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ruivilela
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Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 236
Location: Łódź
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 Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 9:47 pm Post subject: [SOLVED] The laptop of my wife with Gentoo is a nightmare |
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The laptop of my wife is a:
| Code: | Linux Daphnis 2.6.31-gentoo-r6 #6 PREEMPT Thu Jan 21 16:56:36 CET 2010 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
512MB RAM. |
She has Gnome, firefox, ooffice. Firefox eats a lot of CPU when any flash is open. Some videos don't appear... encoding problems... mounting problems... to see a DVD is a problem... user problems... etc...
With other 2 x86 box it has distcc, ccache, tmpfs, portage from nfs ... but even with all this. It's slow
There is always a lot of upgrades to do from times to times (I use fluxbox). Some things breaks... (result discussion about updating). First installed in 2004.
I'm thinking in moving that laptop to Sabayon Gnome (512 MB sounds too less) or Mint.
It's simple too painful to update that computer.
Last edited by ruivilela on Mon Jan 25, 2010 11:30 am; edited 1 time in total |
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jonnevers
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Joined: 02 Jan 2003
Posts: 1594
Location: Gentoo64 land
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| Posted: Fri Jan 22, 2010 10:59 pm Post subject: |
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| mint sounds reasonable. memory is cheap upgrade it. |
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Punisher
n00b
Joined: 26 Feb 2007
Posts: 21
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 12:59 am Post subject: |
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Don't use the laptop to compile, use the other 2 box for this. You can create binary packages and use it for your laptop.
And don't use gnome with firefox and only 512MB... |
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pianosaurus
l33t
Joined: 19 Apr 2004
Posts: 944
Location: Bash$
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 1:34 am Post subject: |
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I run a very minimal stable system, with ooffice-bin for those pesky e-mails from insensitive clods. There has been exactly two packages updated since 20. December (tiny ones, don't remember which). I swear, as soon as you get rid of gnome/kde, your system will be a dream to maintain. Also, I prefer opera over firefox. It's a lot more responsive, and uses a lot less resources. It's a shame it's not open-source.
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d2_racing
Bodhisattva
Joined: 25 Apr 2005
Posts: 13047
Location: Ste-Foy,Canada
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 2:51 am Post subject: |
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| Code: |
Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux 512MB RAM.
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In fact, you could upgrade the memory, but basically, don't use this box to compile or use an another distro that use only binaries. |
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cach0rr0
Bodhisattva
Joined: 13 Nov 2008
Posts: 4123
Location: Houston, Republic of Texas
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 4:11 am Post subject: Re: The laptop of my wife with Gentoo is a nightmare to admi |
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| ruivilela wrote: |
There is always a lot of upgrades to do from times to times (I use fluxbox). Some things breaks... (result discussion about updating). First installed in 2004.
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I started with gentoo back in mid 2004 (I dropped my old forum name - it was a dumb nickname I'd carried over since 7th grade, and it was time for a change)
You may well recall back then just how chaotic a state things were, as well the royal PITA it was to get major upgrades done.
I've done up a gentoo laptop for my 66 year old mother, some time around mid 2009. I don't have any hard proof to quantify this, but updates seem to be considerably easier now since I started from a recent snapshot.
I do a weekly glsa-check as a cron job on there, but that's about it - no reason to upgrade anything significant unless there's a security flaw, or, a specific bug that's affecting usability for her.
There is no need to upgrade just for the sake of upgrading. You can, but then you hit the administrative nightmare.
Might be worth one last wipe+reinstall so you have a recent set of stuff to work from. If it's still a huge PITA managing it, I concede defeat and bid you my blessing to look elsewhere (I say that as a joke - I fully realize my opinion is more or less meaningless  )
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ruivilela
Apprentice
Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 236
Location: Łódź
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 8:53 am Post subject: |
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| d2_racing wrote: | | Code: |
Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux 512MB RAM.
