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ngant
September 24th, 2014, 12:19 PM
I'm sure this is not a new question, but I've tried some of the tweaks for speeding up Ubuntu and at least one made it worse and I had to do a re-install. I increased memory which seem to help a little bit.

Memory is now 2.0 GiB, installed Ubuntu in a Intel® Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz box w/40Gig hard drive.

Would you recommend:

1.uninstall unity and compiz?
2.Remove Zeitgeist?
3. install gconf-cleaner?
4. Install bum to remove ‘unnecessary’ system services?
5.Adjust Swappiness?

mikewhatever
September 24th, 2014, 12:28 PM
I'd recommend switching to Xubuntu or Lubuntu. They are more suitable for old P4 machines.

Vladlenin5000
September 24th, 2014, 05:33 PM
I'd recommend switching to Xubuntu or Lubuntu. They are more suitable for old P4 machines.

^^^^
This.

Regarding your list, your #1 would immediately result in no desktop, *if* it booted that is... And about your #5, with just 2GB of RAM you want to have at least 2~2.1GB as a swap partition and not reduce "swapiness".

ibjsb4
September 24th, 2014, 07:53 PM
I have installed Lubuntu on similar spec boxes with good results.

I always set swap to zero.
swappiness=0 tells the kernel to avoid swapping processes out of physical memory for as long as possible
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq#What_is_swappiness_and_how_do_I_change_it. 3F

Gconf editor has been replaced with dconf, forget gconf :)

Instead of removing unnecessary system services, just don't install them in the first place.
An example would be Lubuntu-desktop. You could instead just install lubuntu-core without the recommended packages. Compare the two:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/lubuntu-desktop
http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/lubuntu-core

Or lighter yet is the LXDE desktop.
http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/lxde

Remove Zeitgeist? I never installed it :)

ngant
September 25th, 2014, 01:18 AM
Yes, I think I will reinstall with Xubuntu or Lubuntu next time.

OTOH I have a laptop w/2GiB memory, Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7280@2.00Ghzx2 and 121GB drive and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS works very well in this box. Apparently a 1.8GHz cpu is not adequate for 14.04LTS, even with a 2GiB memory upgrade(over double my previous memory, with only very little more speed to show for it).

mastablasta
September 25th, 2014, 07:06 AM
the issue for slowness is likely the GPU chip. Unity uses hardware 3D acceleration to draw windows. so if you have a descent AGP card (something like AMD or Nvidia with 256MB or more and it's own GPU unit) it should work quite fluently.. Intel Core 2 Duo likely has better GPU chip as well as being faster.

if you can't get the card just use Xubuntu... or turn off unity and use gnome flashback, or use Mate or... so many choices.

Vladlenin5000
September 25th, 2014, 11:55 AM
As already commented, the GPU can be and often is a problem. We don't have information about it yet. Assuming it is the typical Intel integrated graphics contemporary of the CPU - 32-64MB reserved @BIOS - then I would say short, very short for a modern 3D desktop environment. A contemporary decent AGP card exactly as mentioned in the previous post makes a huge difference.

Now, I also I have bad news (not that the previous ones were good...):
A 40GB HDD must be old, very old, therefore atrociously slow. This I believe is the main cause of your perceived slowliness.




I have a laptop w/2GiB memory, Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7280@2.00Ghzx2 and 121GB drive and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS works very well in this box. Apparently a 1.8GHz cpu is not adequate for 14.04LTS, even with a 2GiB memory upgrade(over double my previous memory, with only very little more speed to show for it).

Certainly you understand there's a world of difference between an old single core P4 and a Core2Duo with even higher clock. Here you're talking about a typical medium-to-high end notebook from 2006-7 whereas before you were talking about a a 15 or so years old entry level desktop. It's not just the clock difference that matters. Actually, that's the least of your problems.

frank18
September 25th, 2014, 05:37 PM
I'm sure this is not a new question, but I've tried some of the tweaks for speeding up Ubuntu and at least one made it worse and I had to do a re-install. I increased memory which seem to help a little bit.

Memory is now 2.0 GiB, installed Ubuntu in a Intel® Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz box w/40Gig hard drive.

Would you recommend:

1.uninstall unity and compiz?
2.Remove Zeitgeist?
3. install gconf-cleaner?
4. Install bum to remove ‘unnecessary’ system services?
5.Adjust Swappiness?


Suggest Xubuntu 14.04LTS;i have also DELL P4 2.00Ghz 2 Mem ram and it runns great with Xubuntu also get Chrome web browser it runs better then with FFox.

ngant
September 30th, 2014, 12:44 AM
Just did a Xubuntu 14.04.1 LTS install, got DVD today from osdisc.com. Definitely improved everything. FFox is running okay for me. Will consider a bigger hard drive but right now I'm enjoying the overall increase in page loading and applications.

ibjsb4
September 30th, 2014, 03:03 AM
Good deal :) Don't forget ..

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnansweredPostsTeam/SolvedThreads