Ubuntu...laggy & slow?

[adit_sen]

I've been using Ubuntu on my system for over a year now, dual boot with windows xp. So far I've just used it as a 'fun' operating system, to surf the web, try out new things such as Beryl etc etc. But when I decided to give it a go as a full fledged OS, i've noticed that the OS runs much slower as opposed to running windows. If I open an OpenOffice document, it takes much longer to open as compared to Office 2007. Saving documents, closing and opening applications such as VLC etc take much longer. And there's a considerable system 'lag' while working in Ubuntu. Take for example when I run the System Update, as its installing or updating software, I can't do anything else properly. The mouse lags, the speed of the computer reduces drastically. But if I'm running windows update, I can just minimize it and continue with my work. Another issue i've found is with multitasking. Say I've got Rhythmbox, Firefox & OpenOffice running. The moment I switch from OpenOffice to Firefox, the system lags again, and it takes a while to make the switch.

Anyone else facing similar problems? And how can I improve the performance of the system?

[mehulved]

Please give your hardware config and which version of OO.org are you running?
And is the lag only on ubuntu or other distros too?

[adit_sen]

My system config:

Compaq Presario M2202TU Notebook
40GB + 250GB HDD
256 MB RAM, 1GB Swap Space
Intel 915GM Mobile Graphics (64MB Video Memory) on the i810 chipset

My OO.org version is 2.0.4. Mind you the problem is not just with OO, but with *every* application...
I don't have any other distro installed except for Ubuntu 6.10

[techno_funky]

I have used Ubuntu on a 256mb ram machine and yes it lags ,in your case add the GPU using up the ram as well .So i can very well say its the ram that is the problem.

[mehulved]

I remember kato saying that Ubuntu lagged on his P3 with 256mb of RAM but Xubuntu was a lot faster. If you have a good connection there, install xubuntu-desktop, it should be about 50-60 mb AFAICR, and see how it runs.

[chesss]

1. first make sure you have the best drivers possible for your graphics
2. when the system gets laggy run the command 'top' , and see if there is any specific process that is taking too much cpu. say if klogd is taking 995 cpu just kill it!
3. don't use gnome( Yuk!)
4. use opera!!
5. try disabling services (apt-get install bum)

my ubuntu is also slower than windows as well but not as slow as you describe here.

[mehulved]

What's bad with GNOME?

[adit_sen]

Hmm...well I guess RAM it is then. But if they are to compete with other OS's...they shud spruce up their memory management, cuz on the same system windows xp runs fine...

@chesss: whats wrong with gnome? and what does using opera have to do anything with it?

[chesss]

Say I've got Rhythmbox, Firefox & OpenOffice running. The moment I switch from OpenOffice to Firefox, the system lags again

^That! Opera is much much ligter and friendly than firefox.
Infact it runs just fine on the opcl laptop with 128mb ram.
http://www.olpcnews.com/software/thi...on_the_xo.html
http://www.digg.com/software/100_PC_...r_smoothly_pix

So if your hardware is low-end running firefox is a bad deal.

What's bad with GNOME?

err
xubuntu = ubuntu -gnome + xcfe
=> gnome is crap(for low end Pc's)

[Yamaraj]

Anything less than 512MB is a definite no-no for mainstream Linuxen. Either upgrade RAM, or use VectorLinux or Slackware. XFce is recommended in place of GNOME/KDE.

[praka123]

@chess:as for your words about the Best FLOSS s/w-GNOME as Cr@p,
get my personal experiance -KDE is a crap,get yourself GNOME.KDE mocks a lot from windows,also is a resource hogger for your PC.I think most KDE users are ppl who are haunted by the famous M$ Windows User Interface.KDE is not an eyecandy for me,but a garbage full of not useful apps!Most big distros/corps are supporting GNOME bcoz of its qualities.
but no flame wars please.
You Must understand that there ARE diehard GNOME,XFCE etc fans in the world too.also i heard KDE users tends to guide newbies to think that GNU/Linux is KDE only and other DE are wastes,is that the right attitude?
I am very happy with the death of a once famous GNOME bashing service @ tuxmagazine now dead with its KDE/qt support blindly.

[mehulved]

Stop bashing KDE/GNOME and it's users or be ready for -ve reps.

[adit_sen]

Hmm. Well I've tried KDE & XFCE before, and there's no way I'm leaving GNOME for any of that. So I guess I'll live with the lag till I upgrade my hardware...

[mehulved]

What's wrong with XFCE it's really nice and you can customise it beautifully to your liking. You will find a lot if you google around.

[chesss]

@chess:as for your words about the Best FLOSS s/w-GNOME as Cr@p

No no, you didn't read my post completely , I said gnome is crap FOR LOW-END SYSTEMS , not talking about usability here .
I am no fan of kde either, as a matter of fact I hate both kde and gnome with all my heart, simply using FVWM's godliness

and there's no way I'm leaving GNOME for any of that.

Just curious(since I am no expert).. but why?

[mehulved]

Originally Posted by chesss

No no, you didn't read my post completely , I said gnome is crap FOR LOW-END SYSTEMS , not talking about usability here .

It can be tweaked to work fine. adit_sen that's one way but you will have to search for it, since I haven't tried it yet.

[praka123]

@adit_sen:does your speed lag connected to your hdd performance and/or your display driver(Xorg).
Also u can try removing unwanted services starting up by "services-admin" as sudoer.
as a last resort i tried once a program called "defrag" to defragment my Debian GNU/Linux ext2 jfs(ext3) "/" mounted in another linux install. that was 'coz its running for more than 1.5 years.

Another option is to apt-get install prelink which makes programs start fast.

prelink is a program which modifies ELF shared libraries and ELF dynamically linked binaries, so that the time which dynamic linker needs for their relocation at startup significantly decreases and also due to fewer relocations the run-time memory consumption decreases too (espe
cially number of unshareable pages).Such prelinking information is only used if all its dependant libraries have not changed since pre linking, otherwise programs are relocated normally

from prelink man page.

Another good option is to use preload.apt-get it

adaptive readahead daemon
preload monitors applications that users run, and by analyzing this
data, predicts what applications users might run, and fetches those
binaries and their dependencies into memory for faster startup times.

Note that installing preload will not make your system boot faster
and that preload is a daemon that runs with root priviledges.

but my edgy is running as fast as it is when installed for the first time.