How to optimize Linux?

[Siskmarek]

In some of my games (Quake 3, UT...) Linux performs sluggishly and I'm not sure why. In some instances I do something, like kill some processes that I don't need and start Q3 up and it works just fine... but most of the time it ends up being that Quake 3 repeatedly freezes every one and a half seconds or so. I'm not sure how I fix this and I'm not sure why it returns.. anyone have any thoughts on this? I run Mandy 8.1

~ Siskie

[z0mbix]

what 3D card are you using and what drivers?

[bwkaz]

And what sound card and drivers (OSS, ALSA, ARtS, ESD, a combination)?

[Siskmarek]

I have an ATI XPert 128 (PCI bus) that was only just recently supported by XFree86 in its 4.1.0 incarnation. That isn't the problem though, I think.. Because it has run fine before in certain instances (although I'm not sure how exactly I got to that point).

For a sound card I just have a Sound Blaster Live. I use KDE so Arts is running.

I leave the default settings alone (leave the driver selection to auto, etc.) because if I screw around with the settings I tend to lose all sound altogether.

I would have just left the OS in a form where it was working but my official 8.1 cds finally arrived and I did a reinstall. Now the opengl subsystem isn't even working (I did a pretty minimal install so it's leaving me wondering which package I forgot..).

And the OS isn't even working any more, either... which seems like a habit for Mandrake to do.. it'll start to boot up and then just hang at "Configuring Kernel Parameters" for reasons beyond my comprehension... Usually when this happens I just reinstall but it is quite annoying and I don't even know where to start to even begin fixing this...

~ Siskie

[bwkaz]

OpenGL with an ATI card would be Mesa. Make sure Mesa is installed.

ARtS sits on top of either OSS or ALSA. Which is it using? Look in the output of lsmod to see if "snd" is loaded -- if it is, then you're using ALSA. Make sure the ARtS command line is set to use ALSA as well -- "ps aux" should show that to you.

Beyond that, though, I don't have any ideas.

[Siskmarek]

Okee, my MDK install wigged out (due to a bad CMOS clock) any way so I just did a fresh install and removed all packages (except the packages installed by default, which I couldn't remove) and then started step-by-step adding what I considered to be the bare essentials.

It seems to have worked. I disabled arts entirely (it was always screwy any way) and I'm using ALSA... q3a and related works great! (well, wish wolfmptest performed a little better... as good as quake3 at least, but I've got a crappy video card so I can excuse it).

I think it was just too much crap running in the background ruining stuff (arts might have contributed, too), but now q3a is running great, and even KDE is running slicker because of my more stringent and less liberal package selection.. KDE now only loads in about 4 seconds instead of the 10 seconds it used to before. ^_^ w00t!

Now lets hope my CMOS clock doesn't freak out my installation again... o.0;;

~ Siskie

[bwkaz]

Hey, that's cool! Good job!

BTW, I think you get the same effect performance-wise with LFS. I have been meaning to do that for a long time now, and never got the time.