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X wasn't designed to be a speedy single user graphical
environment. Development focused on portability and networking capabilities.
X isn't an inherent part of any operating system, and direct access to the
system core is only granted reluctantly.
For the most part drivers have not been written by the hardware vendors
but by interested programmers, either sponsored by a Linux company or even
in their free time.
X by itself isn't really useful: you'll need another program to draw the
windows, the menus, the background etc. This window manager adds another
layer between the user and the operating system. Desktop environments like
KDE or GNOME even add yet another layer to provide more and more uniform functionality.
All this explains why the graphical subsystem on Linux
doesn't share the 'snappiness' of its Windows counterpart. On the same hardware,
MS Windows usually is faster than X on Linux, although given the proper drivers,
the race can get pretty
close.
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Slow response times in X can be the symptom of an issue
with the system's configuration, be it hardware or software. If you are running
your Linux system off an IDE hard drive, read the section on Performance Tuning
in the article on IDE hard drives.
As for hard drives themselves, I'd suggest using 7600
RPM / UDMA 66 drives for the best price / performance ratio. As for graphics
cards, there isn't much of a difference in 2D speed between most models up
to two years old. In 3D speed, the nVidias are currently unrivaled on Linux.
Another thing to check is the list a currently running
system services.
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Some graphic cards vendors offer proprietary Linux drivers
for their hardware. These drivers usually offer enhanced functionality and
better acceleration. Likewise there are vendors who offer alternative X server
implementations for Linux which might provide a speed boost, too.
On the other hand, you have to address the vendor or
other users when you've got problems with them, since Mandrakesoft does not
support proprietary third party software. Furthermore do some third party
graphics drivers do not support X servers other than XFree86, so caveat emptor.
See If Your Card Is Not Supported
By XFree for details.
Free alternative windowing systems like berlin and DirectFB are in the works, but since
they would require massive changes to vast amounts of current software, developers
have so far been very hesitant in adopting them.
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You can regain some speed by partially reversing the
deal: trade functionality for speed and use a 'thin' window manager instead
of sophisticated environments like KDE or GNOME. Window managers like Blackbox,
IceWM or Window Maker are provided on your Mandrake Linux CD, and they use
only a fraction of the resources environments need. You'll find more information
on them on the Desktop Resources
page.
But maybe you don't even have to go that far if you:
-
... only use as many virtual desktops as you really
need. By default KDE and GNOME come with four virtual desktops running, which
is a bit of an overkill for most users. Turn them off, then.
-
... avoid full-scale wallpapers. If you can't live
without a colorful background use small pictures and tile them.
This is often underestimated: four virtual desktops with different full-scale
wallpapers at a color setting of 24 bpp and a resolution of 1024x768 eat
some 8 MB of system memory!
-
... turn off screensavers. They are loaded into
system memory on startup even if you do not use them. A simple screen blanking
might not look very fancy but it is more efficient. If you enable power management
as described onX Setup, a screensaver
is superfluous anyway.
-
... use lower color depths. 16 bpp instead of 24
bpp don't make any real difference in appearance but in terms of memory usage
they do. Run 'XFdrake' or the 'Xconfigurator' again to change this. You'll
find a discussion of this topic in X
Setup.
-
... prefer light-weight themes. If you are fond
of eye-candy, you don't really want to do without a nice desktop theme. But
since there are many, many themes
available, you might find one that's nice and light.
-
... not load gazillions of fonts. This puts a heavy
load on both, xfs and X. You can load fonts on demand. Just put
them into a directory which is not part of the default font path and load
that directory as 'root' with
chkfontpath --add directory
and
service xfs restart
when needed. Likewise use chkfontpath --remove
directory and the 'service' command
to unload the directory again.
-
... turn off font anti-aliasing (AA). AA is a huge
resources sink (looks pretty, though ;-)). If you can't do without AA, at
least edit '/etc/X11/XftConfig' as 'root' and remove all directories from
that file which are not present on your system. This will improve startup
time of programs.
-
... start X from the console with startx
or via 'autologin' and thus avoid loading a display manager. See the article
on Starting X.
Hardcore users and efficiency fanatics will want to
compile their window manager of choice on their own, anyway. Window manager
RPMs are usually compiled with all options enabled. Only by compiling the
source yourself you can decide which features should stay out of your manager.
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If you use desktops like KDE or GNOME, you should prefer
using the programs supplied with them, because these programs won't have
to load their own libraries into system memory. Notice that KDE programs
need to load a good deal of KDE's code when you run them in an environment
other than KDE.
Try to avoid statically linked programs. These programs
usually use graphics sets not common in the Linux world (like Motif). They
can take very long to load, eat up much memory and are usually less stable
than programs which rely on system libraries.
Consider that console programs often can't be beaten
in terms of low memory usage, stability and flexibility. They often lack
intuitiveness, though. Often enough there are also lighter graphical alternatives
available.
Some examples:
-
Mozilla web browser: 17 MB on startup. Konqueror
web browser in KDE: 6 MB on startup. w3m console browser: 1.5 MB on startup.
-
Konqueror file manager in KDE: 6MB on startup. mc:
1.2 MB. And you can't even browse RPMs with 'kfm' like you can with 'mc'.
-
KMail mail program: 6.5 MB on startup. Mutt in terminal:
2.2 MB. And Mutt offers more functionality than kmail (although it can be
a pain to configure).
-
konsole terminal emulator: 4 MB on startup. rxvt
terminal emulator: 1 MB.
Run free -m every now and then to compare
the memory weight of programs. Run it before you start an application, while
the application is working and after you terminated it. Always compare the
third line of 'free's' output.
Do not use 'top' and its graphical frontends, because their numbers are often
misleading or even inaccurate.
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