Acer 2420 Laptop slow performing

[imoldovan]

System slows down to a crawl after opening a couple of apps, like browser and a player. Is this normal?? this is a celeron 1.5 Ghz procesor with 256 MB of ram ( Acer 2420 Laptop). Shouldn't that be enough to run Debian?? It shown that after reboot about 190 Mb of ram and about 32 megs of swap is being used without any app started. Is this normal?? I wonder if I am missing some settings that I can change to improve performance but I am a noob at this stuff.

Thank you...

[shadowking]

To read used memory, Use the free command and look at 'buffers / cache' figure

[imoldovan]

this is what I get when I run free with iceweasel started and the terminal window

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 247124 243120 4004 0 940 37360
-/+ buffers/cache: 204820 42304
Swap: 722884 71408 651476

[pendrachken]

256MB might be a little lean depending on what desktop you run. KDE and Gnome are both pretty heavy on the ram usage E.G my system 2 iceape windows open 2 terminal windows open and 1 konqueror open in a full KDE install I am using 842 / 1146MB RAM.


My suggestion, try out a simpler Desktop, if you use KDE or are more comfortable with a MS. Windows layout you might want to try running LXDE:
as ROOT

Code: Select all

apt-get install lxde 

If you are more of a gnome kinda person XFCE can be made to look more like Gnome yet still be light weight:
as ROOT

Code: Select all

apt-get install xfce4 xfce4-goodies 

Best bet though: go here pay the $20 + shipping and get your laptop up to it's full RAM capacity ( at least from a quick look that is the RAM you need anyways.... double check before ordering ) you will notice the difference between 265MB and 2GB RAM like night and day, it will be like having a brand new laptop

[gnudude]

256MB might be a little lean depending on what desktop you run. KDE and Gnome are both pretty heavy on the ram usage ...

but both can be fairly lean (less than 64mb usage) as well, just depends on what junk is in da trunk... The basic environment isn't that heavy, it is all the extras...

[jalu]

in addition to whatever you choose try preload. [and e.g.: fluxbox or e16 as wm]. greetings

[pendrachken]

in addition to whatever you choose try preload. [and e.g.: fluxbox or e16 as wm]. greetings

Preload in this case wouldn't be very helpful, I believe he is saying his system can't multitask very well ( because it has to swap to disk ) so ADDING stuff to RAM will make it worse. The one or two apps that get preloaded might get loaded faster BUT it will make response time slower faster because more RAM will have to be swapped to disk sooner.

256MB might be a little lean depending on what desktop you run. KDE and Gnome are both pretty heavy on the ram usage ...

but both can be fairly lean (less than 64mb usage) as well, just depends on what junk is in da trunk... The basic environment isn't that heavy, it is all the extras...

That is true, but it is a lot more work according to the specs he has it appears it is either the asian or latin america model, so it has at least a 40GB hard drive minimum so a few alternatives then removing the big desktop may be the better way to go.

[gnudude]

could always try http://refracta.org/ it truly is debian with a slimmer and lighter default install

(shameless plug)

[imoldovan]

And I just ordered a bunch of stuff from Newegg. O well I might have to place another order as soon as I verify that is the memory I need. In the mean time I will try the Xfce. The question I have is, after I install it will the laptop automatically boot in Xfce, or should I uninstall Gnome first??

Thank you all for help...

[shadowking]

One a retired P-3 550 pc, IceWm was using 50mb (60 with kdelibs) , xfce 80mb, minimal kde 95 or so..

[pendrachken]

And I just ordered a bunch of stuff from Newegg. O well I might have to place another order as soon as I verify that is the memory I need. In the mean time I will try the Xfce. The question I have is, after I install it will the laptop automatically boot in Xfce, or should I uninstall Gnome first??

Thank you all for help...

You should be able to select XFCE from your login menu if you use GDM, there should be a clickable menu that says sessions, and XFCE should be one of the options there after an install.

[imoldovan]

At the moment Icewm seems to be working the best. Here is what free shows:
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 247124 241824 5300 0 5680 54608
-/+ buffers/cache: 181536 65588
Swap: 722884 76 722808

this is with Iceweasel started and a a terminal window. Thanks everybody for the replies.