need to update before anything anyway with easy_urpmi, do you suggest any other updating? Thanks again, this board has been very patient and helpful, thank you NEW2MDK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted February 23, 2005 Report Share Posted February 23, 2005 Bluetooth: If you don't have any bluetooth devices, you can turn this off. (If you had a bluetooth wireless device, you would know it :D) crond: Not absolutely necessary, but I would keep it. It's the cron daemon that keeps periodical jobs done, like rotating logs and stuff. dm: This is the display manager that gives you which options/desktops to log in to. Keep it fam: File monitor...I would keep it...but it is not absolutely necessary. KDE and Gnome use it, so I suggest you leave it on. hotplug: Name says it all...let's you hotplug usb devices...I would keep it. keytable: Needed if you want a keyboard kheader: Keeps the kernel headers in /boot updated. Needed mailman: Not needed messagebus: Broadcasts notification for system events...keep it. ntpd: Keeps your clock synced with internet time. Not necessary. rawdevices: Assigns raw devices to block devices (like hard drives and stuff). Don't turn this one off. xfs: X font server. X won't run without it. xinetd: like init, but runs X-related programs at boot. Keep it As for your other problem, I'm assuming that gianluca is the hostname you chose when you set up the network? If so, you can add it to /etc/hosts, like this: 127.0.0.1 gianluca Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted February 23, 2005 Report Share Posted February 23, 2005 To see if RAM is the issue, do the command: free and if your system is not using any swap, RAM is not the issue. Then, if it's slow, monitor with top and see what takes up your cpu cycles. Hey, you wanted to learn CLI, here you go... :D By the way, get gkrellm and use it. Shows immediately if something fishy is going on: urpmi gkrellm (as root, then as user) gkrellm & By the way, I may have missed something, what's so horrible about the 2.6.8 of 10.1? I have not seen big issues, but maybe I haven't been paying enough attention on the forums. On the other hand, I have used 10.1 on plenty of systems (see my review)... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
New2MDK Posted February 24, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 24, 2005 After doing the 'free' RAM wasn't the problem, and 'top' showed no hogs. But then again, I'm using gnome instead, so I assume KDE was the hog. This morning when I booted up, I noticed I had no taskbar. Can that be accessed through CLI, or any other way? Thank you all very much Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted February 24, 2005 Report Share Posted February 24, 2005 After doing the 'free' RAM wasn't the problem, and 'top' showed no hogs. But then again, I'm using gnome instead, so I assume KDE was the hog. This morning when I booted up, I noticed I had no taskbar. Can that be accessed through CLI, or any other way? Thank you all very much Im not sure from Gnome (I think its called panel ) but there are even lighter WM's.... IceWM (and an even lite-er version) fluxbox, ratpoision... all depending on your choices. Personally Id say IceWM for a noobie then choose features from there. (look for Windows managers in Add programs and search descriptions :D) Im going to slightly disagree with steve ... Gnome/KDE are both pretty heavy and tend to swap over which is heaviest.... both are many times more demanding than ICE/Flux etc. If you had hostname probs this can often be a reason why KDE crawls... its network dependant and stuff like this can mess it or Gnome up.... Like Steve I personally prefer KDE but it is so much a matter of personal preferences... and for every reason someone else will have a perfectly good one why Gnome is better :D (Welcome to free choice and linux:D) Its only important in like me you will fall in love with one or the other.... Try them all .. thats why linmux is so much fun :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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