Fedora 17

[Henrik Frisk]

Hi,

I have now migrated to Fedora 17 (clean install) and configured and
installed most of what I need. Though I think everything looks very
good my computer is considerably less responsive than under fedora 13.
I haven't worked that much yet but emacs in particular is very slow.
Incorporating 5 messages into MH-E can take a couple of seconds. My
hardware is a MacBook Pro 5,2, I'm running nvidia drivers. Anyone
knows of something I can do to get it a bit more speedy?

Thanks,

/Henrik

[Marc Blanc]

Le Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:30:49 +0100,
Heinz Diehl <htd(a)fritha.org&gt; a écrit :

> I use emacs daily, and it's fast on my machine (F17). 
Idem with xemacs and WindowMaker on F17.

-- 
M.B

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 21:49:04 +0100,
   Henrik Frisk <frisk.h(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
> I was going to not comment on this since it's a bit off topic. I've
> been running Linux on this machine all along and haven't had any
> issues with it before.  Why would hardware that ran Fedora 11-13
> beautifully suddenly not be good for Fedora 17 (unless it's too slow 
I expect that video driver regressions would be the most likely reason.

[Henrik Frisk]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 5:09 PM, Phil Dobbin <bukowskiscat(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  As has been mentioned, I'd be sceptical about putting Linux on
> my
>  Macbook Pro although my wife ran Ubuntu for a while with no ill effects
>  on her Macbook but she was mainly using it for surfing, email, that sort
>  of thing but switched back to Mac in the end. 
I was going to not comment on this since it's a bit off topic. I've
been running Linux on this machine all along and haven't had any
issues with it before.  Why would hardware that ran Fedora 11-13
beautifully suddenly not be good for Fedora 17 (unless it's too slow
obviously but a too slow computer is too slow regardless of the
manufacturer)? I've run Linux on Macs for more than ten years now and
it was a bit of a struggle with the PowerPC processors but since they
switched to Intel it's worked fine. Fact is, prior to this machine I
had 2 dell laptops and as far as running Linux there's no difference
and the hardware on this particular computer is superior compared to
the two dells I've had. This is obviously not a general claim though.

Thank you all for the tips. I'll try to switch to xfce and see what
that does. Then I'll try the optimasation tips suggested to me.

Thanks!

/Henrik

[Phil Dobbin]

On 12/10/2012 12:59 PM, Henrik Frisk wrote:
>  Hi,
>  
>  I have now migrated to Fedora 17 (clean install) and configured and
>  installed most of what I need. Though I think everything looks very
>  good my computer is considerably less responsive than under fedora 13.
>  I haven't worked that much yet but emacs in particular is very slow.
>  Incorporating 5 messages into MH-E can take a couple of seconds. My
>  hardware is a MacBook Pro 5,2, I'm running nvidia drivers. Anyone
>  knows of something I can do to get it a bit more speedy? 
I'm using Fedora 17 on an Lenovo Think Centre (it's about five years
old, I think. I bought it with a 17" Lenovo screen both refurbished for
about £100) with 2 GB's of RAM enjoying the full Gnome 3 experience & it
fairly zips along.

It's running MySQL, Postgres, Mongo, Apache, Puppet, Ruby on Rails
amongst other things plus Spherical in a kvm vm & shows no ill effects
whatsoever.

As has been mentioned, I'd be sceptical about putting Linux on my
Macbook Pro although my wife ran Ubuntu for a while with no ill effects
on her Macbook but she was mainly using it for surfing, email, that sort
of thing but switched back to Mac in the end.

Also as has been mentioned, if you are struggling & suspect Gnome is the
culprit, switch to another desktop. It will speed things up for sure. As
for emacs, I can't comment as I use vim & that doesn't suffer from bloat
in the least :-)

Cheers,

  Phil...

-- 
currently (ab)using
CentOS 5.8 & 6.3, Debian Squeeze & Wheezy, Fedora Beefy & Spherical,
Lubuntu 12.10, OS X Snow Leopard & Ubuntu Precise & Quantal

[Heinz Diehl]

On 10.12.2012, Heinz Diehl wrote: 

>  3. Write this in /etc/rc.config 
Don't know how I could write this BS. Here's the correct file:

 /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Sorry!

[Alan Cox]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2012 13:59:28 +0100
Henrik Frisk <frisk.h(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  Hi,
>  
>  I have now migrated to Fedora 17 (clean install) and configured and
>  installed most of what I need. Though I think everything looks very
>  good my computer is considerably less responsive than under fedora 13.
>  I haven't worked that much yet but emacs in particular is very slow.
>  Incorporating 5 messages into MH-E can take a couple of seconds. My
>  hardware is a MacBook Pro 5,2, I'm running nvidia drivers. Anyone
>  knows of something I can do to get it a bit more speedy? 
Throw out Gnome 3 and use Xfce as the desktop. That should get you back a
ton of memory and video bandwidth.

