Ubuntu slower than Windows XP?

[SteveZsuzska]

I have an ancient laptop with a 300MHz PII and 192 MB RAM(max possible). It runs XP acceptably well after I disabled non-essential services and turned off all the fancy desktop effects. With this I can use Outlook, Firefox and even watch divx video files so long as the bit rate is not too high.

I thought I'd try Ubuntu to see if it was any faster. I had 8.04 to start with and recently upgraded to 9.04. Subjectively it seems slower to start applications than XP but I have not done any measurements to quantify this. However, a video that will play under XP with VLC media player will overload Ubuntu also running VLC. Is there any way to speed things up or is Ubuntu just slower than Windows?

[skymera]

192MB RAM is not a lot to run Ubuntu. 512MB i suggest as minimum.
Perhaps try a lighter distro (CrunchBang is very light and functional).

Don't forget XP is pushing a decade old. Jaunty is pushing 2 weeks.
A lot has changed, you cannot compare the two.

For me. Ubuntu is a LOT faster than XP.

[sacredeagle]

Have you checked that Visual Effects are set to a minimum or none at all (which you seem to have done in XP), check here:

System --> Preferences --> Appearance --> Visual Effects and choose None if it's not already configured as that.
Go to the tab Theme and change it to Clearlooks (Gnome standard which is lighter on graphics)

[Sprax]

Personally I installed 8.04 on my laptop because I thought it was too slow to run XP. My GF ran 8.04 on her laptop and it slowed down considerably some time after switching to jaunty. So far for unknown reasons.

[loell]

Is there any way to speed things up or is Ubuntu just slower than Windows?

to get around this, with that small specs , you can use fluxbuntu or any linux variation that is designed for older machines.

[kalana]

It's better if u look for the processes which take most of the memory and processing power of ur machines. U can do this by using

System --> Administration --> System Monitor

or using

usr@usr:~$ top

After that, u can decide whether u need to run all that or u can stop those. Making Ubuntu a OS that can run in ur machine.

Good Luck

Kal

[muhannadfa]

192MB RAM is not a lot to run Ubuntu. 512MB i suggest as minimum.
Perhaps try a lighter distro (CrunchBang is very light and functional).

Don't forget XP is pushing a decade old. Jaunty is pushing 2 weeks.
A lot has changed, you cannot compare the two.

For me. Ubuntu is a LOT faster than XP.

yeah u can't compare both XP and Jauty
what about comparing 8.10 and 9.04
even these are incomparable >> do u know why >>> 9.04 is crab (still alpha release in my opinion) even crap like vista is better than this 9.04
------------------------------------
XP
ubuntu 8.10
Vista & jaunty but both are crap >> so if u want to pick crap pick vista better than 9.04
thanks in advance

[PhantoMEngineeR]

Personally I installed 8.04 on my laptop because I thought it was too slow to run XP. My GF ran 8.04 on her laptop and it slowed down considerably some time after switching to jaunty. So far for unknown reasons.

hey, guys. you may want to check this thread out:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1134984

if what you mean by slow down after jaunty update is the response of the graphics or some of the applications becoming slow, it may have something to do with the version of the kernel. i encountered the same problem as well after upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04. i installed the new kernel update and voila, everything's back to normal now.

[rob1408]

even these are incomparable >> do u know why >>> 9.04 is crab (still alpha release in my opinion) even crap like vista is better than this 9.04

Really ? I haven't had one significant problem with Jaunty from the Alpha to the stable release. Everything runs smoothly and it seems much quicker than 8.10 let alone XP. Maybe i've just been lucky but on the other hand maybe you've just been unlucky, as far as I'm concerned I've found my perfect OS.

[binbash]

Ubuntu requires better system than windows xp of course.Windows XP is from Ice Age