Computer is slow with Mandrake 9.1

[cjblade54]

I just installed Mandrake 9.1 onto my computer.... but it seems like its making it slower. Especially if I leave the machine on for couple hours. Do you think I need a better system to run Mandrake 9.1. Here is my system info:
500MHz Processor speed
100MHz front bus speed
20 GBs Hard Drive
128 RAM

[oubipaws]

What kind of install did you do?
you might want to do 'su -c setup' and see which system services you can shutdown

[roamingnomad]

Try tweaking things in your BIOS that might speed the computer up, and/or use a lighter window manager such as Fluxbox, Blackbox, IceWM, Windowmaker, etc. as opposed to Gnome or KDE.

[Hayl]

<edited Subject to comply with posting guidelines>

cjblade54,

see my sig if you need to review the posting guidelines

[davholla]

I had a lot of problems with Mandrake 8.2 on a faster system, I know this might not be the most helpful idea but in the end I changed to Suse 8.2 and that was a lot faster.

[deanrantala]

As crazy as it sounds - it has been my experience that changing the hostname of the PC *greatly* kicks up speed.

1)create a file named "HOSTANE" under your /etc/ directory. This file should have a single entry: the name of your PC (lets say it is gonna be " sparky")
->should look like this...

sparky

2)Open the /etc/hosts file, under the line that says an IP address, and "localhost" - re-type the IP address, and add sparky in the same format as is in the above line
->should llok like this....
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx localhost
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx sparky

3)Open the /etc/sysconfig/network file, and make sure it looks like this:

NETWORKING=yes
NOSTNAME=sparky

_______________

Also, do like oubipaws said and disable any un-needed services. An easy way to manage this on mandrake is go to the "mandrake control center", click on "system" (on the colum on the left-hand side), and select services. You will be presented with a list of sevrices, if you are not using an ssh server, telnet server, if you don't need webmin, (all of wich a common user won't ever use) then disable them, and de-select the "start at boot" radio button. Mandrake will usually explain each service to you, so this proccess os not too hard.

[mdwatts]

Having hostname/localhost incorrectly configured can slowdown apps when starting etc.

/etc/hosts

If using DHCP

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost <your hostname>

If using Static

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx <your hostname>

(xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is your static ip address)

[dkeav]

i would suggest

1. open mdk control center, and turn off services you dont need
2. use a lightweight wm like icewm,xfce, i pefer enlightenment
3. wouldnt hurt to add some more memory if you can (its cheap and makes all the difference)
4. compile a custom kernel

[navy-linux]

I have just installed mandrake 9.1 on a 600mhz celeron system. It is not too bad. I was running win98se on it before I converted it. It runs pretty good. The hard drive does do some thrashing when it is loading the drake control center. Most other apps load in less then 15 seconds. So, overall, I would say it is running good. I do have 196mb of ram. I am sure if I had a faster CPU, I would have better load times though.

Navy-Linux

[drummerboy195]

on my laptop, (see below) which is a rather powerful machine to begin with, i saw a noticible improvement in speed from a kernel recompile.

[cjblade54]

Well, it is getting better with ICEWM interface..... in fact, lot faster too. But KDE looks so much cooler..... :(
I guess I will just use this until I upgrade my RAM or even better system. Or is there a better way so I can use KDE??

[leonpmu]

in your lilo.conf file (I am guessing that you are using LILO edit in the append line

append+"idebus=66"
This will bring your IDE bus up to 66MHz as apposed to 33MHZ, and as someone else suggested, maybe check your BIOS, disable PnP OS etc...

Hope it helps

L

[mdwatts]

As I have in my Grub config. idebus=66 & ide0=autotune

kernel = /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.19-SMP-MDW-4GB-SMP vga=788 idebus=66 ide0=autotune acpi=off disableapic apm=power_off hdc=ide-scsi hdd=ide-scsi max_scsi_luns=0 root=/dev/hda5