Linux is a little slow ?

Inf0Byt3 · Post by **Inf0Byt3** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 3:38 pm

In the latest two weeks I installed all linux distos I found on the net and it seems that they all have a problem. I tried them all and for a windoze user like me linux is a bit slow... For example, i've got 384 MB RAM, the system monitor applet shows 151 MB consumed, but when I resize a window it moves really slow. In windoze, the windows are resized much faster. It seems to be a painting problem of the X server... Can anyone confirm this? I'm using the latest official drivers, all patches installed and Ubuntu 6.06.

Joakim Christiansen · Post by **Joakim Christiansen** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 3:53 pm

I can't confirm that here with PCLinuxOS MiniMe, but I think it uses much memory...
If I remember right it was 360mb while just browsing

Inf0Byt3 · Post by **Inf0Byt3** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:00 pm

Yeah, that too... this packages thing, it makes it modular, but it has drawbacks too, like memory and others

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:09 pm

A bit?

(By the way, QT is much, much faster than GTk.)

Inf0Byt3 · Post by **Inf0Byt3** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:18 pm

Qt? You mean Kde? (As i remember Kde was using Qt). Can this be enabled or installed in Gnome?

bembulak · Post by **bembulak** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:26 pm

Linux itself is not slow. The GUI makes it slow.

a) Try to switch off all those "KDE-QT-Candy-like-Redmond-XP" grafic features and it gets a bit better, if you're using KDE.

b) Try XFCE 4.2 as windowmanager / Desktop-GUI. It uses GTK (like Gnome --> ideal for PB programming), but is several times faster than Gnome.
www.xfce.org or www.os-cillation.com

c) Use BlackBox or IceWM or GNUStep as GUI, it's lot faster!!!

Or E17, is also quite fast and looks neat!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:F ... w_managers

Nik · Post by **Nik** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:31 pm

Qt isn't faster than the current gtk/gnome versions used in Ubuntu 6.06 and KDE as a whole would probably be even a lot slower than gnome. The RAM thing is a bit difficult to explain, it's not really using so much ram but Linux uses a different approach thhen windows when it comes to managing the ram, it somehow prefetches it for further use, which means the ram displayed as used is sometime not realy used by an application but prefetched by the OS. On the other hand it'S true that resizing a window under Linux is much slower than on windows, which is a result of the way the X-Window system works and the goals it is designed for, that is a Client-Server sturture, that's also why all drawing commands for the X-Window system are performed over a faked network connection which can be replased easily with real networking making it possible to stream the Drawing over the Network which results in a built in remote operation capability which can also be used over a crypted ssh tunnel to securely remote operate graphical applications over a broadband network.

That isn't very interesting for the average Joe but can be used to perform really cool things windows wouldn't be capable of.

//Edit: Sorry for the spelling mistakes I was on a hurry

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:32 pm

bembulak wrote:Linux itself is not slow. The GUI makes it slow.

GNOME under FreeBSD seems a lot snappier than under Linux, using the same theme.

Inf0Byt3 · Post by **Inf0Byt3** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:33 pm

Cool. Thanks

. Still, i tried Xubuntu (uses XFCE). I can say it's blazing fast but it's not that practical. I switched to ubuntu because it was much more easyer to use. I hate XGCE because the desktop is useless, you can't even have a selection rectange

... i must try the others

.

Oh, and another thing : I tried Linux even on a 3 Ghz, 1 Gb ram, Geforce Fx 6600 , but it still was slow. So i guess Gnome is slow itself. KDE worked much much better. The fastest GUI was KDE on Freespire, but i formatted it because i couldn't use other repos with apt.

[Edit]
So it seems it's nothing we can do about it...

Nik · Post by **Nik** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:40 pm

On Linux/Unix you always need to destinguish between the raw Speed of the OS and the Speed of the GUI, while on Windows the GUI and the OS are essentially the same, they are completly seperated in the unix world.

@Inf0Byt3: I use Ubuntu 6.06 on a 2.4 ghz Laptop with 512 Meg of RAM, and though it's definitley not as snappie as Mac OS X on my new Intel iMac it's definitley fast enough for normal work. While moving Windows is a realy heavy task for Linux it's database/server performance is stunning and I really miss it sometimes when I'm working on my Mac. I must say though that it feels a lot faster than Windows on the same mashine when you get used to the small performance hits when it comes to GUI.

@Trond: Which Linux have you used?

Inf0Byt3 · Post by **Inf0Byt3** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:46 pm

What about other implementations? is X.Org the only architecture for GUI on Linux?

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:50 pm

That isn't very interesting for the average Joe but can be used to perform really cool things windows wouldn't be capable of.

Like?

Nik wrote:@Trond: Which Linux have you used?

Ubuntu Breezy Badger,
DreamLinux,
Zenwalk,
Fedora Core (another computer),
Knoppix,
BeatrIX,
Mandriva One,
Gentoo (a bit faster than the other Linuxes), and
Xubuntu Dapper Drake.
(Not all of these uses GNOME.)

Now, what distro should I try next to get better screen performance?

Code: Select all

What about other implementations? is X.Org the only architecture for GUI on Linux?

The only architecture is X. X.Org is one and XFree86 are the two implementation. So, we have an option here. Either, say that Linux has poor screen performance (using), or, say that Linux has excellent screen performance, but, alas, no graphics functions are done yet.

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:53 pm

Um, you shouldn't be having such slow window movement unless you aren't using the correct video drivers for your card.

If you have nvidia or ATI be sure to install the official drivers from the repositories.

If you have a VIA card then you probably aren't supported for accelerated rendering.

If you have an intel gfx chip you probably are all set already and it shouldn't be moving slow unless you have another problem going on.

Linux itself isn't slow and the X rendering functions even in software aren't bad, but if you have transparency enbaled or anything and your drivers aren't optimal for your card you'll have a severe performance hit.

Also, about your RAM usage. A) Get rid of unnessary tray icon programs. B) Linux uses a memory caching function similar to how .NET does on windows. You probably have more than that available but your memory cache is taking up some more (But its freed when it's needed). Of course if you already knew that an are reported your mmeory usage without* cache , then even still 150MB of RAM being used isn't that much for a full fledged GUI and background services, etc.

Inf0Byt3 · Post by **Inf0Byt3** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 4:58 pm

I allready did that... I removed all the tray icons, applets, unnecesary stuff, but the only thisg is that resizing and moving slowness. It doesn't consume memory , but it still moves hard. I've got an ATI Radeon 9550 and i've got the official drivers installed but it still performs badly

. It seems that Windows has gained a few points here.

[Edit]
So i'm not complaining about the RAM, but about the GUI.

[Edit]
Well, both

and filesize too.

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 5:13 pm

Windows hasn't gained anything, more like ATI shoudl have lost something.

However, I have a feeling that your drivers are not installed correctly. THeres no way resizing a window should be slow on that card, or really any card these days.

Open a terminal and type: fglrxinfo

Copy the results here.

(It might have been "fglrx-info")
Just type fglrx and hit tab a bunch of times until you get the right command. I havent had an ATI card in a while.

(Btw its a well known fact that ATI writes shitty drivers for linux. Maybe with the AMD buyout this will one day change. All this mess could be avoided if they'd just opensource their drivers or release specs for their cards.)