How to improve performance? (starter)

[James Wilkinson]

Tony Dietrich wrote:
> An AMD K6_2 isn't really fast enough for FC2 either.  Downgrade to RH9.  Or 
> get a faster basic system.

I strongly disagree with this.

The core of the operating system is not particularly processor
intensive. Most of the system, and nearly all of the non-graphical
stuff, is based on designs that are decades old. In general, the
requirement for memory has gone up, but the CPU requirements have not
gone up that much.

Most of the graphical programs are newer (and many of them are memory
hogs), but they don't do *that* much computation. It still takes a *lot*
of computation to tax a 300 MHz processor.

There certainly are programs that run on Fedora that do require CPU
time, but that isn't the fault of the operating system. (The only one
I'd notice is that compiles would take longer. I don't tend to sit about
waiting for compiles to finish, anyway).

It's worth running top or "vmstat 5" in a window while you use Fedora
normally. If user time + system time is much less than 100%, then you
are simply not CPU limited.

You may well be disk limited: there are other bottlenecks in a PC. Extra
memory would be a Good Thing, and hide this.  Most K6-2 motherboards can
take at least 512 MB of RAM.

Incidentally, another poster recommended upgrading to a K6-III. In my
experience, on normal desktop use, you wouldn't notice the extra 20%
performance this brings. Besides, it will be hard to source these
nowadays.

James.
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