How to improve performance? (starter)

[Tony Dietrich]

On Thursday 13 Jan 2005 22:56, James Wilkinson wrote:
> 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.
>
I didn't make myself clear.  Sorry
I agree with you .. my point as below is that earlier distributions provided 
applications that weren't as capable, thus demanded less from the host 
system.
A full GUI install of RH9 imposes less of a load on the CPU than a similar 
Fedora installation will, assuming the user makes use of the new generation 
Fedora GUI apps on the Fedora installation, but uses RH9 generation apps on 
that installation.

> 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.
> --
> E-mail address: james | A woodpigeon would, If a woodpigeon could,
> @westexe.demon.co.uk  | But a woodpigeon can't, So it won't.
>
>                       | A woodpigeon could, If a woodpigeon would,
>                       | But a woodpigeon doesn't want to. So it doesn't.

-- 
Tony Dietrich
-------------
Just type 'mv * /dev/null'.