[Henrik Frisk]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 3:06 PM, Heinz Diehl <htd(a)fritha.org&gt; wrote:
>  On 10.12.2012, Henrik Frisk wrote:
>
> > Anyone knows of something I can do to get it a bit more speedy?
>
>  Here's what works for me. For deeper explanation, use Google (I'm
>  sitting with my exams in statistics and have no time for explaining,
>  sorry!)
>
>  1. Buy a fast(er) harddisk
>
>  2. Compile a preempt kernel with sched_autogroup and zcache enabled.
>
>  3. Write this in /etc/rc.config
>
>  /sbin/blockdev --setra 8192 /dev/sda
>
>  echo "cfq" > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
>  echo "32" > /sys/block/sda/queue/iosched/quantum
>  echo "0" > /sys/block/sda/queue/iosched/slice_idle
>  echo "1" > /sys/block/sda/queue/iosched/low_latency
>  echo "51200" > /sys/block/sda/queue/nr_requests
>
>  echo "20" > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold
>  echo "10" > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_down_factor
>
>  4. Write this in /etc/sysctl.conf:
>
>  vm.swappiness = 10
>  vm.vfs_cache_pressure = 50
>  vm.dirty_ratio = 10
>  vm.dirty_background_ratio = 5
>
>  5. Kick tracker, zeitgeist and similar performance-drags from your
>  system.
>
>  That's it. Works for me :-)
>  
Thanks a lot, I'll try that!

/Henrik

[Heinz Diehl]

On 10.12.2012, Henrik Frisk wrote: 

>  Anyone knows of something I can do to get it a bit more speedy?
Here's what works for me. For deeper explanation, use Google (I'm
sitting with my exams in statistics and have no time for explaining,
sorry!)

1. Buy a fast(er) harddisk

2. Compile a preempt kernel with sched_autogroup and zcache enabled.

3. Write this in /etc/rc.config

/sbin/blockdev --setra 8192 /dev/sda

echo "cfq" > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler
echo "32" > /sys/block/sda/queue/iosched/quantum
echo "0" > /sys/block/sda/queue/iosched/slice_idle
echo "1" > /sys/block/sda/queue/iosched/low_latency
echo "51200" > /sys/block/sda/queue/nr_requests

echo "20" > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/up_threshold
echo "10" > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_down_factor

4. Write this in /etc/sysctl.conf:

vm.swappiness = 10
vm.vfs_cache_pressure = 50
vm.dirty_ratio = 10
vm.dirty_background_ratio = 5

5. Kick tracker, zeitgeist and similar performance-drags from your
system.

That's it. Works for me :-)

[Mihamina Rakotomandimby]

On 12/10/2012 03:59 PM, Henrik Frisk wrote:
>  I have now migrated to Fedora 17 (clean install) 
Same here, but
- I choosed the LXDE spin
- the former version was F16 LXDE spin too

>  and configured and
>  installed most of what I need. Though I think everything looks very
>  good my computer is considerably less responsive than under fedora 13.
>  I haven't worked that much yet but emacs in particular is very slow. 
The default Emacs is 24, and without surprise, software are heavier as 
versions grow.
I noticed the same with LXDE/Openbox, GTK, LibreOffice,...


>  Incorporating 5 messages into MH-E can take a couple of seconds. My
>  hardware is a MacBook Pro 5,2, I'm running nvidia drivers. Anyone
>  knows of something I can do to get it a bit more speedy? 
Mmmm: Althoug being a Linux evangelist, I dont preech Mac owners to 
install Linux on a Mac ;-)


-- 
RMA.

[Sam Varshavchik]

Henrik Frisk writes:

>  Hi,
>
>  I have now migrated to Fedora 17 (clean install) and configured and
>  installed most of what I need. Though I think everything looks very
>  good my computer is considerably less responsive than under fedora 13.
>  I haven't worked that much yet but emacs in particular is very slow.
>  Incorporating 5 messages into MH-E can take a couple of seconds. My
>  hardware is a MacBook Pro 5,2, I'm running nvidia drivers. Anyone
>  knows of something I can do to get it a bit more speedy? 
I think it's just emacs.

I've noticed emacs' slowness myself. Something in emacs is causing a heavy  
X11 client/server load. It's especially noticable on comparatively lower- 
bandwidth wireless connections through an ssh tunnel.

[Joe Zeff]

On 12/10/2012 12:50 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
>  I expect that video driver regressions would be the most likely reason. 
That's certainly one possibility.  Another one is using a DE that's 
getting bloated and taking up too much of the system resources.  If 
using a leaner desktop doesn't help, video drivers are the next thing to 
consider.  The nice thing about changing DE first is that it doesn't 
cost anything except a bit of time.

[Heinz Diehl]

On 10.12.2012, Phil Dobbin wrote: 

>  As for emacs, I can't comment as I use vim & that doesn't
> suffer from bloat
>  in the least :-) 
I use emacs daily, and it's fast on my machine (F17).

[Heinz Diehl]

On 10.12.2012, Alan Cox wrote: 

>  Throw out Gnome 3 and use Xfce as the desktop. That should get you
> back a
>  ton of memory and video bandwidth. 
I'll second that (using XFCE myself).

[Henrik Frisk]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 8:33 AM, Marc Blanc <arsace(a)orange.fr&gt; wrote:
>  Le Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:30:49 +0100,
>  Heinz Diehl <htd(a)fritha.org&gt; a écrit :
>
> >I use emacs daily, and it's fast on my machine (F17).
>
>  Idem with xemacs and WindowMaker on F17.
>  
After a lot of testing it turned out that it wasn't Gnome 3, the Mac
or lack of power but a conflict between BBDB and MH-E that caused the
slowness. An upgrade to BBDB 3.0 solved it.

Thanks for the help and input!

/Henrik