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In fact, you could upgrade the memory, but basically, don't use this box to compile or use an another distro that use only binaries.
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I use firefox-bin and openoffice bin. Downgrading to maybe a xfce can be a daring move (which she could not like at all).
But probably I made a mistake when I moved to Gnome in that computer. Firefox ran smothly some time ago on her box. Now if it doesn't take 50-70%CPU and 30-60% Memory, it's not Firefox.
Upgrading memory, depends of what memory is inside and local price. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 9367
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 10:59 am Post subject: |
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| 99% chance it's 200pin SO-DIMM DDR (1) memory. |
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ruivilela
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Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 236
Location: Łódź
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 12:38 pm Post subject: |
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Sinceryly I will kick out Gentoo from that computer and install a Mint or Xubuntu (the one with lower memory footprint). But my guess is that Xubuntu has less.
She said no way to memory. Laptop has 6 years now, sound and screen holder is slightly damage (but they work). |
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dol-sen
Retired Dev
Joined: 30 Jun 2002
Posts: 2805
Location: Richmond, BC, Canada
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| Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2010 8:39 pm Post subject: |
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my laptop is 6years old too, only I upgraded the memory a few years ago, now has 1.25Gig, also a new hard drive 120gig.. It is an athlon-xp 2000. Battery is toast, lasts about 5 min. 
Don't use gnome, go for xfce instead, still gtk, but not resource hungry like gnome.
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ruivilela
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Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 236
Location: Łódź
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| Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 11:29 am Post subject: [solved] |
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Ok. I installed Xubuntu for her.
Firefox still clogs the system, especially with flash. Starts eating swap. Memory usage is >512 MB. |
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asturm
Developer
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| Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 11:46 am Post subject: |
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Well, that's what Firefox does best.  |
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d2_racing
Bodhisattva
Joined: 25 Apr 2005
Posts: 13047
Location: Ste-Foy,Canada
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| Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 2:03 pm Post subject: |
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| As long as you use a Linux distro on that box, use the one that run best on that box |
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Sprotte
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Joined: 18 Oct 2004
Posts: 217
Location: Kiel, Germany
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| Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 7:58 pm Post subject: Re: [solved] |
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| ruivilela wrote: | Ok. I installed Xubuntu for her.
Firefox still clogs the system, especially with flash. Starts eating swap. Memory usage is >512 MB. |
that's kinda extreme O_o
FF is a memory hog, though, I wondered about that myself.
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Shining Arcanine
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Joined: 24 Sep 2009
Posts: 1110
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| Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2010 8:02 pm Post subject: Re: [solved] |
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| ruivilela wrote: | Ok. I installed Xubuntu for her.
Firefox still clogs the system, especially with flash. Starts eating swap. Memory usage is >512 MB. |
What version of firefox did you install? I am running Firefox 3.6 on KDE 4.3.4. Right now, I am only using about 290MB of RAM and that is with a terminal (with two tabs) open, firefox (with about 20 tabs) running and system monitor in the background.
| Quote: | richard@localhost ~/proj $ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2069864 567288 1502576 0 31176 240900
-/+ buffers/cache: 295212 1774652
Swap: 2097144 0 2097144 |
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ruivilela
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Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 236
Location: Łódź
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| Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 9:41 pm Post subject: |
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Top says that firefox uses more than 50% of memory (2 tabs opened). Firefox Cache cleaned. And CPU usage > 50% also. She's playing farmville (flash) from facebook.
