qandd Posted September 16, 2007 Report Share Posted September 16, 2007 (edited) A few years back Mandriva (Mandrake actually) was my first experience with Linux, I have since changed distributions, but always check back to Mandriva every now and then, always try each new release. The problem I have, is that the last few releases, 2007/2007.1 and now 2008 RC1 (yeah I know, but) all have the same problem, they all run like crap for me, where as any other distro I try runs fast and smooth, over that time I've tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora, SUSE, PCLinuxOS, Sidux, and of course the distro I have been using for some time now, Debian (sid), they all run fine. My PC's, while not being bleeding edge, are certainly more than capable of running Mandriva, and I do not have any exotic or unusual hardware, I never have any trouble with hardware/hardware detection with any distor's. With Mandriva things are just so slow and unresponsive, that I just can't be bothered using it, even things like just opening a directory are noticably slow. I have stopped and uninstalled Beagle, followed threads with recomended services/process's to stop etc, installed from the PowerPack, Free DVD, One CD, no difference, same result. Downloaded each a number of times, md5's always check out fine, the burns and subsequent verification by K3B are always fine, but it's always the same result, Mandriva runs like a Sloth, I just can't use it. This is not just isolated to 1 PC, it does exactly the same on both my PC's, both are similar, but not identical. When I installed 2008 RC1, it was the same, as mentioned, I stopped, uninstalled Beagle, disabled various services/process's etc, all to no avail. Then one day I booted into 2008, and it was running fine, I thought, well this is good, so I decided to install the available updates, after that I rebooted, and it was back to it's usual slothful self, and has remained that way since. [edit] it may have run fine for 1 or 2 days, before I decided to install the updates Gnome system monitor shows CPU usage while the PC is idle, anywhere from 10% to 99%, whereas at the same time top will show things at maybe 1% to 3% at idle, which is roughly what I will get with Debian, although Debians Gnome System Monitor will also show the same 1% to 3%. So has anyone got any suggestions of what it could be, or what I could try to get Mandriva to run properly, I would like to try 2008 when it is released. Edited October 12, 2007 by qandd Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted September 16, 2007 Report Share Posted September 16, 2007 I have experienced some cpu-usage that is unusual on my cooker system. At times the system freezes for some seconds when it reaches 50-100% CPU usage. Beagle is uninstalled, unnecessary services are disabled but still e.g. the mozilla engine eats up the cpu like Homer Simpson eats donuts. I guess that there is a serious memory-leak in one or more packages. But then... Well, it is Cooker. Such things tend happen there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted September 16, 2007 Report Share Posted September 16, 2007 (edited) Cooker running well here, although I'm using XFCE4, not Gnome. Firefox eats a little bit more resources than usuaal, but nothing dramatic. I have some trouble with KDE4 (KDE3 isn't installed at all): While parts of it (dolphin, konqueror, kate...) are running fine, I cannot run the desktop environment yet without a big bunch of crashes at initialization. But oh well, it is beta distro (Cooker) and beta desktop (KDE4), I shouldn't really expect much more than that... :P Edited September 16, 2007 by scarecrow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffi Posted September 16, 2007 Report Share Posted September 16, 2007 just installed task-gnome-minimal it is slow as hell for me too :unsure: xfce and kde3 are running just fine though.... (xfce seems to be running quite a bit faster for me, well a lot faster than xubuntu anyway...), kde is as fast as kubuntu.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
{BBI}Nexus{BBI} Posted September 16, 2007 Report Share Posted September 16, 2007 Well just to add my two pennies worth. I'm also running 2008 RC1 with KDE and to me, it's slightly more responsive than 2007. Everything seems to be working just fine, especially Amaroking, Torrenting, K3bing and Web browsing all at the same time. The only issue I had was with it's choice of kernel. I'm really looking forward to the final release. One thing though, I wish they would make Beagle an opt-in choice rather than an opt-out. Keep up the good work Mandriva Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qandd Posted September 17, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 17, 2007 Thanks all, thing is for me, it was exactly the same with 2007 and 2007.1, I just gave up on them, thought I would try 2008, but it's the same, I realize that with cooker/RC's, you maybe shouldn't expect to much, but like I said, it's the same for me with 2007 and 2007.1, and I used to use KDE then, not Gnome as I do now . I just booted into 2008 RC1, but just couldn't use it, and booted back into Debian. Funny thing is, Debian (sid/unstable), is the most stable Distro I have tried. Oh well, I'll try the next RC, and then the release, but I don't think anything will change, maybe Mandriva just doesn't like me :P Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffi Posted September 17, 2007 Report Share Posted September 17, 2007 Why dont you install xfce or kde to see if it is a gnome problem or a general problem? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qandd Posted September 17, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 17, 2007 KDE is all I used in Mandriva 2007/2007.1, and it was the same. I will however try xfce. Let you know how it goes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qandd Posted September 17, 2007 Author Report Share Posted September 17, 2007 tried xfce, same deal :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted September 17, 2007 Report Share Posted September 17, 2007 Funny thing is, Debian (sid/unstable), is the most stable Distro I have tried. Hehe... then give RHEL/CentOS or Debian stable a try. Almost unbreakable. (yeah... I know... unless you do some rm -f -r --no-preserve-root /* nonsense. :P) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted September 17, 2007 Report Share Posted September 17, 2007 Does gnome-system-monitor show *what* is using all that CPU? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted September 17, 2007 Report Share Posted September 17, 2007 Quandd, check your disk speed with hdparm: # hdparm -t /dev/<insert drive for root partition> With certain hardware configurations/kernels I've seen terribly slow disk speeds. Primary culprits are changes in libata in the 2.6.22 series of kernels and pata drives. Ever since they rolled ide/pata support into libata I've seen some really weird problems on certain hardware. Things seem better in 2.6.23 kernels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted September 17, 2007 Report Share Posted September 17, 2007 Does gnome-system-monitor show *what* is using all that CPU? It is only the mozilla-firefox-bin that eats up all the memory on my system. from 54% to 97% of cpu ressources, and it happens when I visit regular sites (no flash/java) and very infrequently. There is no real telling what could cause it except a big memory-leak in the package imho. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neddie Posted September 17, 2007 Report Share Posted September 17, 2007 I'm not sure what you mean, Arctic. :unsure: If it's a memory leak, it'll use up memory, but won't necessarily use up CPU. Which do you mean, using up memory (resources), or using up CPU? Knowing which will certainly help diagnose the problem. Obviously if memory gets low then the machine will have to swap to disk which will slow the machine down, but that's not the same as some problem which is using up a lot of CPU but might not take up any memory at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted September 17, 2007 Report Share Posted September 17, 2007 Thanks for pointing my nose on it, neddie. And sorry for being a lazy bastard these days (I simply have too much work these days. My brain hurts...). I meant that the firefox eats all cpu resources, not my memory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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