Improving the speed and responsiveness of Ubuntu/GNOME.

[PrimoTurbo]

I'm not satisfied with my Ubuntu performance, even with a tweaked system and using a light Desktop Environment like Xubuntu I notice little to no improvement in responsiveness of the interface and the general speed of the system.

My system specs are the following:

Pentium 4 1.6Ghz

Generic 768MB of DDR RAM PC2100

Western Digital 250GB Hard Drive

ATI 9700 Pro 128MB

I'm using a new up to date install of Ubuntu 7.04, I have installed the ATI restricted fglrx driver. My 3D performance works nearly the same as on Windows, Quake3 engine based games run at over 100FPS with everything on except AA and VSync. I have no issues as far as 3D.

My boot speed is also very fast and nearly identical to my Windows XP partition, around 30 seconds.

Currently I have a vanilla setup of Ubuntu/GNOME with NO compiz/beryl or any other special effects. I have the same problems under XFCE & KDE

My problems:

• Slow rendering of windows and slight artifacts left after minimizing for approximately 0.5 seconds, for example favicon in Firefox.
  
• Resizing, minimizing is a few seconds slower compared to my Windows setup.
  
• Having multiple windows open overlaying each other greatly decreases the overall responsiveness of resizing, moving and minimizing windows.
  
• Sluggish Firefox performance compared to Windows XP, especially in regards to scrolling.
  
• Slight delay and drawing of menu and desktop icons, approximately half a second of delay.
  
• High CPU usage when scrolling, minimizing, resizing and moving windows. Approximately 50-70% CPU usage.
  

My RAM usage on Ubuntu is very low compared to Windows XP, Ubuntu uses about 140-160MB of RAM while Windows XP uses around 170-200MB.

I tried downgrading libxll to 6_1.0.3 and forcing version, as suggested here. - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/x...bug/88815"" target="_blank">Sluggish rendering since xorg 7.2 update

I didn't notice any real improvement.

I have tried most of the links crimesaucer has provided me in my other threads (Thanks BTW), but I only noticed slight application startup increases and not general rendering issues that I have.

I used a lot of tips from this sidux list I found. I checked most of the tips out on Google and they seemed to be used in many different guides for speeding up your system: http://sidux.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-3484-start-0.html

I only used the tips that I felt comfortable with on my laptop.

However, I didn't agree with all of the Firefox about:config tips, I prefer to follow this guide: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=53650

....using the 2.0.0.5 settings from this page: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Tweaking_preferences

and also these pages:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Preferences

http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=...+at+punctuation

http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config_entries

I found this off of digg.com: http://tvease.net/wiki/index.php?title=Twe...buntu_for_speed

and: http://www.santa-li.com/linuxonbb.html

...they basically say the same things.

This also helped a little: http://www.opendns.com/start/unix.php

and Swiftweasel: http://swiftweasel.sourceforge.net/

....also, for both of my posts, they have a setting for "vm.swappiness=0" which I didn't do because I only have 512MB ram and I figured I wouldn't mess with my swap file, because sometimes I need it.

That was a very good link, the problem is, that a few (almost half) of those are very old (for Dapper)...but there is a lot of real good info in most of those links, just make sure it's current.

What's good about a lot of those links, plus the links that I posted, is that they have the same tweaks for basically all of the settings like Broadband Internet, Swapping, and Concurrent Booting, so at least you know the info is correct, and you have more then one source of info to feel safe about these system tweaks.

Since I originally used this guide a while back (as well as a couple others that were on your page because all of them had the same info): http://sidux.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-3484-start-0.html

And then added these ones from your page today: http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/08/02/loc...aster-browsing/

another about Local DNS: http://www.debianadmin.com/local-dns-cache...ntu-system.html

...and this one for noatime,data=writeback and: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Improve-Per...dgy-47261.shtml

...and I finally tried prelinking, and I can say that my computer feels even faster now...and it was already fast.

I also tried various kernels and even built my own with no changes in speed what so ever. IceWeasle, Firefox and SwiftFox all work at the same speed.

==========================

HAS ANYONE ELSE EXPERIENCED SUCH PROBLEMS and IF SO, CAN YOU PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME!!! Sorry about the CAPS I'm just really frustrated with my poor Ubuntu performance.

The default "ATI" video driver gives me the same performance on Ubuntu except I also have poor 3D performance.

What else can I try, I think what's happening is that my video card is not rendering my desktop but my CPU is and therefore I get slowdowns and spikes. Thanks.

[Gundamdriver]

Hi. I have similar experience when I was using GNOME in the past. I have an old desktop PC (Pentium 2.4GHz, 512 MB RAM, 40GB HDD, ATI Radeon VE w/ X.Org built-in driver, 2 CD-RW drive).

The response of Firefox (Icewesel) was a bit slow when I was using GNOME (and KDE, as far as I can remember). Later I changed to Xfce (I install Debian base system and then Xfce), everything become very smooth.

Try to install the ATI driver for Linux from AMD (I never tried it before), I don't know if it helps, but just a chance to improve the 3D performance.

[PrimoTurbo]

Here are 2 videos comparing the speed of my Windows XP tweaked setup and Ubuntu 7.04 which is also very tweaked. The software used to record both uses quite a bit of CPU so this is not a 100% accurate representation of speed and responsiveness. However it's a decent idea or maybe even benchmark/indication of the problem. Also keep in mind Ubuntu doesn't have the resizing artifacts you see this is due to gtk-recordMyDesktop not recording it correctly. Both desktops are about 20-30% faster with out the recording software, but still Ubuntu is significantly slower then Windows XP!!!

