-- Chip Rose <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
(on Tuesday, 12 November 2002, 09:55 AM -0500):
> My wife's Windows98 computer is a LOT faster than my Debian3.0/KDE computer
> also. Her's is a 1.3ghz with 512mb RAM and my is only a 450mhz with 128mb
> RAM, but her computer *instantly* loads any program and runs many at the same
> time with no slowdown. I know that her hardware is more powerful, but it's
> like night and day. Mine thrashes around for 30 seconds trying to load
> Mozilla, and about 5+ seconds to load KMail, under KDE. Of course mine is
> much more stable (uptime now 22 days) as Win98 box can't go for more than 1-2
> days without needing a reboot. I still love Linux because it's more stable,
> and Debian in particular, but is there any way to speed it up? Will using
> something other than KDE do it?
This is not to bash the likes of KDE and GNOME, but they take a lot of
overhead to run. Consider the way it all works:
1) Boot the kernel
2) Load any system daemons (networking, cron, etc.)
3) Login -- and load shell (bash, etc.)
4) start X-Windows
5) X-Windows loads window manager
6) Desktop loads on top of window manager
By getting rid of the desktop, you get rid of one more level of
applications taking residence in memory.
2 years ago, on my 333MHz laptop with 32MB memory, when I went from kde
1.1 using kwm to xfce, I saw my load time for X go from 2 minutes to
around 20-30 seconds, and NN4 went from taking 2 minutes on first load
to 15-20 seconds. On my desktop, a 366MHz machine with 256MB memory, I
started with GNOME 1.4 on sawfish, where my load time was around 1
minute for X and 15 seconds for NN4; I experimented with a number of
different window managers until I settled on blackbox, where my load
time (which also includes loading a number of applications) is about
15-20 seconds, and NN4 (when I use it -- I typically use Phoenix or
Galeon now) loads in about 8-10.
So, yes, in my experience -- and I'm sure others will back me up --
getting rid of the desktop layer will speed up your experience in
X-Windows. But that's not the *only* thing you can do.
Other things will also help: don't load any system daemons you're not
using (for instance, if you're already behind a firewall, you don't
necessarily need to load up iptables or ipchains; if you don't use mysql
or apache or samba or nfs... etc. don't have them installed or at least
don't load them on boot); if you don't need the eye-candy (jpeg or png
backdrops, icons, etc.) don't use them; use a terminal to do your file
management instead of konqueror or nautilus (or investigate a
lightweight file manager like rox or mc); ask yourself if you need to
use a gui mail client, or if a text based one will work (I found mutt
met my needs much better than evolution).
The main thing to ask is: what do I want my computer to do for me? How
can I make it do that as efficiently as possible? And then start
experimenting.
--
Matthew Weier O'Phinney
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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