topic title: Slow Woes
Posts: 200
moron
Joined: 12 Sep 2007
#1
Has anyone found antiX-V to be noticeably slower than previous versions of antiX? Here's my story......

I have an old 400 MHz Celeron / 256 MB machine on which I have run antiX since Spartacus. Most recently I had been running antiX_m7_base which was quite fast even on this old antique. I ran the m7.2 previews which ran acceptably, as well. The final release, however, runs considerably slower and I cannot determine why that is.

I started with the full m7.2 final version. It installed well enough but ran pretty slowly. I re-burned the iso and tried again with the same result. I then downloaded the iso from another mirror, burned it, and installed it. Again, I got the same result. So, I installed the base version -- twice -- same result. Other versions of antiX have run well but, for whatever reason, the current version is pretty slow on my machine.

Any ideas as to why that could be?

Thanks.
anticapitalista
Posts: 5,955
Site Admin
Joined: 11 Sep 2007
#2
The biggest change from preview2 to 7.2 V final, was an upgraded xorg. Maybe this has caused the slowness on your box. Since release, there has been another xorg upgrade (If I am not mistaken). You could upgrade and see if it makes a difference.

Edit: I just checked and there hasn't been an xorg upgrade in Testing.
Posts: 200
moron
Joined: 12 Sep 2007
#3
Thanks anti, I'll keep a check on that. I'm running m7 base on my laptop with kde ala xToeCutter (
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). I can always run that on my desktop if no xorg upgrade surfaces. Thanks for the reply and for your continuing work with antiX.
anticapitalista
Posts: 5,955
Site Admin
Joined: 11 Sep 2007
#4
If you want to see if it is the newer xorg, you could upgrade the M7 version and see what happens.
Posts: 316
DJiNN
Joined: 26 Oct 2007
#5
I've seen a difference in the time that it takes to open apps. PCmanFM & Roxterm used to open almost immediately, whereas now they take a few seconds at least. Not that a few seconds is a lot, but coming from almost no time at all it seems like a lot. __{{emoticon}}__

What i have noticed though, and i can't figure out why, is the following. I have antiX (7.2) installed on several machines here and even after a fresh install, one boots up to the desktop using only about 50-60mb RAM, while the other machine boots to the desktop and uses 100mb+. They're both very similar installs with very little difference (if any) & yet the way they boot is so different.

The one that boots to about 60mb RAM is a Core 2 Duo laptop (Zepto Znote 6615WD) with 2Gb RAM and 100gb sata (7200) hd. The other machine (that boots to above 100mb) is an intel P4 (2.6ghz) with 1gb RAM and a 160gb hd.

I know the hardware's vastly different, and there could be drivers etc loading in one that the other doesn't need or WHY, but the difference in the way they run & work also is quite considerable.

I've also got a PIII here with about 780mb RAM and that boots and runs really well, booting to about 50-60mb ram on initial boot.

I've tried everything to get this P4 to boot up with less ram, turning off all kinds of drivers etc, and while it's made a little difference, it's only a few mb.

It's no big deal at the end of the day, and antiX still rocks for me, but it would be really cool to find out why such a difference between machines and also why, just lately, my main machine just eats RAM where it never used to. __{{emoticon}}__
Posts: 200
moron
Joined: 12 Sep 2007
#6
Sorry..............see next post
Last edited by moron on 20 May 2008, 13:17, edited 1 time in total.
Posts: 200
moron
Joined: 12 Sep 2007
#7
anticapitalista wrote:If you want to see if it is the newer xorg, you could upgrade the M7 version and see what happens.
Thanks, anti. I probably should have done that. I have just installed m7.01 base with kde as described here:
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. That's what I have run on my laptop for a while now with no complaints and it runs well on the old desktop, as well. I've got my eye on another machine for antiXm7.2. I'll let you know if I have the same problem there. Thanks again.
DJiNN wrote:They're both very similar installs with very little difference (if any) & yet the way they boot is so different.
DJiNN,
I've noticed that kind of thing with various machines but never really gave it much thought. It is interesting, though. I'm sure you've considered this but, just to satisfy my curiosity, did the increase in RAM usage appear suddenly or gradually & had you updated anything just before you noticed it? Like you said......
It's no big deal at the end of the day, and antiX still rocks
. It is a curiosity, though. Thanks for your input.
Posts: 316
DJiNN
Joined: 26 Oct 2007
#8
moron wrote: I've noticed that kind of thing with various machines but never really gave it much thought. It is interesting, though. I'm sure you've considered this but, just to satisfy my curiosity, did the increase in RAM usage appear suddenly or gradually & had you updated anything just before you noticed it? Like you said......
It's no big deal at the end of the day, and antiX still rocks
. It is a curiosity, though. Thanks for your input.
Hi moron, thanks for the reply. __{{emoticon}}__

