Quick performance question

[psych-major]

I'm running Slackware 10.1 on a really old P.O.S. PC. (see sig for details)
My question is this:
The system performance is tolerable when logged in to kde as root, but very slow when logged in as a regular user. Any ideas?

[IsaacKuo]

I'd first look at the KDE Control Center settings, since they are specific to each user. In particular, settings like anti-aliased fonts can have quite an effect, as well as the theme and window decorations. Some widgets and window decorations are real CPU hogs!

[IsaacKuo]

BTW, this machine can be pretty zippy, even with KDE, if you add in maybe 32+ more megs of RAM. Normally, 128megs is enough for KDE but your on board video is probably eating away at the available RAM.

Since you're probably not looking to invest any money at all in this machine, the more probably alternative is to make things as lean as you can. That means no anti-aliasing, a 16 bit display (or maybe even 8 bit!), no transparency effects and animated stuff, small icons, etc...

Since the on board video probably has no 3d acceleration, the best performance you'll probably be able to squeeze out of it is DRI. With DRI, you may be able to get acceptable performance out of video media players and SDL games.

[psych-major]

You were right about the anti-aliasing, it was set differently for this user, and it made a big difference, and I shut off everything else while I was in there.
Also found the depth to be 24, changed that back to 16, another big improvement!

This box will support 256megs, but I haven't had time to track down two 128meg sticks of PC100. Once I get around to it, it will help enormously.

The video is using 4 megs, incidentally. But it's strictly for internet, email, and acquisition of music files. There will be no game playing!

Thanks for the help!