Re: Debian on Slow laptops. What setup is best?
On Tuesday 21 June 2005 19:34, Tom Olson wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 06:13:35PM +0200, Benedek Frank wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > I am seeking info from other people who has slow laptops, or just know
> > how to save memory and CPU usage on a Debian system.
> >
> > I am an owner of a Sony Vaio PCG-C1VRX/K laptop, that has a Transmeta
> > Crusoe 600MHZ CPU, which is very slow in nowdays, but I refuse to change
> > it as I love it. I have a Centrino DELL laptop, but I dont use that much,
> > as I am just inlove with this thing, however I need it to be faster.
> >
> > I have a 2.6.11 kernel. I saw a major slowdown from when I upgraded to
> > 2.6 kernel, from 2.4. Even disabling Discover, I now only have Hotplug,
> > but boot time is still around 3 minutes. That is to console. From there,
> > I booted KDM and KDE, and my full boot time was around 4 minutes and a
> > little.
> >
> > I looked into smaller window managers, but finally I am using now XFCE,
> > which is ultra fast compare to KDE. I dont use KDM now anymore, I rather
> > log in with console and do a "startx" from there.
> >
> > However, still my boot time is unacceptable. Not even speaking when I try
> > to open Kmail or Openoffice, and Firefox. They take a loooooooong time to
> > boot up.
> >
> > Anybody has any more suggestions, how to make a speedy but usable Debian
> > laptop?
>
> Running a lightweight window manager is absolutely a good idea if you
> want performance. I usually like to use openbox, though if you're happy
> with XFCE then by all means keep using it.
I am pretty happy now, but I am open for other suggestions. I kind of like
having a battery meter, and a volume controll, etc on my desktop. That is why
I settled for XFCE, but if there is a faster one, I am all for it.
>
> How married are you to kmail? A console MUA would help in that case; I
> like mutt but there are others. Some people say they can browse the web
> just fine with console browsers most of the time (like the various
> lynx/links/elinks programs . . . I don't do that so I can't really
> say).
>
Yes, I am kind of married to Kmail. One reason is that I have thousands of
emails, and kmail doesnt have an export feature, so I cannot use my emails in
a new client. And also I would prefer a GUI email client over a console one.
Then I guess there is no help here. I tried Evolution but I couldnt convert
my emails for evolution.
> How do you use openoffice? You may be able to avoid using that as well.
> There are utilities for converting word documents and the like to other
> formats; maybe those would serve. Also, if you need to write papers or
> other documents, there's always LaTeX. Finally, it's not just your
> machine; openoffice is just slow.
>
Yes, it might just be it . I dont use it much, so that would be ok I guess.
> Did you compile your own kernel? If you do so you can often remove
> things you don't need and the boot time will improve, I believe. This
> will likely take some research.
Yes I do have a kernel compiled. I needed it for the Transmeta Longrun stuff,
so I did a very thorough kernel compile, meaning that I went one by one and
disabled what I didnt need, and enabled BLuetooth, Sonypi for the camera, and
other things.
>
> You can also turn off services you don't use by editing the contents of
> /etc/init.d/. This will likely improve your boot time quite a bit
> depending on what you can do without. Could someone explain this
> further? I don't really know what I'm doing in this area.
>
\For this I use "rcconf" that does the job somehow, but not very well. It
modifies the things in the "rc2.d" but not in the "rcS.d"
There are several things that I have no idea about, so I would like to post
the contents of that folder here, and if somebody could help me with it, that
would be great.
K02mountvirtfs S05bootlogd S30checkfs.sh S48console-screen.sh
K36discover S05initrd-tools.sh S30procps.sh S50hwclock.sh
K36mountvirtfs S05keymap.sh S35mountall.sh S55bootmisc.sh
K38pppd-dns S07hdparm S36udev-mtab S55urandom
K39dns-clean S10checkroot.sh S39ifupdown S70nviboot
K43portmap S18hwclockfirst.sh S40hostname.sh S70xfree86-common
K45mountnfs.sh S18ifupdown-clean S40hotplug S75sudo
README S20module-init-tools S40networking
S04udev S20modutils S41hotplug-net
These are the things there. SHould I change something?
> Is your laptop's suspend/resume working? If so, you can save boot time
> by not shutting down. :-]
>
Yes I have that running. That is one reason for the self-compiled kernel. But
it isnt perfect, as even when suspended, the display isnt completely shut
down. It makes a little noise, like electrical noise when sleeping. QUite
annoying. WHen I tilt the LCD, I can see there is writing on the screen, but
almost invisible due to the LCD is very dim, but I can see if I concentrate.
SO the LCD seems black, but it isnt off.
> Max out your memory if you can. That improves performance too.
>
256MB, cant do more than that :(
> These are most of the things I did with my Dell Latitude, which was a
> mighty 333 MHz. I used it for "everything" until last year when the
> screen finally crapped out, and it was certainly more than fast enough.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> -T
Great you had a working 333MHz laptop, and I am complaining about my 667MHZ
one. Maybe the transmeta that makes it slow. Also my HD is slow I think, even
DMA and such is turned on. This is what I get with everything set.
This is the state it is now:
/dev/hda:
multcount = 0 (off)
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 6344 (on)
geometry = 38760/16/63, sectors = 39070080, start = 0
ANd the performance under these conditions
/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 364 MB in 2.01 seconds = 181.12 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 44 MB in 3.07 seconds = 14.31 MB/sec
Thanks again for helping,
Bence
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