why my Gentoox is too slow?

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X-guy
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why my Gentoox is too slow?

Post by X-guy »

I recently install Linux Gentoox on my X-Machine but every time I tried to run more than two aplications it gets so slow that can't handle it


any suggestion or Advice will be nice to hear


Thankx you all



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Hmmmm Memento
Scocou
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Location: British Columbia, Canada

Post by Scocou »

Are you running home or pro? If home, I would suggest dropping KDE in favor of a more resource-friendly 'Window Manager', instead of a full 'Desktop Environment'. Depending on your level of Gentoo or Gnu/Linux knowledge I would also suggest switching to pro to minimize the number of running processes. After that use Shallax's excellent Magic patcher to install Xfree, then emerge one of the *box's, like fluxbox or Waimea (my fav). I also found (no offence intended to Shallax - it works flawlessly) the default kernel to be a bloated, modular (bleecchh ;) ) sluggard vanilla build. It contained no performance enhancing patches and, oddly, had support for tons hardware unavailable on an Xbox, such as firewire, ISA bus(!), and scsi support. Personally I prefer a lean, nearly monoithic kernel, so I built a tiny little nut and noticed some performance gains. All you need to have as modules in an Xbox kernel are the USB devices, as they are the only(?) hardware variable, everything else is Xbox constant. Heck, even Linus said the overhead accumulated from kernel-module interaction negates performance gained by minimizing (modularizing) the kernel. Well that was paraphrased, but basically that's what he said, heehe. Anyhow, that's an old, boring argument so I'll shut my trap about that. Furthermore, I've always found the pre-emptive kernel patch, low-latency patch, and gcc>3.1 optimization patch to make a huge difference for desktop application responsiveness in general. This is, for obvious reasons, more important on under-powered hardware (i.e. the Xbox-celeron, pII's, etc...) Admittedly it's a little ugly to monkey in pre-empt with the Xbox fatx patch (especially if you suck, like me ;) ), but it's easy if you use a little trick. I was thinking about writing a 'Kernel Tweaking Howto' for Gentoox... Shallax do you welcome user submitted howto's? Oh ya, I forgot the obvious, in case you were born with a soldering iron in your hand, you could always add some RAM to your Xbox :)
Last edited by Scocou on Wed Aug 13, 2003 7:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
ShALLaX
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Post by ShALLaX »

You sir, are a power user :).... The default kernel is a modular hell because I know if I neglect to include something, SOMEONE out there will complain about it. SCSI modules can be used for USB cdwriting (unless im wrong). You could install legacy hardware through the lpc bus (so im lead to believe) such as serial ports and ps/2... so its all there just in case. If you think its bloated, fix it yourself --- the on thing i learned from Gentoox is that you cant please everyone, so you can only try to make it tolerable for everyone to use :)

Yes, KDE is slow as hell... but when I released Gentoox with no window manager, I got an influx of emails demanding I made KDE _the_ window manager of Gentoox, so i did despite warning that it would be hellishly slow... now look where that got me :). If youre using the home edition, just run "magic wmaker" then let it reboot, and it should be a lot faster! You can always go back to KDE with "magic kde".

Oh and yes.. this software is open source, so the howto/ tutorial section also is! Any howtos are welcome so long as they are well written (spelling etc) and actually work first time, every time with no "ifs" or "maybes" :)
X-guy
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Post by X-guy »

Dang... Scocou that was a Heck of Answer man!!!
I really appreciate the suggestions and I'll start working and some new Window Manager for my X_Box cause kde sucks on xbox at this point , but I strongly believe that eventually It'll get better



Again Thankx
Scocou
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Post by Scocou »

Shallax I like the new forum, very professional. I'm glad to see by the number of smilies that you used that you didn't take me for a whiner ;) I think Gentoox is the bee's knees, you do Gentoo-proper justice with your efforts and results.
The default kernel is a modular hell because I know if I neglect to include something, SOMEONE out there will complain about it.
Yes I think you made the right decisions, this way you can concentrate on important stuff like Magic, and not people saying "How come my *hardware* doesn't work?" Any distro worth it's salt has a large number of modules available in it's default kernel, for those that don't want to bother with compiling their own. I just love goading people about kernel modules, they're always so sensitive about it :) I wonder if Gentoo-proper would include a sys-kernel/xbox-sources ebuild for Portage, if one was submitted? They have some pretty weird kernels already, probably a good chance they would if it worked. I assume one could make the ebuild trivially, what with using their excellent addpatches script...
SCSI modules can be used for USB cdwriting (unless im wrong)
Yes correct there, I was talking out my ass on that one, or not thinking 'outside my wallet'....
install legacy hardware through the lpc bus
Cool I never heard of that but hats off to ingenuity on that one, if anyone has pulled it off.
If you think its bloated, fix it yourself
Heehe an excellent policy! I did trim it down myself, as I'm obsessively a kernel-tuning nerd, but not a coder at all. To reiterate, I found yours to work flawlessly, no complaints towards functionality. That said, I certainly would maintain that someone looking to, i.e. X-guy, could eek out some more performance from a tighter, patched kernel. Ahhh... the elusive 'crispiness'...
this software is open source, so the howto/ tutorial section also is!
Good to hear, I'll write something up soon, as I have a lot of time on my hands ;)

X-guy I wanted to mention another little tweak for performance, but it's not much I'm afraid. I reduced the number of tty's in /etc/inittab by #'ing out the last three or four, it eases up on the very limited RAM a bit. This only leaves two, but if you're primarily an X user(?) it won't matter (you can hash out five in that case). You could also probably save a bit more by removing some unneeded(?) processes from /etc/runlevels. For example, I don't use NFS so I would

Code: Select all

rc-update del netmount
then either reboot or

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runscript /etc/init.d/netmount stop
This will do ****-all really, but since you have ****-all RAM in an Xbox, well... Repeat for anything else you don't want, although I don't think you'll find many (be careful ;) )
If you don't want to roll-your-own kernel you could simply drop whatever you don't want/need from /etc/modules.autoload to trim your kernel overhead some. Good luck, have fun, use Gentoo(x)!
ShALLaX
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Post by ShALLaX »

Fyi

Code: Select all

rc-update del netmount default
Dont forget the default! (at least, i think you need it! hehe) :)

I keep all constructive criticism in mind so it doesnt annoy me :) Im glad I have users like you because you actually know what youre doing and appreciate the effort put it ... and you help other users! Thanks!
Scocou
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Joined: Tue Aug 12, 2003 12:22 am
Location: British Columbia, Canada

Post by Scocou »

Dont forget the default! (at least, i think you need it! hehe)
Umm, you actually don't need it, unless of course you had *whatever in more than one runlevel and only wanted to remove one of them. That excellent rc-update will dig through /etc/runlevels and remove *whatever script from all runlevels, if no runlevel is specified.
and you help other users! Thanks!
You may live to regret encouraging me, now you've acquired a resident verbally-diarrhetic windbag to flood your forums with wordy responses to simple questions! Be afraid ;)
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