Slow netbook with 11.10

[smssms]

I don't expect to get much help as I am just too annoyed to give enough detail of the problemS or trawl the resources at the moment but:

I just upgraded to 11.10 and my Toshiba NB250 is hardly coping at all. It has gone sssllloooow, each click takes a second or two to happen, windows stutter open and shut, programs take seconds to open. I had it all FAST, nice and minimalist with 11.04. Despite getting the Gnome fallback desktop to make it look a bit better the performance has gone.

It also seems to have filled my (8GB) System file to the brim.

As you can tell, I'm new to Linux and annoyed! I had my netbook running really well on 11.04 and now it is just a pile of pants!

[rant over]

[vajorie]

It also seems to have filled my (8GB) System file to the brim.

I wonder if the software cache is doing that. Try a

sudo apt-get clean

and see if that empties your hdd a bit. I don't think that would have an effect on performance (unless it is literally full), but still...

I also wonder if the symptoms you describe might be due to an overuse of memory... Though, it can actually be due to many other things, such as problems accessing the filesystem or even faulty drivers/modules in use or need to pass special options to the kernel or to specific modules and so on.

In terms of memory, take a look at what this code gives you

free -m

Its output is a bit strange, so here's an example:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          5844       2024       3820          0        185        734
-/+ buffers/cache:       1104       4740
Swap:         4766          0       4766

According to this, I have 5844MB ram. Of this, 1104MB is in use while 2024MB-1104MB is being used as cache. I seem to have 4766MB of swap available, none of which the system is using. Note that whenever my system starts using swap actively, I have serious performance issues (brief moments of system freezes, windows not responding or responding after a lag, etc).

[smssms]

Thank you Vajorie.

I tried apt-get clean, autoclean, autoremove; deb orphan, looking for big Trash or temp files, removing residuals with Synaptic, etc. They made small improvements in the space used on / but not much. Strangely, just leaving the computer alone for a couple of hours took the System partition used down to 4.5GB, so now I have a couple of GB free - don't know why... (I have also calmed down a bit)

I assume 4.5GB is a normal sort of size for 11.10?

BUT, the computer performance is still SLOW as hell. The "free -m" output is as follows:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           991        456        535          0         62        237
-/+ buffers/cache:        155        836
Swap:         1906          0       1906

I have no idea if this is normal, good or bad.

My CPU load is at around 50%, with the cooling fans on, with just system monitor and (an idle window of) Firefox open. System Monitor show the only active Process as itself...

seems

If anyone can help me get my netbook back up to speed now it is on 11.10 it would be much appreciated

[mörgæs]

Have you thought of Xubuntu?

[goldshirt9]

fuduntu is designed for netbooks

[smssms]

I hear what you are saying and am on the train of thought myself.

I did try an xfce desktop environment a while ago and that REALLY did not agree with my computer i.e. was super super slow.

But, I am in the process of downloading Lubuntu to a USB to have a play with that... (first attempt did not work - some sort of gfxboot error????)

Not heard of Fuduntu but will have a look.

Thanks.

EDIT - Bye bye Ocelot, I'm now running Lubuntu.

[vajorie]

EDIT - Bye bye Ocelot, I'm now running Lubuntu.

(~4GB is normal for Ubuntu, yes; mine's using around 5.5GB) The memory usage looked fine; not even half of your available ram was being used, even with the cache. Is Lubuntu treating you better?

[smssms]

Is Lubuntu treating you better?

Still just exploring, trying to get it populated and set up how I like it.

But, on initial impressions, it seems to be my kind of distro (fairly minimalist but usable); and best of all it seems to work!

It's annoying that Natty worked so well on my netbook (even better than Lubuntu so far) but the upgrade to Ocelot just killed it and forced me to look for a new distro.

[smssms]

I'm still not at all happy!

My computer was great on Natty, fast, responsive and just worked well.

11.10 just totally ground it to a halt so I changed to Lubuntu

Lubuntu worked but was still noticeably slower than Ubuntu Natty

Now I'm on Debian 6 x64 - guess what - still loads slower than Natty was. Mouse clicks and internet page loads take ages, CPU fan on a lot.! (Boot and shutdown have always been ok on all of them)

QUESTION - Are there any major problems with reverting back to (what I assume is the now unsupported) Ubuntu Natty and sticking with it?

Can anyone recommend any other supported distro they KNOW works well on a Toshiba NB250-108 netbook?


EDIT: Couple of hours later. Just to keep the story going, I'm trying Puppy Linux on a live UBS at the minute - BRILLIANT! By far the best yet from what I've seen so far. May well end up installing this as the main OS.

[angryfirelord]

I'm still not at all happy!

My computer was great on Natty, fast, responsive and just worked well.

11.10 just totally ground it to a halt so I changed to Lubuntu

Lubuntu worked but was still noticeably slower than Ubuntu Natty

Now I'm on Debian 6 x64 - guess what - still loads slower than Natty was. Mouse clicks and internet page loads take ages, CPU fan on a lot.! (Boot and shutdown have always been ok on all of them)

QUESTION - Are there any major problems with reverting back to (what I assume is the now unsupported) Ubuntu Natty and sticking with it?

Can anyone recommend any other supported distro they KNOW works well on a Toshiba NB250-108 netbook?


EDIT: Couple of hours later. Just to keep the story going, I'm trying Puppy Linux on a live UBS at the minute - BRILLIANT! By far the best yet from what I've seen so far. May well end up installing this as the main OS.

It may be KMS. It was introduced in 2.6.33, so Squeeze, which has 2.6.32, wouldn't have it.