[SOLVED]: Slow response of X

["Basajaun" <isilanes@bluebottle.com>]

Basajaun wrote:
> Joseph H. Fry wrote:
> > On Wed, 2005-10-19 at 09:12 -0700, Basajaun wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > >
> > > I have a weird problem with the response time inside X. I am running
> > > Debian Etch, kernel 2.6.12-1-686-smp on a P4 3.4GHz HT with a SATA
> > > drive and 1GB RAM. Whenever I start X (XFCE 4.2.2), I experience the
> > > following problems:
>
> [snip]

> > Second, are you sure there isn't a problem in hardware/bios that is
> > causing this...
>
> No, I am not. It might well be the case.

Eureka! Hooray! and all that!

Yes, the problem was an incorrect BIOS setting. I don't know why the
other PC we bought has a different BIOS setting (we bought two
identical ones), but mine had a "Frame Buffer Size" of only 8MB. It
made the boot time go up to 8m, whereas increasing it to 32MB (the
maximum), sets the boot time in 1m10s.

I have tried enabling/disabling the "PnP OS", the "Serial Port A",
"Parallel Port" and "ISA Enable Bit", plus changing the "ATA/IDE
Config" from Legacy to Enhanced, and the "IGP Aperture" (shouldn't it
be _A_GP?) from 256MB to 128MB... but nothing would affect the booting
time, except the FBS setting.

With FBS=32MB, not only it boots in 1m10s, but Firefox starts in 5s
(before: 15s) and KMail in 6s (before: 32s). The responsiveness is
perfect, the icons get focused immediately when the mouse hovers over
them, and the menus are displayed whithin miliseconds (ejem, my
perception is veeery acute, :^).

For me, it's end of story, except that I'm going to reboot the other
comp when I get hold of it (and the owner is not around, hehehe), and
see its BIOS settings...

Thanks everybody, and specially Joseph!

     Basajaun