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Just installed Linux for the first time

C

Chronic321

Member
I just installed Linux for the first time. I decided to go with Redhat 7.3 as most people thought this would be best for machine that was to be used as a desktop and an HTTP, FTP server. Anyways, so far (Its been 20 min) Redhat seems slow. I have a 400 mHZ K6-3 with 256 MB of Ram but for some reason Linux seems slower and not as smooth as XP Pro or Win 2k Pro running on the same computer, any tips on how to speed it up. Also TUX RACER is not working on my Voodoo 3! It just locks up when I load it, any suggestions? Also, what GUI should I run, I installed GNOME and KDE.

Thanks
 
if you installed both kde and gnome, then why ask us which is better? try them both. its just a matter of personal preference.

either way, KDE and gnome ARE slow, you can't expect them to be that fast on a 400mhz machine.
 
One of the first things you should check is that your hard drive(s) are using DMA mode. The newer distros have gotten better at this, but its still worth checking. See the man page on hdparm and check back if you have questions.

Another thing to check is that Linux is using all your memory. Again, newer distros have gotten better at this, but its still worth checking. Just type 'free' on a command line and it will show you what it thinks it has.

And finally, if TuxRacer won't work, have a look at your X configuration. I'm not familiar with your video card, but a bad X config can definitely make it feel slow. Maybe you picked a much higher resolution/color depth then you need?
Good luck
 
Having gone through similar troubles, I can recommend a few things in addition to the others' recommendations:

1) check your swap setup
2) can't decide between gnome/kde? choose the one that superficially pleases you but keep the libraries installed for the other one so you can run applications from both! it lets you have the best of both worlds (assuming you can decided on one to live in :-D
3) tinker around with your kernel setup to make sure that you aren't loading unnecessary stuff that you won't use... on a pc that slow lots of TSRs and other programs can show a performance hit

Hope that helps.
 
Originally posted by: Chronic321
I just installed Linux for the first time. I decided to go with Redhat 7.3 as most people thought this would be best for machine that was to be used as a desktop and an HTTP, FTP server. Anyways, so far (Its been 20 min) Redhat seems slow. I have a 400 mHZ K6-3 with 256 MB of Ram but for some reason Linux seems slower and not as smooth as XP Pro or Win 2k Pro running on the same computer, any tips on how to speed it up. Also TUX RACER is not working on my Voodoo 3! It just locks up when I load it, any suggestions? Also, what GUI should I run, I installed GNOME and KDE.

Thanks
Click to expand...

I am not sure about the Tuxracer question.

First, Redhat is designed to be safe and reliable. Not fast. When software is compiled from the source code, many choices must be made. Generally, Redhat compiles all of its software for a 386, which means that it will safely run on a 386 and up but that the software does not use any of the "speed tricks" of the more advanced processors, such as the K6 or Athlon. There are distros that are designed with speed in mind, but generally they are a poor choice for beginners. (Mandrake is an exception, but is not actually much faster)

Second, there are many, many, many window managers for X. KDE and GNOME are application suites, include a window manager, and many other things.
KDE and GNOME are designed to have LOTS AND LOTS of features and be VERY configurable, far moreso than Windows. They are *not* designed with speed in mind! Out of the huge morass of interfaces available for Linux, KDE and GNOME are by far the slowest.
There are others, such as Windowmaker, IceWM, Fluxbox, Blackbox, FVWM, and OpenStep that are orders of magnitude faster than Windows 2000/XP and KDE/GNOME. You might try one of those. Out of the fast ones, the most popular seem to be FVWM, WindowMaker, and Fluxbox, but I may be wrong.

You might try downloading one of the optimized kernels from Redhat, or perhaps compile your own though this is unsupported by Redhat (but it works fine).
You might also look into installing apps such as KDE/GNOME/XFree from the source code RPM using less conservative compilation flags. You might try:
CFLAGS="-s -march=k6 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -fexpensive-optimizations -frerun-cse-after-loop -frerun-loop-opt -malign-functions=4"

Those may seem completely nonsensical babble, but they are actually options that tell GCC how to tweak programs for performance during compilation. Note that compiling KDE takes approximately the age of the universe because it is SO large.

That said, I use KDE and find it far faster than Windows for soem things. For example, moving or copying the same large group of files is about five times faster. Deleting is at least 50 times faster, but that is difficult to measure because it is nearly instantaneous under Linux. Granted, more credit is due to the ReiserFS filesystem I use than KDE, but it does demonstrate a point: Even with the slowest of GUIs, Linux/Unix is faster at some things. It all depends on what you are doing.

Now I will post the "Optimizing KDE for Gentoo" post from the Gentoo Linux forums (forums.gentoo.org). Much of this may apply to Redhat:
1) set up Gentoo 1.1a w/stage3 per install docs
2) installed kernel-2.4.19-r4, preempt, lowlatency
3) *important: merged binutils-2.12+ in order to take advantage of combreloc (but built kernel with 2.11 beforehand just to be safe)
4) *USE flags="-march=i686 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" Many people use a lot of crazy optimizations, but the only one to me that makes a noticable difference in "feel" is -fomit-frame-pointer, and I don't need to debug my system so its all good.
4) *rebuilt glibc with new binutils installed
5) finish install per docs. (I use metalog, and lilo instead of grub)
6) reboot
7) use hdparm to make sure DMA is enabled
8) you now have a Gentoo system ready to build apps with the combreloc tweak (you can test this by running apps with 'LD_DEBUG=statistics' and checking the relocations)
9) build X, kdebase, kdenetwork, mozilla, vim, etc... (doesn't matter)
10) *add fam to start on boot (allows KDE to track files quicker)
11) *add your hostname to /etc/hosts (if it's not already there)
Click to expand...
Hope this helps
 
Make sure you have the drivers installed for your V3 and try running gears or glxgears from the CL. This will test to see if OpenGL is functioning and how many FPS you're getting. Also type glxinfo in a terminal to see if GLX extentions are even installed. You might need to edit XF86Config-4 and uncomment (if its commented) a line that says "Load glx". I'm not really sure on the last one as my Voodoo3 worked fine on install. I hope some of this helps....

edit: If you'd like to download an optimized kernel and compile it I'd be more than happy to help you out. LMK.
 
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