chathamsq
October 27th, 2009, 07:12 PM
I'm experiencing unexpectedly slow general performance on an older laptop & would greatly appreciate help in diagnosing.
I had previously been running a standard Hardy install with the gnome desktop & acceptable performance. I decided to wipe the slate clean & did a new install with the Jaunty Minimal CD and OpenBox window manager. I was shocked to find substantially worse performance than I was getting on Hardy with gnome.
The slow performance seems pervasive, but here are some examples:
slow application switching in Openbox
sluggish usability in various applications, including thunar, swiftweasel, keepassx
delays in typed keys appearing on the screen in some apps
also - I could be wrong about this - but it seems like password verification (on login and sudo commands) is slow (6 sec) at the CLI, even with X not running
System: IBM ThinkPad X31... Intel Pentium M 1400MHz... 1GB RAM... ATI Radeon Mobility M6... Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty 32-bit Minimal... Openbox WM
Here's what I've looked at:
top shows CPU utilization 1% and memory 30% at idle.
When I switch apps, resize windows, or perform certain application actions, Xorg jumps to 50%-80% CPU.
I've checked dmseg & /var/log/syslog and don't see anything obviously wrong, but most of the entries don't mean much to me
I made a couple other changes on the new install, which may or may not have anything to do with the problem:
ext4 file system (previously ext3)
encrypted home directory
Appreciate any ideas or guidance on how to diagnose.
I had previously been running a standard Hardy install with the gnome desktop & acceptable performance. I decided to wipe the slate clean & did a new install with the Jaunty Minimal CD and OpenBox window manager. I was shocked to find substantially worse performance than I was getting on Hardy with gnome.
The slow performance seems pervasive, but here are some examples:
slow application switching in Openbox
sluggish usability in various applications, including thunar, swiftweasel, keepassx
delays in typed keys appearing on the screen in some apps
also - I could be wrong about this - but it seems like password verification (on login and sudo commands) is slow (6 sec) at the CLI, even with X not running
System: IBM ThinkPad X31... Intel Pentium M 1400MHz... 1GB RAM... ATI Radeon Mobility M6... Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty 32-bit Minimal... Openbox WM
Here's what I've looked at:
top shows CPU utilization 1% and memory 30% at idle.
When I switch apps, resize windows, or perform certain application actions, Xorg jumps to 50%-80% CPU.
I've checked dmseg & /var/log/syslog and don't see anything obviously wrong, but most of the entries don't mean much to me
I made a couple other changes on the new install, which may or may not have anything to do with the problem:
ext4 file system (previously ext3)
encrypted home directory
Appreciate any ideas or guidance on how to diagnose.