Slow Performance 10.10

[kpm1]

Hi,

I'm new to Linux, finally jumped in with 10.10 install on an IBM Thinkpad X40 laptop.

I thought Linux was supposed to be much faster than Windows, but my performance is horrible. Just runnnng firefox - no other aps running and every action seems to hit the hard drive...

long lags constantly. Do I need to modify the install to optimise performance?

Thanks!!

[mörgæs]

Please give the specifications, especially the amount of memory.

[kpm1]

IBM Thinkpad X40
CPU: Intel Pentium M 1.2GHz
Memory: 512 MB

Thanks

[KegHead]

Hi!

Ram is a little low, but should work fine.(the more the better!)

Please do the following;

sudo apt-get autoclean

sudo apt-get autoremove

You could also try installing bleachbit and Ubuntu Tweak.

KegHead

[mörgæs]

I don't think that this will help, sorry.


The machine will not be really fast, but there are some steps you can take:

In all browsers, install Flashblock. After this run top while doing normal work to see what puts the biggest load on the system.

[kpm1]

OK - did the actions both of you suggested.

I installed Flashblock, but how do I run top?

[KegHead]

Hi!

goto terminal and type "top'

Enter and post your results!

KegHead

[kpm1]

Thanks - here you go.

top - 16:11:34 up 4:46, 2 users, load average: 2.08, 1.78, 1.64
Tasks: 134 total, 1 running, 133 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 16.5%us, 19.8%sy, 0.0%ni, 63.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 499312k total, 438132k used, 61180k free, 15688k buffers
Swap: 1648636k total, 100564k used, 1548072k free, 139792k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
654 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 17.9 0.0 6:52.82 kslowd000
1562 kieran 20 0 430m 74m 16m S 7.6 15.3 17:04.84 firefox-bin
3240 kieran 20 0 95072 13m 10m S 7.0 2.8 0:02.61 gnome-terminal
883 root 20 0 84140 32m 7208 S 2.6 6.7 5:49.16 Xorg
3263 kieran 20 0 2624 1112 832 R 0.7 0.2 0:00.63 top
6 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:01.83 events/0
2318 kieran 20 0 119m 18m 4800 S 0.3 3.9 0:20.69 acroread
1 root 20 0 2892 932 624 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.51 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.66 ksoftirqd/0
4 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
7 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset
8 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 netns
10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 async/mgr
11 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pm

[mörgæs]

The sudo commands mentioned above only frees a minimal amount of hard disk space. They don't increase speed.

You don't need to post the top results, since they are dynamic. Just keep an eye on it and see if one particular application is eating all your CPU cycles, when you feel the machine is getting slow.



The CODE tag (used below) makes the list easier to read, but again: There is not much information in a snapshot.


PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
654 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 17.9 0.0 6:52.82 kslowd000
1562 kieran 20 0 430m 74m 16m S 7.6 15.3 17:04.84 firefox-bin
3240 kieran 20 0 95072 13m 10m S 7.0 2.8 0:02.61 gnome-terminal
883 root 20 0 84140 32m 7208 S 2.6 6.7 5:49.16 Xorg
3263 kieran 20 0 2624 1112 832 R 0.7 0.2 0:00.63 top
6 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:01.83 events/0
2318 kieran 20 0 119m 18m 4800 S 0.3 3.9 0:20.69 acroread
1 root 20 0 2892 932 624 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.51 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.66 ksoftirqd/0
4 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
7 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset
8 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 netns
10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 async/mgr
11 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pm

[KegHead]

Hi Morgaes,

I don't see any real problems do you? (besides 512 ram)

KegHead

[mörgæs]

No, top looks normal, but we don't know how much workload was on the machine while the picture was taken.

I am a little unhappy with seeing kslowd000. It seems to have made trouble earlier:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1594239

More later...

[KegHead]

Hi!

Thanks for the info, I'm really curious now!

KegHead

[K_45]

Upgrade your RAM: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-54352.html That laptop should support 1GB and this will improve performance. I'd also install Xubuntu if you upgrade the memory so you can squeeze a little bit more speed out.

[mörgæs]

Xubuntu is not much lighter than Ubuntu. If something else is to be installed (which might be the solution), it should be Lubuntu 10.04.

Kpm1, please post the result of


uname -a

[kpm1]

Sorry for the delay posting - I seem to have OK performance now - about the same as before with XP. Not sure what was bogging the system down before, but hasn't been an issue any more.

Thanks for all the input.

Cheers.