Should I upgrade? Lubuntu? My Laptop is too slow...

[SA_LinuxNewb]

Hi.
I'm a Ubuntu Newbie and need your help to boost my Computer.

At first let me explain what I got:

Maxdata Pro 8100X
Pentium M 1.7 GHz - Centrino
RAM 512 MB -
Harddrive 60 GB
Graphics Mobility Radeon 9600

I currently run Ubuntu 11.04 with the latest updates and got WinXP on a second partition, but I haven't booted it for at least a month - because XP is so slow you simply get frustrated. (I would even delete it now, because Ubuntu replaces it completly)

I'm using a external Harddrive with all my music and movies on, because the internal one is so small. I also use the Vodafone Mobile Broadband USB Stick K3770 which gives me 2Gig of traffic at day and another 2 gig in the night. (I run all my update at night, so I can really use the other stuff at day). I prevously had problem with that modem but it's sorted out. (For furhter Information look at that thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...t=k3770&page=7)

So now that you understand my situation here are my problems:

My computer is terrible slow. I know the simpliest solution would be to get a new one, but I haven't got the money so this is out of question.
The thing that disturbes me is that I cant browse the web with Firefox and listen to music with Banshee at the same time. It always freezes the music when load a new page and Banshees is reacting to everthing VERY slowly. (Klick - 10 secs wait - react)

Now I was thinking following things:
Would 11.10 make it faster? (Because of Unity 2D?)

Would Lubuntu fit better for my system?

Is there a lighter and faster music player? (got a BIG music collection and I think banshees is troubled with that)

Would Chrome (Chromium?) be faster than Firefox?

I just want a system where I can browse the web and listen to music properly at once. Then watch a movie once in while and I'm very happy.

But I really need to know what to do beforehand, because my traffic is very limited. Normally I would just download it all and try it on my own but I can't. So please help me!

If this is the false category, please move the thread. I wasn't sure where to put it.

[bodhi.zazen]

Hi.
I'm a Ubuntu Newbie and need your help to boost my Computer.

At first let me explain what I got:

Maxdata Pro 8100X
Pentium M 1.7 GHz - Centrino
RAM 512 MB -
Harddrive 60 GB
Graphics Mobility Radeon 9600

I currently run Ubuntu 11.04 with the latest updates and got WinXP on a second partition, but I haven't booted it for at least a month - because XP is so slow you simply get frustrated. (I would even delete it now, because Ubuntu replaces it completly)

I'm using a external Harddrive with all my music and movies on, because the internal one is so small. I also use the Vodafone Mobile Broadband USB Stick K3770 which gives me 2Gig of traffic at day and another 2 gig in the night. (I run all my update at night, so I can really use the other stuff at day). I prevously had problem with that modem but it's sorted out. (For furhter Information look at that thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...t=k3770&page=7)

So now that you understand my situation here are my problems:

My computer is terrible slow. I know the simpliest solution would be to get a new one, but I haven't got the money so this is out of question.
The thing that disturbes me is that I cant browse the web with Firefox and listen to music with Banshee at the same time. It always freezes the music when load a new page and Banshees is reacting to everthing VERY slowly. (Klick - 10 secs wait - react)

Now I was thinking following things:
Would 11.10 make it faster? (Because of Unity 2D?)

Would Lubuntu fit better for my system?

Is there a lighter and faster music player? (got a BIG music collection and I think banshees is troubled with that)

Would Chrome (Chromium?) be faster than Firefox?

I just want a system where I can browse the web and listen to music properly at once. Then watch a movie once in while and I'm very happy.

But I really need to know what to do beforehand, because my traffic is very limited. Normally I would just download it all and try it on my own but I can't. So please help me!

If this is the false category, please move the thread. I wasn't sure where to put it.

You are sort of stuck, you have older hardware and yes it is going to be slow.

xubuntu or lubuntu are about as light as it is going to get without doing a minimal install and then installing only the applications you want.

You are demanding too much from your hardware

Your best options are to

1. Upgrade your hardware, in particular add ram.

2. Do a minimal install and use light weight applications.

3. You can try other light weight distros such as Zenwalk, slackware, slitaz, or tinycore.

[SA_LinuxNewb]

You are sort of stuck, you have older hardware and yes it is going to be slow.

xubuntu or lubuntu are about as light as it is going to get without doing a minimal install and then installing only the applications you want.

You are demanding too much from your hardware

Your best options are to

1. Upgrade your hardware, in particular add ram.

2. Do a minimal install and use light weight applications.

3. You can try other light weight distros such as Zenwalk, slackware, slitaz, or tinycore.

I would prefer number 2!

But what would be better? Lubuntu oder simple 11.10 with Unity 2D?

Which one is the light weighted music player?

[sandrodz]

I would prefer number 2!

But what would be better? Lubuntu oder simple 11.10 with Unity 2D?

Which one is the light weighted music player?

Try http://www.linuxmint.com/

it's fresh and very easy on system load. plus looks minty fresh

[HermanAB]

Howdy,

Your penguin is lobotomized. Please add more RAM.

[CatKiller]

Whichever desktop environment you go for, more RAM will make a huge difference. Personally, I quite liked LXDE and I didn't really like Xfce, although I haven't used either of them for quite a while. If you go the minimal route, you don't need to use a desktop environment at all; you can choose your own window manager (I have a friend that uses Sawfish, as an example) and a file browser and a handful of lightweight applications and you're good to go.

[SA_LinuxNewb]

I dont quite understand how this works with Lubuntu?

Whats the easiest and less trafic way to get LXDE to run?

Is the difference between ubuntu and lubuntu just unity and lxde?

(ill inform me on mint and what the hardware specs are..)

[Gatemaze]

crunshbang is one of the lightest and uberfast, particularly the openbox version (read and see screenshots whether it is for you)
http://crunchbanglinux.org/

But above all it would greatly help if you post your pc specs.

[ac_d600]

Install Lubuntu 11.04 you'll love it..

I have it running on my laptop (Dell D600)
Pentium M 1.60GHZ
512mb Ram
40GB HD

I'm running Seamonkey (browser/email) with 4 tabs open,
Audacious playing music and XnView (image viewer) running
and I'm using less than 300mb of ram.

[bryncoles]

I would so go with Lubuntu. I installed it on a friends laptop (6 years old -- though I can't tell you more about the specs I'm afraid). It's fully functional though and very snappy.

As for music players, are you command-line phobic? If not, why not play your music in the terminal? I have recently started doing this, and I have seen a radical reduction in processor demands as a result!

Open a terminal, cd to the directory where your music is stored. As you say your music is on an external hard drive, this will doing something like

cd /media/name_of_hard_drive/folder_where_music_is

now type

mplayer name_of_folder_where_music_is/name_of_subfolder/*

and it should play.

You'll find the terminals autocomplete useful here -- at any time you don't know what to type, just press tab twice and it'll list all available options. So, to cd to your external hard drive, type

cd /media/

and press tab twice, then type the option corresponding with your hard drive. to play music, type

mplayer

and press tab twice to get a list of folder options. Keep repeating until you are in the folder you want to play. Putting the * at the and of the directory tells mplayer to play all files in that diorectory. If you want to play them on random, use

mplayer name_of_folder_where_music_is/name_of_subfolder/* -shuffle

Does that help?

-------edit--------

I used to use audacious to play music too. I noticed it using about 10% of my CPU. Using Mplayer from the command line uses about 1% -- big difference! you can get more information on mplayer by

a) asking here
b) typing

man mplayer

into the terminal.

-------edit 2--------

Mplayer can play movies too, with a nice, low demand on resources! I like mplayer, can you tell?