I've actually now got 2 versions of antiX running on the same machine (Multi-Boot) and one is an upgraded M7.1 and the other is a fresh install, just with the usual apt-get update then apt-get upgrade. Both are OK, and run well, but just seem more sluggish than they did, and they both exhibit the same symptoms, that of using more ram and also the CPU starting to max out every so often??

The increase in ram seemed to creep up on me. Over the last few weeks, as i've left my machine on, the amount of ram it uses just keeps going up & up, until it max's out at about 900mb to 1 gig. As it does this, it gets very slow & harder to use, and the only way to put it back to normal is to reboot. But it's now becoming more frequent??

I've done nothing to this fresh install (Apart from what i've mentioned above) and i've also got a fresh 7.2 install on my lappie, which uses far less ram and doesn't do the CPU thing at all.

It's just strange. Although i'm not too bothered, it would be nice to get to the bottom of it if possible. __{{emoticon}}__
anticapitalista
Posts: 5,955
Site Admin
Joined: 11 Sep 2007
#9
Maybe there is a problem with one of your Ram sticks.
Posts: 316
DJiNN
Joined: 26 Oct 2007
#10
anticapitalista wrote:Maybe there is a problem with one of your Ram sticks.
You could be right anti, as i've since installed a couple of other distros on some spare partitions on the same machine and it does the same thing. Time to check the ram i think. __{{emoticon}}__
Posts: 316
DJiNN
Joined: 26 Oct 2007
#11
OK, after much detective work (dons Sherlock Cap!) i've found a few things that seem to be, if not the cause, certainly a slight hinderance.

1: Conky - Seems to be starting up all of it's own accord, even though i've disabled it in the flux start script. There was (I think) several instances of conky running, and this was causing a few problems. I've stopped conky by killing it in htop, but if i do a reboot it still runs it, and i don't know where else to look to stop it running. I've checked all the autostart files that i know of.

2: IceWeasel - Whenever i start IceWeasel, it puts such a load on the machine that the whole thing starts to slow down, even with just a few tabs etc. This could be a plug in or somesuch, so i'll investigate further tomorrow if poss. When i run either Kasehakase or Opera, nothing like that happens even with upwards of 10 tabs open.

Now that i've disabled conky & am running Opera (Much to my wife's disgust __{{emoticon}}__ - she is a FireFox/IceWeasel person) the whole system runs as it used to. A lot smoother, and responsive.

anticpitalista - I did do a Memory check and it came up with nothing. No errors and everything checked out fine. __{{emoticon}}__
Posts: 1,520
eriefisher
Joined: 07 Oct 2007
#12
Couple of suggestions, does the startup script conky and others have the"&" at the end so they run in the background? ie:

conky &

Is the /.fluxbox/startup the only place where conky is started? Not in .xinitrc as well?
Posts: 316
DJiNN
Joined: 26 Oct 2007
#13
eriefisher wrote:Couple of suggestions, does the startup script conky and others have the"&" at the end so they run in the background? ie:

conky &
They do, yes.
Is the /.fluxbox/startup the only place where conky is started? Not in .xinitrc as well?
There's nothing that gets started in .xinitrc at all, it's all (as far as i'm aware) starting up from the fluxstart script.
Posts: 1,520
eriefisher
Joined: 07 Oct 2007
#14
Hmmmmm?
anticapitalista
Posts: 5,955
Site Admin
Joined: 11 Sep 2007
#15
By default, conky starts via .fluxbox/apps file in antiX, not .fluxbox/startup.

Maybe this is where there is the conflict?