My laptop is extremely slow! I've tried everything I can think of!

[Skara Brae]

I do "better" than chessnerd, with an ancient Compaq Armada with a PIII 500 mhz, 256 MB RAM and a tiny Ati Rage Mobility with 8 MB RAM (or is it 4 MB?)

Tonyw303, Xubuntu (with XFCE) looks just like Ubuntu (Gnome), so you would hardly see (much) difference. Xubuntu runs fine with me (albeit a tiny bit slower than I would like, but then again, this here is an old machine), so it will run even better on your Compaq.

Are you sure the slow speed is not some hardware issue?

[kerry_s]

i'd make sure the cpu is running at full speed> cat /proc/cpuinfo

check your bios make sure the settings is performance and the cpu set to full. i've in the past were the boot up speed gets set as the top speed, because the cpu throttled.

[00b00nt00]

Tony, help us a little by defining 'slow'. Are we talking about screen re-draws or system hangs? (Or both, even). You have plenty of RAM, 512MB is enough to run a vanilla install of Ubuntu happily how about processor speed?

Another thought tells me that as XP was also slow on your computer, there may be a hardware fault - specifically your hard disk may be causing problems. go into the terminal and type: sudo hdparm /dev/sda1 -t -T

Report back with the figures.

[chessnerd]

Will I be able to run all the same programs that I was running on GNOME?

GNOME programs should work fine under Xfce. I use OpenOffice, Firefox, and plenty of other programs that were designed for Gnome just fine under Xubuntu. The only difference will be the desktop environment (ie the window borders might be different, the panels and icons will work a bit differently, and some of your buttons might have different images), but overall you shouldn't notice a huge change.

Xfce and Gnome have a lot in common and the good news is that, if you don't like it, you can always change the settings to go back into Gnome and then uninstall the package through Synaptics as though you never changed a thing.

[billfreeboy]

My Dell Latitude CPx is slow too! And I'm not used to taking Laptops apart.

[tonyW303]

go into the terminal and type: sudo hdparm /dev/sda1 -t -T

Report back with the figures.

I noticed that there are also /sda2 and /sda5 in /dev. I don't know if it will help you or not but I posted hdparm results for those two as well.

sda1 results:

/dev/sda1:
IO_support = 0 (default)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 7296/255/63, sectors = 115202052, start = 63

sda2 results:

/dev/sda2:
IO_support = 0 (default)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 7296/255/63, sectors = 2, start = 115202115

sda5 results:

/dev/sda5:
IO_support = 0 (default)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 7296/255/63, sectors = 2008062, start = 115202178

Thanks 00b00nt00. Hope this helps

[jmate24]

You don't need to install a different OS just to make it go faster...

Just go to services System>Administration>Services>Unlock>Type Password and uncheck the things that you don't use, for instance I have a Lenovo Y510 and it has no Bluetooth adapter so I uncheck the 'Bluetooth device management', and I don't use the 'Remote backup service' so i uncheck that,
I personally don't use 'Samba' so I uncheck 'Folder Sharing Service'.

Then i go to System>Preferences>Startup Applications and since I don't have a Nvidia Graphics Card i uncheck 'Check for new hardware drivers' and I make sure that I uncheck 'Bluetooth Manager' then I uncheck Gnome Splash Screen', 'Remote Desktop', 'Tracker' and 'Tracker Applet', and finally 'Visual Assistance'

Make sure to restart!!

Now it can boot up faster and things run smoother and I can do almost anything. If you have a Nvidia card, I recommend Disabling the Visual Effects because your Video card uses 'Share Memory' from your RAM that is why it shows Less RAM that what is actualy installed.

jmate24--

[emacbri]

Hi,

I am also running a Compaq Presario 2100, except mine has a Intel Celeron and only 512 mb of RAM. I Just re-installed Ubuntu on my computer and I noticed it is considerably faster. You should try reinstalling Ubuntu could help, just don't forget to backup your stuff first.

[Language]

i'd make sure the cpu is running at full speed> cat /proc/cpuinfo

check your bios make sure the settings is performance and the cpu set to full. i've in the past were the boot up speed gets set as the top speed, because the cpu throttled.

Definitely follow kerry_s' advice and check the proc speed; My 1.5ghz laptop was running pretty sluggishly until I noticed that it was only running at 600Mhz. For some reason auto-scaling wasn't working correctly, and it sat at 600Mhz no matter how high the load got. Cranking it manually made it perform much better, and thankfully with 9.04 it scales automatically on its own now

[abn91c]

you problem maybe all those chat programs you have running, they are usually resource hogs, same if you are downloading torrents in the background, plus all the flash crap people load in their myspace & facebook pages also eat your RAM.