On Thu, 2002-02-21 at 15:42, Patrick Kirk wrote: > Hi all, > > My laptop has a 4MB vid card, 64 MB RAM, 120MB swap and a Pii 400 > celeron processor.
This should be ok; when I wrote my thesis, half of the time I was editing on a much smaller machine than that, but you do have to be careful about which software you run. > I'm running enlightenment with konqueror for file management, galeon for > web and evolution for mail. > > Performance is appalling. Konqueror takes 13 seconds to launch. Galeon > takes 10 seconds. Evolution takes 15 seconds. Even Eterm takes over 10 > seconds. Switching between apps takes forever and involves screens > freezing. This sounds a lot like you're out of RAM. > My suspicion is that konqueror runs a ton of kde stuff, evolution > likewise for gnome stuff and that enlightenment may use more than a > processor cycle or ten thousand. But I don't know really. True, but more important than the processor cycles (in this case) is the fact that each of those libraries occupies RAM. Part of your trouble is that they are all using different libraries, instead of sharing, because you're mixing programs from different desktop environments. > Is there a URL of useful diagnostics? I don't want to pepper this list > with questions unless I've at least had a chance to go through some > performance diagnostics but I have no idea how to tell what apps or > services are slowing the system down. > > So - any preferred url's for semi-skilled people like me? If you'd like to verify this, you can run "vmstat n", which will give you _n_ second snapshots of certain performance measures (n=5 would probably tell you a lot without . Look at the swap / si and swap / so columns, which will tell you how much you're using swap. My guess is that any time you start or switch programs you're getting a swap storm, which you'll be able to see in that the si/so columns will suddenly jump, and then go back down once it finishes. I think you either need a RAM upgrade or to switch programs to something more space efficient. I'm kind of partial to WindowMaker as a window manager, although there are several others, like blackbox, which are suited to smaller systems. As far as your other programs go, at the very least you want to consolidate so that you're only using programs from either Gnome or KDE, but I think you're probably better off avoiding both, as either environment by itself wants over 128Mb to run effectively. I just checked on my system here, and galeon is using roughly 40Mb all by itself; evolution is harder to figure out, since it spawns a whole bunch of subprocesses to handle various tasks, but it would probably come close to filling up your RAM all by itself also. Since I don't use that type of file manager, I can't suggest alternatives, but others probably will. As for browsers, Karsten Self has already written a pretty nice summary of these at http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/browsers.html which I highly recommend. I happen to use Evolution myself, but I was using postilion before, which is based on TkRat, and a lot smaller than Evolution while still being a graphical mail reader. I also use mutt when I'm dialing in from home, which I know many people on this list recommend; it'll take some getting used to, but it is a powerful program and it will be much less strain on your system. HTH, -- Stephen Ryan Debian GNU/Linux Technology Coordinator Center for Educational Outcomes at Dartmouth College
