Ubuntu 9.10 so sluggish on 512mb ram AMD athlon 1.8GHZ

vinnie_vinodh · 02-01-2010, 12:52 AM

Hello All

Why is Ubuntu 9.10 so sluggish with 512mb ram and amd athlon64 1.8Ghz..!!!!!!!
The previous release 9.04 is so beautiful ,it ran so well without stucking . Can u imagine i used to run DeVeDe(dvd creating), firefox browser and at the same time Transmission simultaneously on 9.04 moreover compiz turned on.
The problem is it stucks

in mouse clicks and on opening new applications and it has become mem hungry than the previous version of it?
I can also tell you that alot of processes are running .
What do i have to do now ? This computer is used by the whole family .
I either have to switch to Xubuntu which i "dont like" at all or any other distro ( gnome based) .

Thanks In Advance

vigi · 02-01-2010, 02:05 PM

You could try the LXDE instead to see if it is the Gnome DE clogging your system. It is far more simple, independently built and less memory hungry than the major Desktop environments.

linus72 · 02-01-2010, 02:21 PM

It is a 9.10 problem
in every desktop I have tried..

I even made fluxbox and jwm from source and still doesn't work as good as 9.04
9.10 has some serious issues with dpkg too
I've had 3 seperate installs of 9.10 that for no reason
suddenly freaked out and told me I wasnt root, and didnt have root powers??!
thats when I was running as ROOT!

and the GDM thing?
what kinda nonsense is that?
what happend to GDM in 9.10?
its atrocious

vigi · 02-01-2010, 04:24 PM

I have Lxde-ubuntu 9-10 installed on my desktop system along side slackware and vista and it works very well; and responsive. Having said that I only use it as a test-bed system to try the odd application for fun. If I decide it is worth having, I then install it to my slackware. My system is an amd6000+ 64bit with 4GB ram, however it worths well on my old system AMD2600 with 512MB ram.

fragos · 02-01-2010, 06:10 PM

Sluggish is a subjective term in the yes of the beholder. At 512MB you most likely use swap space when can impact performance. I found that with my AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6GHz 1GB was sufficient to almost never use swap. You can examine your use of swap space with the "free" command. I don't perceive a difference in speed between 9.04 and 9.10. With 7.10 I went from 512MB to 1GB and that made a noticeable difference as I perceived it.

vigi · 02-01-2010, 11:54 PM

yes my experience supports that. If I play a video file on my old amd 2600system with only 512MB, the picture is jerky and, or will break up. Where as on a netbook with 1.6Ghz cpu and 1GB ram - the ram is large enough to hold and feed the processing and the movie plays fine. Swap space is too slow to keep up.

vinnie_vinodh · 02-02-2010, 03:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vigi

I have Lxde-ubuntu 9-10 installed on my desktop system along side slackware and vista and it works very well; and responsive. Having said that I only use it as a test-bed system to try the odd application for fun. If I decide it is worth having, I then install it to my slackware. My system is an amd6000+ 64bit with 4GB ram, however it worths well on my old system AMD2600 with 512MB ram.

SLackware 13 Ran superb with KDE4.2 on the same configuration ......A Nice disro to learn linux --this doesnt mean others are bad

vinnie_vinodh · 02-02-2010, 03:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fragos

Sluggish is a subjective term in the yes of the beholder. At 512MB you most likely use swap space when can impact performance. I found that with my AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6GHz 1GB was sufficient to almost never use swap. You can examine your use of swap space with the "free" command. I don't perceive a difference in speed between 9.04 and 9.10. With 7.10 I went from 512MB to 1GB and that made a noticeable difference as I perceived it.

Yes it does has a impact on performance but the actually usage of swap when opening firefox,transmission,terminal, empathy were not more than 250mb out of 1024mb .I noticed it using HTOP . I'll use it to monitor everytime.
Some times its takes nearly 20-30 sec sometimes to change theme..and evrything gets stuck

Memory statistics when running firefox, empathy ,transmission and terminal

vinodh@Joshua:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 465 453 12 0 24 106
-/+ buffers/cache: 321 143
Swap: 1051 41 1009

Even when mem consumptions is low it stucks in mouse cliks and on opening menus
Thanks Anyway

bmxcess · 02-02-2010, 05:28 AM

Hi there,

I had to reconfigure my swap file after moving to 9.10. I have similar specs to the poster ( now that I have more memory (2G) the swap is rarely used ).

