mdk9.0 slow

[Anskiere]

I installed mdk9.0 on a 166Mhz CPU with 160MB PC55 RAM my swap size is 300MB. It runs extremely slow compared to windows. i have seen in the past that on other peoples computers it actually runs faster. I installed some of the server products but im not running any of them, when i run ICE i see my CPU is maxing out JUST opening Mozilla, and i cannot even send IM's and listen to MP3's without the MP3's chopping up. Any suggestions/explanations?

[threadhead]

what WM are you using?

[mdwatts]

Of course it's slow... It would be roughly the same as running XP on the same pc, plus you are likely running a lot more services than XP does.

Search the forums for 'mandrake slow' or 'redhat slow' and you should find lots of previous suggestions to try.

[Anskiere]

WM? Windows Manager?

I tried using KDE because i liked the familiarity of it. but IceWM runs a bit faster. But one of the things the sites say about linux is that it is faster, didnt know if i was doing something to make it slower, I reinstalled Win2k and im currently downloading rh 8.0 (because of Lilo and documentation i have for dual booting) and im about to download Spectrum.

I have win2k running on a 30GB and i installed a seperate 4GB from one of my old computers for Linux. Any suggestions on anything?

[x]

Linux is often said to be very fast.
This is not the whole truth, it depends on several things:
* What do you compare with? Win98 is a small OS, loads & runs pretty fast - I don't think any modern Linux distro (used for same purpose) runs that fast. But then, Win98 doesn't contain very much.
Linux can very well compete with W2K though.
* What are you loading? As mdwatts says, you can have a lot of services running. Turn off everything not needed.
* What distro are you running?
In my experience, Mandrake is one of the slowest. I have one PC same as yours, Mandrake 9.0 / 8.2 are really painfully slow - I'm trying to speed it up but obviously it simply needs a better CPU.

It is a bit irritating when you hear/read about Linux being so fast, so small, so effective etc... but you never hear about the presumptions.
With Linux you can have a faster machine or a very small OS than when running a comparable Windows - but you'll have to fix it yourself!

[JohnT]

MDK 9.0 is not optimized for your CPU. You don't have the resources for it. Simple as that. Try a distro like Slackware.