Ubuntu 7.04 (Slow, sluggish and not very responsive) - http://www.mediafire.com/?agyc15ebtug (Download 7MB)

VS

Windows XP Pro (Very responsive and fast) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPhbHp7WhGg

[markwolfe Veteran]

I run Fedora on an old system, as well. It is an Athlon XP1900+ (runs at 1200MHz). As Linux development continued over the years, it seemed that KDE was getting a bit slower. I switched to fluxbox as a window manager, and have extended the life of my computer - in terms of what I consider acceptable run speeds. I seriously doubt that I could put Vista on here and have decent performance. Remeber, Linux of today has had features added over all the years since XP, so it is going to be tough to declare what versions are 'equivalent' of each other.

I use Linux with fluxbox, because it is current (I get all the latest updates) and it runs quickly (due to using flux as a WM over KDE/Gnome/XFCE).

[PrimoTurbo]

Maybe I should try Fedora instead or mess with a different distribution in general.

[markwolfe Veteran]

The distro isn't going to make the biggest difference. In fact, I believe Fedora defaults to running sendmail as a background service (which I have always despised as a default install option - stupid idea, IMO).

[Unholy Moley!]

ATI doesn't exactly earn an A+ for Linux compatibility. Maybe it's the case that the drivers work on Linux, but aren't optimized at all. That being said, yeah, Ubuntu and such variants aren't so nice on system resources. All I can suggest is trying out different distributions to see which ones work best.

[Dm4975]

The gnome interface is slow in general for me. Try out KDE

[PrimoTurbo]

I hate when people don't read, I already tried KDE, GNOME and XFCE I have the same problems on all of them. Yes KDE is a little bit faster but not very noticeable to be honest.

[Unholy Moley!]

Strange, I had the opposite experience with KDE vs Gnome.

[mitch00]

Best advice I can give you is to bump that RAM to a gig or a gig.five. You'll see some big improvements. Also you could do as mark said and use a lighter window manager (I like openbox and pekwm for example) or do both (ram and wm).

Another tip, which will probably give you a slight performance increase (though probably not nearly as much as doubling your ram or switching to a lightweight wm) would be to use a more slimmed down and optimized distro. My favourite distribution, Arch, comes to mind, but Gentoo and Slackware are suitable alternatives. If you'd like something more on the easy-to-use side: Vector is based on Slackware and so has all the speed and advantages but rolled into an easy to use package.

Good luck :)

[StandingInAlley]

I am running Linux on my main box now

Intel C2D E6300 @ 1.8ghz

1 GB Ram

Nvidia 7300GS @ 128mb

Linux flies on my system and is so damn! fast. I am running Gnome with beryl and its quite lag free. When I was running Vista, my system was really slow.

[Aaron Veteran]

If I had a dollar to bet I'd say it is avideo driver issue. I have an old laptop with an integrated Intel 32 MB video card and don't have the issues you report. I have always heard better performance with nVidia chipsets than ATI, but I am not 100% sure that is completely true.

[The2]

If I had a dollar to bet I'd say it is avideo driver issue. I have an old laptop with an integrated Intel 32 MB video card and don't have the issues you report. I have always heard better performance with nVidia chipsets than ATI, but I am not 100% sure that is completely true.

It's definitely video driver issue. I've installed Kubuntu on my 1.6ghz laptop with s3 graphics card (the biggest sh*t of all VGA cards) and I've stunned with the speed (I've had Xfce before, and it worked less responsive)

[mezoko]

I'd bet its the video driver. You can try an other distro, which may work (I hate ubuntu anyways to many "strange" bugs)

The issues you listed all had to do with xorg/video driver so take that as you will

[5c077]

I run Fedora on an old system, as well. It is an Athlon XP1900+ (runs at 1200MHz)........................................

Hate to bump this thread but I have a 1900+ as a server and the CPU is 1600Mhz, you must have your FSB mis-configured to 100 instead of 133.

[Kreuger]

Best advice I can give you is to bump that RAM to a gig or a gig.five. You'll see some big improvements. Also you could do as mark said and use a lighter window manager (I like openbox and pekwm for example) or do both (ram and wm).

I wouldn't be so sure. I went from 1 to 2gigs and noticed barely any difference and I'm using Fluxbox too!

[markwolfe Veteran]

Hate to bump this thread but I have a 1900+ as a server and the CPU is 1600Mhz, you must have your FSB mis-configured to 100 instead of 133.

So it is! It was auto-set by my BIOS that way. I set it to 133/33 which set the CPU to 1600MHz, and the darn thing won't boot. The display is corrupted and it can't properly POST and boot. This CPU had an issue early in life where the fan (a stupid 2-wire fan with no RPM feedback signal) stopped and the CPU shut down due to overheating. It could be that something is damaged/marginal now.

Back to 1200MHz with FSB at 100 for me, I guess. But thanks for pointing that out. And I was looking forward to 33% greater processing power... :(

[Foub]

Get a better CPU. Not one that old. I'm using Ubuntu with a P4 3.4 GHz CPU, 1 gig of DDR2 PC3200 RAM, and an ATI Sapphire x1650 Pro 256Meg AGP vid card (1280X1024) and it runs quite well. These parts aren't as expensive as they were. Better than Vista and I had a good score under it as well.

If you want to play games just dual boot XP for them. I now use a nLited copy of XP just for games and use Ubuntu as my primary OS. This XP just has enough left in it to play games and access the net for online games. I had at first used Transgaming under Ubuntu to play games and they plaed more than fast enough, but I got tired of configuring them for it and not all of my games worked yet under it.

BTW, what version of Wine are you using. 0.44 has some big improvements with regard to DirectX and the like.

Just to verify. You are using the accelerated video driver from the Restricted Drivers Manager in the Administrator menu?

Edited September 12, 2007 by Foub