Re: Diagnosing poor performance
On Thu, 2002-02-21 at 15:42, Patrick Kirk wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> My laptop has a 4MB vid card, 64 MB RAM, 120MB swap and a Pii 400
> celeron processor.
This should be ok; when I wrote my thesis, half of the time I was
editing on a much smaller machine than that, but you do have to be
careful about which software you run.
> I'm running enlightenment with konqueror for file management, galeon for
> web and evolution for mail.
>
> Performance is appalling. Konqueror takes 13 seconds to launch. Galeon
> takes 10 seconds. Evolution takes 15 seconds. Even Eterm takes over 10
> seconds. Switching between apps takes forever and involves screens
> freezing.
This sounds a lot like you're out of RAM.
> My suspicion is that konqueror runs a ton of kde stuff, evolution
> likewise for gnome stuff and that enlightenment may use more than a
> processor cycle or ten thousand. But I don't know really.
True, but more important than the processor cycles (in this case) is the
fact that each of those libraries occupies RAM. Part of your trouble is
that they are all using different libraries, instead of sharing, because
you're mixing programs from different desktop environments.
> Is there a URL of useful diagnostics? I don't want to pepper this list
> with questions unless I've at least had a chance to go through some
> performance diagnostics but I have no idea how to tell what apps or
> services are slowing the system down.
>
> So - any preferred url's for semi-skilled people like me?
If you'd like to verify this, you can run "vmstat n", which will give
you _n_ second snapshots of certain performance measures (n=5 would
probably tell you a lot without . Look at the swap / si and swap / so
columns, which will tell you how much you're using swap. My guess is
that any time you start or switch programs you're getting a swap storm,
which you'll be able to see in that the si/so columns will suddenly
jump, and then go back down once it finishes.
I think you either need a RAM upgrade or to switch programs to something
more space efficient. I'm kind of partial to WindowMaker as a window
manager, although there are several others, like blackbox, which are
suited to smaller systems. As far as your other programs go, at the
very least you want to consolidate so that you're only using programs
from either Gnome or KDE, but I think you're probably better off
avoiding both, as either environment by itself wants over 128Mb to run
effectively. I just checked on my system here, and galeon is using
roughly 40Mb all by itself; evolution is harder to figure out, since it
spawns a whole bunch of subprocesses to handle various tasks, but it
would probably come close to filling up your RAM all by itself also.
Since I don't use that type of file manager, I can't suggest
alternatives, but others probably will. As for browsers, Karsten Self
has already written a pretty nice summary of these at
http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Linux/FAQs/browsers.html which I highly
recommend. I happen to use Evolution myself, but I was using postilion
before, which is based on TkRat, and a lot smaller than Evolution while
still being a graphical mail reader. I also use mutt when I'm dialing
in from home, which I know many people on this list recommend; it'll
take some getting used to, but it is a powerful program and it will be
much less strain on your system.
HTH,
--
Stephen Ryan Debian GNU/Linux
Technology Coordinator
Center for Educational Outcomes
at Dartmouth College
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