Slow computer when running Ubuntu

[n-sallis]

I have a lenovo y500. It's a fairly nice laptop (i7 processor, 8gig ram...). It cam with windows 8 and was insanely fast with that. it would boot in like 10 seconds, and everything would open really snappy. However, I hate windows 8 and so I threw ubuntu 14.04 on it. (it was actually quite a process because it had a lot of software on it to stop you from putting other os's on it. Anyway, ubuntu is really slow on it. like it ran faster off the live boot than when it's on my hdd. I have all the drivers installed (I chose the newest). Finally I installed win8 on my external (sort of like a live boot) and run it on a usb3.0 port, and that is even quite a bit faster than when I run Ubuntu off the internal drive. Any ideas where to start? I did an hdparm and got 106.43 mb/s as a buffered speed. I don't know what else to check.

Thanks in advance for any help.
Nick

PS. the boot takes about a minute and a half, and once I've logged in it takes quite a few minutes until things are running smoothly.

[WinEunuchs2Unix]

Pressing <Ctrl>+<Alt>+T gives you a terminal window. From there you can type:

gedit /log/var/kern.log

and look at the Kernel log. Press the end key to see the most recent and look for error messages like "waiting 16000 microseconds" or something like that.

The ability to view the Kernel messages is just one of the advantages Unix / Linux / Debian / Ubuntu have over all Windows and DOS products from Micro$oft.

(The only advantage of having no money is no one wants to sue you).

[n-sallis]

there's nothing in that file. It just comes up blank.

[Bucky Ball]

Open a terminal and type 'top'. What is hogging your resources, if anything? Should be at the top of the list frequently and using a lot of resources. Also, at the top of that page, is your /swap being used? What are the CPUs doing? Is the RAM being thrashed? Give us a screenshot if the machine lets you (attach it with 'Go Advanced' and the paperclip icon).

[WinEunuchs2Unix]

My apologies I transposed the first two words. It should read:

gedit /var/log/kern.log

When the file opens up press <Ctrl>+<End> to see the most recent entries. For example my log runs from July 13th to July 18th.

[WinEunuchs2Unix]

That "top" is sure cool. Wish I'd seen that before downloading System Indicator Load PPA.

[Bucky Ball]

You can also use 'htop'. You may need to install it. It's much the same, but prettier.

[WinEunuchs2Unix]

htop is even cooler. the fonts don't work out well with my translucent black background and green font. I'll have to play with it

EDIT: I played with it and calling with the -C parameter makes it looks really slick with my colour scheme.

[Bucky Ball]

EDIT: I played with it and calling with the -C parameter makes it looks really slick with my colour scheme.

Neat trick.

[n-sallis]

so my swap is running at 8000000kb! I have plenty of room with ram. I have at least 8 gigs if not 16 (don't remember). I guess I should change my swappyness, am I seeing that right?