I've just installed Slackware after a prolonged discussion on whether I should use Slack or Arch Linux, on this forum (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...distro-668575/) and on the Arch forums.

My machine is a 2002 P4 desktop with 1GB 266Mhz DDR RAM and onboard graphics. KDE with Slackware 12.1 (full installation) is running terribly slowly - the general responsiveness of the system is very poor. For example, if I click a folder on the desktop, the content takes 5 seconds to appear; if I click minimize on a window, it takes 2-3 seconds to repond, then another 1-2 seconds to complete minimizing; maximizing a minimized text file results in visible line-by-line drawing.

I HAVE CONFIGURED X PROPERLY AND AM NOT USING VESA DRIVERS. I have actually installed my system very carefully, and don't think I've made any of the common mistakes. Note however that my file system is ReiserFS. No 3D desktop is enabled. KDE on other distributions on this machine are significantly faster; even Vista (though with aero disabled) runs much faster on this machine!

What am I doing wrong? Please advise. Thanks in advance.

That's weird. Slackware should be very responsive on that unit. Are you running any services that you don't need (samba, sendmail, apache, etc.)? Is it also sluggish with XFce? What does top show?

Is your hard drive IDE or SATA? Does it show up as /dev/hd* or /dev/sd*? What is the output of `/sbin/hdparm -I /dev/sda` as root (replace sda with the location of your hard drive)?

You could try running `top` to see which processes are consuming the most CPU cycles.

"onboard graphics" is not much to go by -- but it does sound to me like it could be a poorly supported video chipset. But, it's also possible that if the drive is SATA that you need to add hda=noprobe to lilo.conf and change /etc/fstab appropriately.

All things considered, onboard graphics are generally pretty slow. You could probably pick up a card on newegg.com that is 10x faster for about $40.

i vote for hda=noprobe as well.
and add to your slackware image section
all your /dev/hdX will change to /dev/sdX
so beware of any places that effects, (for encrypted disks and all

Additional ideas:

I doubt the onboard graphics hardware is the problem. However, the drivers might be faulty or configured incorrectly. Temporarily changing to the VESA drivers would a reasonable troubleshooting step.

Consider checking /var/log/Xorg.0.log for warnings and errors (grep '(EE)' /var/log/Xorg.0.log and grep '(WW)' /var/log/Xorg.0.log).

Another idea is not to start X and test basic file operations from the command line.

Check /var/log/messages and /var/log/syslog for problems. Or open an xterm/konsole session and run tail -f with those files.

Check that DMA is enabled (hdparm -i /dev/hda).

Another possibility is that something with your network configuration is awry. For troubleshooting purposes temporarily disable (chmod -x) all of the /etc/rc.d/rc.inet* services.

Consider disabling unessential system services while troubleshooting.

Thanks for your replies everybody.

hitest, I'm not running any extra services - just the ones Slack starts with a default installation. XFCE is faster than KDE, but still way way slower than it 'should be'. I ran 'top' and there doesn't seem to be any process that's hogging the CPU. When the machine is idle, usage is well below 8%. Still, the most power-hungry process seems to be one called 'artsd' (a daemon!), but even that's not asking for more than 2%-6% CPU at the most.

T3slider, my HDD is IDE (/dev/hda) - I don't know if its 'really' SATA; it's being used as IDE.

volkerdi, my motherboard is an Intel D845GLAD, and I'm using the 'intel' drivers, so it can't be a poorly supported video chipset. And as I said, KDE runs really smooth on this same machine with other Linux distribs.

However, I have a BIG problem now. I added hda=noprobe to 'append' in lilo.conf. I didn't really get what volkerdi meant by 'change /etc/fstab appropriately', so I changed all hda's to sda. Now while booting, I get the message 'failed to open device /dev/sda1: No such file or directory'. Problem is, if I drop down to root shell, ed, ex, vi, vim, pico, joe are all non functional, so I can't find an editor to change my /etc/fstab back to what it was!

Please help!

That system should be too old to have onboard SATA. I'm curious to see an lspci -v, lsmod, and dmesg.

My original HDD conked out about a year ago. Its been replaced with a modern one.

This should be easy enough to rescue.

1. Boot the Slackware install disc with "hugesmp.s hda=noprobe"
2. Mount your root partition or partitions (if, say, you have a separate /boot or something). Example:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

3. Chroot into this system:

chroot /mnt
mount /proc
mount /sys
. /etc/profile
TERM=linux

4. Edit your /etc/fstab with vi, nano, or the editor of your choice.
5. Remake your initrd with mkinitrd (if you use one)
6. Edit your /etc/lilo, changing hda to sda wherever you find it.
7. Run lilo again.

There you have it. Reboot, and you should be ready to go. You'll be able to verify correct DMA with hdparm -i /dev/sda as suggested before. Probably some sort of udma level will be active.

I agree that if you have onboard Intel graphics that you should be doing pretty good with that. The GL screensavers on my machine with a similar board are reasonably fast.

Hope this helps.

Not working.

Firstly, there's no /dev/sda even with hda=noprobe. Does that mean my HDD is not SATA at all? Instead I have /dev/hda after booting from the DVD. However, there's no /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2 that I can mount to access my HDD. Instead, there's /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, ..., /dev/hdr! How do I rescue my system now?

(condensed version)

Well, at this point it does sound like you have PATA and not SATA (which I guess is more likely for a 2002-ish P4). Pretty much the same procedure, but do not use hda=noprobe, and change fstab from the sda that didn't work to the hda that the kernel sees (fdisk -l should show your partitions). Then, rebuild the initrd if you use one, and reinstall lilo.

Why your machine is slow, I can't say for sure. But if the onboard graphics are Intel from 5 years ago, that could be the culprit. The onboard Intel graphics are pretty good now, but I'm not so sure about the chipsets that they used back then.

It might help to try the "i810" driver instead of the "intel" one in xorg.conf.