[TriLUG] fedora 7 & 8 slowness?

[James c. Jones]

Maxwell,

I appreciate your thoughts on adding ram to my old laptop.
Unfortunately, My laptop can only hold 256mb more ( total of 512 ) which
might improve it some, but I have a speedier desktop with 640mb running
fedora 8 and it's sluggish as well.

Before I invest in more ram, I will probably look to buy a new laptop. I
know ram is cheap, but from what I see, it's not going to make it
perform the way earlier versions of fedora/redhat did. The suggestion I
received about the swappiness variable has help a great deal.

I may retreat to an earlier version of fedora and live with it. I don't
see that I have gained a lot from fedora 7.

My guess that as programmers upgrade their base machines, they don't
recognize the bloat that appears on older pc's.

I wonder if the latest distro's have a base machine that they test on.
If so, it would be nice to know what that base pc is. You could then
decide if it is worth upgrading to a new distro.

Again, thanks for the thoughts.

jcj


Maxwell Spangler wrote:
> 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
>