[TriLUG] fedora 7 & 8 slowness?

[Maxwell Spangler]

On Sat, 29 Mar 2008, jonesjc wrote:

> No, I haven't priced ram and my main point is, I really should not have to 
> add ram, since earlier distros worked well.

You need to add more memory.  Seriously, a little cash and a big difference.

My four year old HP laptop has 1.5Ghz and 1G of RAM.  It's definitely *seems* 
slower at initial application startups these days, mostly since moving to F7 
and then F8.  It was snappy when it was new and I did less with it, but now it 
doesn't feel as good.

With 1G of RAM, My graphical system monitor suggestes that about 400MB or so 
is used out of the box for my normal environment.  Right now, for example, 
it's about 45% user memory, 55% disc cache.  I'm running gnome-terminal, 
nautilus, fetchmail/procmail, vlc playing a DVD, Firefox, emule, amarok and a 
full gnome setup including NetworkManager, and a full time system monitor 
graphical display.

So my suggestion to you use add another 256M to stop swapping and give it more 
breathing room.  If you could, go to 1G so it'll use the disc cache instead of 
a slow, dated hard drive.

Given all that, we have to realize that there is a cycle with software and 
hardware.  If we want better environments and more features, we have to keep 
upgrading the hardware to support it.  I still love my four year old HP laptop 
on it but I don't dare run a virtual machine + Windows environment or any 
similar software designed best for today's dual core + 4 G of ram 
environments..

-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maxwell Spangler
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina