Any way to tweak a bit more speed out of GNOME?

[George J.L.]

Well, I've finally managed to get XF86 working on that old laptop that I got for free (IBM Thinkpad 760ED, P1-133mhz, 48mb RAM, 2mb Trident video card, 12.1" screen that can do 800x600x16). I'm using Mandrake 9.0 right now since I couldn't get X working under Slackware no matter what I did. Later tonight I might give it another go, though. Anyway, I was playing around in KDE and GNOME a bit and GNOME feels faster and things seem to load a lot more quickly under it so that's what I'm using. I might give Fluxbox or another lite window manager a shot later, but for now I'm just happy to have things running.

The only thing I would like is to have a bit more speed. Whenever I've used Linux on a desktop (or even on my other, much better, laptop) I'd use KDE and I'm not all that familiar with GNOME. Is there anything I can do to tweak a little more speed out of it? Graphical effects that I can turn off? Anything like that?

Thanks in advance for any advice. :D

[3m00]

Heres my advice. Download an older version's source. Do a compile with optimization level 3. In the make file, under cppflags, add -O3 (thats an o). That should provide you with a considerable speed boost. The binaries will only work on your computer, but it will probably be a bit faster.

[George J.L.]

Well, I've got some time. So I'll give it a shot. Not sure why I'm so obsessed with getting this old POS laptop into usable condition, but I refuse to give up on it. ;)

Thanks!

[saithan]

I don't know if this is a fix or not, but.........
the file manager has a great deal to do with the speeds you from the desk top.
Most of the time the file manager handles the "draw desk" functions.

For instance Nautilus which is common to redhat installs is about the slowest resource hog I have encountered. It also handles the draw desk rutine by handling the desk icons and right click desk functions.
so I switched to GMC and gained allot of speed and it does not hog resources not behave half as buggy. However you sacrifice SMB client intergration (not a big deal).

But after installing GMC then just set the nautilus preferences to not "draw desktop".

GMC will then handle desk icons. it might gain yousome speed there. Keep in mind I'm not all familliar with mandrake. So i don't know what could be the issue, but i hope this atleast helps.

[GaryJones32]

Bravo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I agree it's the window manager
there are some other light gnome compliant window managers
I think there is a place in the gnome gui configuration
to try other window managers
try sawfish if it's there.
also in very light window managers even wmx or fvwm
you can get gnome runing in unorthodox ways
if you call gnomepager_applet (whatever it is called)you get an error message
but then you get gnome panel and menu
i forget what gnome file manager is called but you can start that too
and it will work
just take a look at what all those gnome executables are called
and hack a .Xclients file
thus onward to a blazingly fast laptop