"why is my Linux so damn slow?"

[Mark Eggers]

On Sat, 12 Feb 2011 14:51:25 +0100, M. Fioretti wrote:

> Greetings,
> 
> when I upgraded from Fedora 12 to Fedora 14, about twenty days ago, the
> system (which wasn't doing really well even before the upgrade) became
> almost unusable. The problem is, very likely, upstream of Fedora, but I
> would like to understand where exactly is and if/how Fedora in some way
> amplifies it. I've posted all details here:
> 
> http://freesoftware.zona-m.net/help-request-why-is-my-linux-so-damn-slow
> 
> TIA,
> Marco

I skimmed your writeup, but didn't look at all of the installed packages.

My environment is much less powerful than yours, and it's pretty 
reasonable.

Fedora 14 2.6.35.11-83.fc14.i686
2.6 GHz P4
1.5 GB memory
Overclocked NVidia 7600 GS with 260.19.36 (built by hand, not rpm)
Samsung Synchmaster at 1680x1050
KDE 4.5.5

I run the standard desktop effects. I've tried some of the more esoteric 
ones, but I find that they're distracting.

I run into some slowdowns. I've commented on my OpenOffice Calc issues. 
Flash is slow (but it's slow in Windows as well). When I stress test 
Tomcat/MySQL or Tomcat/Derby applications my load average goes to 11 
(literally) while running around 500 transactions per minute.

This sounds like an NVidia driver issue. I suggest wandering over to 
www.nvnews.net and reading the Linux support forum.

In particular, I have the following set:

nvidia-settings -a PixmapCache=1
nvidia-settings -a InitialPixmapPlacement=2
nvidia-settings -a GlyphCache=1

I've placed these (and my overclocking commands) in a script called 
nvtweaks.sh. I then have the following line in my .xinitrc file:

/home/mdeggers/bin/nvtweaks.sh

I also have a customized xorg.conf file, and I've modified my fonts 
(installed MS Core fonts and customized a .fonts.conf file).

This works well for me. Your mileage may vary.

. . . . just my two cents.

/mde/