Xubuntu has disappointing me. It has exaile and and fails to run because of missing mp3 codec! It's not common sense? And she needed them (earlier on) ... Mplayer has no common codecs ... more install ... copy paste on xfce does not work ... sinking! |
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ruivilela
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Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 236
Location: Łódź
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| Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:50 pm Post subject: |
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| After trimming memory usage. I found out that that each flash animation (adobe flash 10)takes out quite a lot of CPU in a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz. Is this machine so slow!? |
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jonnevers
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Joined: 02 Jan 2003
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Location: Gentoo64 land
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| Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 2:05 pm Post subject: |
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| ruivilela wrote: | | After trimming memory usage. I found out that that each flash animation (adobe flash 10)takes out quite a lot of CPU in a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz. Is this machine so slow!? |
comparatively yes. its now a multi-core everywhere world (4+ cores is quickly becoming the norm). for a single core a p4 is not bad though. |
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Tom_
Guru
Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 448
Location: France
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| Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 3:08 pm Post subject: |
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Even on a fast computer, Flash takes a lot of CPU. A lot of people complain about it! You can block flash animations, with FlashBlock : web pages will look lighter!
You should also try to use a lighter browser like Chromium!
If you've enough free time, you could try to use one of your x86 boxes as an ltsp server, and use this laptop as a thin client! |
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Sprotte
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Joined: 18 Oct 2004
Posts: 217
Location: Kiel, Germany
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| Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 4:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Xubuntu has disappointing me. It has exaile and and fails to run because of missing mp3 codec! |
There are patent issues with mp3, you have to install it yourself I think.
Look for a package named gstreamer-plugins-bad or gstreamer-plugins-ugly. It's one of the gstreamer plugins IIRC.
I agree that the codec situation sucks, but what can you do about it. After all, you also have to install those yourself under Gentoo Linux - it's just not noticeable because, uh, you install everything yourself under Gentoo.
Codec support IS in the standard repository though.
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Shining Arcanine
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Joined: 24 Sep 2009
Posts: 1110
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| Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 8:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Tom_ wrote: | Even on a fast computer, Flash takes a lot of CPU. A lot of people complain about it! You can block flash animations, with FlashBlock : web pages will look lighter!
You should also try to use a lighter browser like Chromium!
If you've enough free time, you could try to use one of your x86 boxes as an ltsp server, and use this laptop as a thin client! |
Firefox usually has lower memory requirements than chromium. Having a process for each tab is fairly expensive in terms of memory. |
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PaulBredbury
Watchman
Joined: 14 Jul 2005
Posts: 7310
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| Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2010 9:26 pm Post subject: Re: [SOLVED] The laptop of my wife with Gentoo is a nightmar |
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| ruivilela wrote: | | She has Gnome, firefox, ooffice. |
Have you considered trading in your wife for a more recent model? This would also present the opportunity to replace e.g. ooffice with less greedy alternatives, such as abiword & gnumeric. |
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ruivilela
Apprentice
Joined: 05 Oct 2004
Posts: 236
Location: Łódź
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| Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 5:53 pm Post subject: Re: [SOLVED] The laptop of my wife with Gentoo is a nightmar |
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| PaulBredbury wrote: | | ruivilela wrote: | | She has Gnome, firefox, ooffice. |
Have you considered trading in your wife for a more recent model? This would also present the opportunity to replace e.g. ooffice with less greedy alternatives, such as abiword & gnumeric. |
Hard to find such specifications. That xubuntu one day refused to run xfdesktop, xfpanel, without any update ... "Sometimes X doesn't start correctly". Will try Mint. Not even a CD Player installed has ... |
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cwr
Veteran
Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Posts: 1969
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| Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2010 3:09 pm Post subject: |
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I've run Gentoo on a Thinkpad T23 for five years or so; 1Gz Pentium III
and 512Mb of RAM. Gnome, Firefox, OpenOffice run fine, and not especially
slowly; the big pain is rebuilding the system, which takes about 16 hours to
a Gnome desktop. Whether the system has enough grunt to run serious
video applications, though, I don't know; I've viewed DVDs on it without
problems, but not very often.
OTOH Ubuntu also runs ok, and would be easier to install and maintain.
Will |
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whiteghost
Guru
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Posts: 374
Location: north dakota
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| Posted: Sat Feb 13, 2010 2:17 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Mplayer has no common codecs |
i never use it.
vlc.
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