Linux on my machine is sloowwww

[Uberclocker]

Ok not too slow to use, but slower than i can handle. Here are the specs

AMD XP 1700+ @ stock clock
SOYO Dragon Platinum Edition
512 DDR Ram
80 gig ATA 133 Maxtor HD Dual booted w/ XP
TI 200 Video card

Redhat 7.2
Swap is 512mb
Boot is like 150mb
Root is like 19 gigs

Nutscrape is slow on my cable modem. I am NOT running the real NVIDA drivers yet, im using the generic.
Would not using the right drivers cause my pages to load so slowly in Netscape? Also, how can i tell if my hard drive is executing read/writes as fast as it should be?
thx!

[Choozo]

Slow loading pages would mean a sloooow line, or a misconfigured NIC/Modem.

[Uberclocker]

nah dude. 1.5Mb/128k cable modem. How would i know if my nic is misconfigured?

My box runs quick as hell under xp

[mXskweeb]

Starting with 7.1, RedHat documentation (i.e. here (http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.1-Manual/release-notes/s1-install-changes.html)) recommends making your swap 2xRAM. With 512MB, you're probably not paging much, but maybe in incorrectly sized swap partition still has implications - just a guess.

Also, I believe by default most installations need some hard drive tweaking. This tip (http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Config-HOWTO/x43.html#AEN125) gave me a noticeable improvement in performance.

If you suspect your NIC is unhappy, can you ping another host (or your router) on your local network? Throughput to a machine on your LAN should suffer too if your NIC is misconfigured.

Does Netscape itself load/perform slowly, or do pages just load slowly in it? If just pages load slowly go back to the NIC, but if Netscape itself is performing bad, well Netscape kinda sucks. You might like something like Galeon better. I think you have to have the Gnome libraries, but it seems to run well without Gnome itself running. If you use .xinitrc to load X Windows, you can add galeon -s & to it and Galeon will load cached in memory when X Windows starts.

Of course I could be totally off-base with all of the above...

[morphgen]

What Window Manager are you using? I have the SOYO Dragon Ultra (the black one) and it ran slower in GNOME than in KDE. KDE runs fine right now.........click

[afterthefall]

Sounds like at least some of your problem could be with your video performance. Once you get your 3D in gear for X then you'll notice a dramatic performance increase - get those nVidia drivers in there.

I've also noticed that Netscape typically does run a bit slower than Mozilla, Konquerer or Galeon. Give Opera (http://www.opera.com) a try, and I can guarantee it'll be faster in linux than MSIE using hidden, speed optimized APIs in any version of Windows.

:D Brian

[Uberclocker]

I am using Gnome. Ill try the drivers and opera.
Thanks guys =]

[JohnT]

I've used all the browsers, and Mozilla 1.X is heads up in speed compared to all, even Opera, on my box. ((56k dial-up). The doc ram suggestion assumes no more than 128mb ram, you've got 512 so paging is not a problem. It's NS. The driver supposition shouldn't even enter this equation. You might try enabling/disabling, manual/automatic setting in kppp DNS.

[Uberclocker]

thanks mXskweeb for the link. I have read about hdparm and was looking for the file. U rule.

[mdwatts]

Use ifconfig eth0 to see if you are getting any errors.


ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:20:AF:DB:71:F3
inet addr:192.168.1.4 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:10387 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:10921 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:1

[wrc1944]

I'm convinced it's mostly because linux OS and applications aren't optimized for i686/athlon cpus and architecture. Apparently, the only solution is to recompile the apps from srpms or tarballs, using the proper optimization flaggs for your specific hardware. I'm currently struggling to accomplish that daunting project (at least for a newbie it's daunting). My system (see signature) is much slower with linux that win99SE. You would think the distros would offer a choice of downloads or cd's optimized for different systems. That would certainly solve one of the biggest gripes people have about switching to linux- they try it out, and quickly notice the reduced performance on high-end equipment, and just as quickly go back to windows. You can't expect most newbies to be able to recompile everything just to get decent performance.

[Uberclocker]

Ya. I am kinda disappointed with my AMD XP. I used to be a hardcore overclocker but even if you unlock the multiplier, the P4s are kickin our arse. Now I have another reason to go back to Intel. LINUX.

[wrc1944]

From what I've been reading, the AMD problem is long-standing with linux. Wish someone who really knew what they were doing would optimize some of the distros for i686/Athlon XPs, and the new ones when they come out. I can do individual apps pretty well (after stuggling some learning how), and am going to attempt to do XFree86 next. Messing with the x windows system sort of intimidates me, though.

I guess a simplistic plan would be to optimize all the srpms of a distro. In other words, do an absolute minimal install, and then add packages you optimze for your own hardware. I'm still learning, so maybe others out there can offer some expert advice and experience. It would probably be very difficult, as dependency hell would likely take over- I've had a lot of that even just doing the little I've done so far. Other than doing that, I guess AMD users are out of luck, until the distros get with it.
wrc1944