Installing Severn on a Sony 505VE laptop - broken?

[Alan Cox]

> I have noticed a problem with performance. Linux used to have a reputation 
> for performance; I can see this clearly in services like DHCP, DNS, and 
> untill recently apache (Win2003 IIS is faster). But on the desktop I have 
> experienced the oposite:

Apache has never been a speed demon - its very flexible instead. For speed
try thttpd  - especially on a low end box. I've seen thttpd on a Macintosh II
survive a slashdotting

> 1. Bootup time: 	Windows 98, ME and XP boot up in almost half the 
> time. Timings are more or less the same with Win2000. 

Yep

> on a dell Lattitude, RAM:128, CPU:333MHZ, Disk:10GIG;
> RHL is usable but verry slow (even after running hdparm). The end 

Gnome/KDE is a bit fat - 2.4 is better but I'm not happy with its 128Mb
performance. If you want to get involved in profiling and tuning that
the gnome project itself is the best base point. 2.4 is faster than 2.2
for me and there are people benching.

Alternatively swap Gnome/KDE/Evolution for Xfce/ROX/Sylpheed and your
desktop will suddenely be blindly fast but a little less featured.
I use the Xfce/ROX/Sylpheed setup on 32 and 64Mb boxes and its fast
on both.

> So the question follows, ofcource: hos do you report this type of 
> information and is any one at RH working on performance? 

The oprofile tools will let you get a lot of info, vmstat 5 will let
you watch the rate of disk I/O and tools like strace can identify delays
and syscall waits. Its a kind of forensics at time but a lot of fun