When I ran the free command I noticed my swap wasn't being used at all. You can use the free command to quickly identify how much memory your using. e.g. something like:

Code:

[bj@192-168-1-146 ~]$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1293412    1234076      59336          0     165016     737032
-/+ buffers/cache:     332028     961384
Swap:       0          0     0

I clearly had a swap file before upgrading. I reconfigured my swap here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

Perhaps install htop to see what is hogging your memory?

good luck

crts · 02-02-2010, 05:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bmxcess

When I ran the free command I noticed my swap wasn't being used at all. You can use the free command to quickly identify how much memory your using. e.g. something like:

Code:

[bj@192-168-1-146 ~]$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1293412    1234076      59336          0     165016     737032
-/+ buffers/cache:     332028     961384
Swap:       0          0     0

From the output it looks like you don't have any swap (total is 0). So did Ubuntu automatically remove your swap partion after upgrading? If it did so, were you notified?
Or are you using a swap-file that is being created as needed?

vinnie_vinodh · 02-02-2010, 06:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crts

From the output it looks like you don't have any swap (total is 0). So did Ubuntu automatically remove your swap partion after upgrading? If it did so, were you notified?
Or are you using a swap-file that is being created as needed?

Thank U

crts · 02-02-2010, 06:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vinnie_vinodh

Thank U

Actually, I was referring to bmxcess's post. A linux without any swap seems odd.

Your output on the other hand:

Quote:

vinodh@Joshua:~$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 465 453 12 0 24 106
-/+ buffers/cache: 321 143
Swap: 1051 41 1009

suggests that you don't have enough swap space. At first I also had problems with a sluggish 9.10, even with 1GB of RAM. After a few updates it got better. Did you install all updates?
If that does not help, are you using a swap-file or a swap partition?
You might improve swap-access-time if you create a swap partition on a secondary harddisk. This way reading/writing to swap would not interfere with normal file-access operations on your main-harddisk which contains the operating system.

[edit] oops, forget the comment about not enough swap. It looked like you had only 41MB free. But the columns are somehow misplaced. Most of your swap is not used.

vinnie_vinodh · 02-02-2010, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by crts

Actually, I was referring to bmxcess's post. A linux without any swap seems odd.

Your output on the other hand:

suggests that you don't have enough swap space. At first I also had problems with a sluggish 9.10, even with 1GB of RAM. After a few updates it got better. Did you install all updates?
If that does not help, are you using a swap-file or a swap partition?
You might improve swap-access-time if you create a swap partition on a secondary harddisk. This way reading/writing to swap would not interfere with normal file-access operations on your main-harddisk which contains the operating system.

[edit] oops, forget the comment about not enough swap. It looked like you had only 41MB free. But the columns are somehow misplaced. Most of your swap is not used.

I'm sorry actually i was in a hurry .........
Even though this is totally out of the current topic would mind providing some assistance in this
>>>>"Does Ubuntu automatically logs out ???" It happened To me twice ...Do you think it occured bcoz of overheating of the processor,hardware or hardware related or any possiblity of hacking !!!!

>>>>Good Content filtering needed please help !!!!!!!!!!

Thank You

crts · 02-02-2010, 09:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vinnie_vinodh

>>>>"Does Ubuntu automatically logs out ???" It happened To me twice ...Do you think it occured bcoz of overheating of the processor,hardware or hardware related or any possiblity of hacking !!!!

Thank You

What exactly do you mean by 'log out'? Is it just a normal logout and you can login afterwards? Or is the system even halted/rebooted? If it were a hardware/overheating problem I would guess it would make more sense to halt the system as a failsafe-measure.

But before we continue please answer my question first:

Is your system up-to-date?

As I said earlier, initially my Ubuntu 9.10 was unhandlable, e.g. if I was downloading a file the system started to freeze. But it got better with every update!
This 'log-out' problem you mentioned might be related to an insufficiently updated system.

If you are not updated I strongly recommend to do that first and see if it gets better.

crts · 02-02-2010, 09:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vinnie_vinodh

>>>>Good Content filtering needed please help !!!!!!!!!!

I do not understand what exactly you mean by that. Please elaborate.