Linux Slow

[WoodiE]

Well to start off i am a newbie. I have had linux installed now for about a day now, maybe a lil less. Anyways, Im running Mandrake 8.0 on a 800Mhz T-Bird, 256MB DDR RAM, ATI Rage Video Card, 20gb ATA-100 7200RPM HD,and a CD-RW. And the system is very slooowwwww!!! I open Netscape or Konquer to browse the net and they open at an ok speed, when i try to minimize them they tend to wait a few seconds to do so or the outline of the window will but the window itself is still there and sometimes stays there unless i close it. Clicking on the KDE icon to bring up my programs takes a few seconds. So can anyone tell me why. I was told linux would run very nice on a P200 and here i have much more then that and runs like windows 2k would on a 486 :(

Please help.


WoodiE

[Malakin]

Did you do a normal install where Linux gets its own partition/s or did you install it on top of windows?

rage pro card is extremely slow, not sure but it might even effect 2d stuff. Try running your desktop at 16 bit if it isn't already.

You can also turn on dma. usually "hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda" after testing it and making sure it works fine you can place this command in your /etc/rc.local file so it gets executed when you startup.

[Garbett]

I found KDE to be just too memory/process intensive in general. I've started running blackbox as the window manager and it's working great. I still use Konqueror under blackbox, but you can really tell a difference when it starts up.

[mangeli]

and you need to edit your lilo.conf file in order to allow it to use the ram you have.

A normal install of lInux will not use more than 64m of ram unless you specify that you have more.

[thor420]

Sounds like your using KDE. I find it pretty darn slow too, and have since switched to blackbox (which runs really fast). Im using an Athlon 1333 ontop of a 266 FSB Asus A7M266 w/ 512 MB ddr RAM and a geForce 2 GTS (DDR) card. It is not just you.