Slow system

[Bob McClure Jr]

On Sat, Dec 18, 2004 at 11:35:01AM -0600, Carla & Dick Bickert wrote:
> Bob McClure Jr wrote:
> 
> >On Fri, Dec 17, 2004 at 01:51:09PM -0600, Carla & Dick Bickert wrote:
> > 
> >
> >>I have recently installed Red Hat Linux 9.  It boots fine and there 
> >>appear to be no problems, but the GUI runs EXTREMELY slow (openoffice 
> >>takes 3-4 minutes to come up).  The computer has a Celeron processor 
> >>running at 667 Mhz and the hard drive is plenty big.  Any suggestions?
> >>
> >>Thanks
> >>Dick
> >>   
> >>
> >
> >Post the results of running "free".  That may well tell the story.
> >
> >Cheers,
> > 
> >
> 
> 
> The results of  "free" are as follows:
> 
>                 Total        Used       Free      Shared     Buffer     
> Cached
> mem           60348    59456     892          0             1396       14160
> -/+ buffers/cache:      43900     16448  
> 
> Swap:        192772    40432    152340     0
> 
> I'm new at Linux, so keep your answers at an elementary level (if possibe).
> 
> Thanks for you help
> Dick

You have only 64MB of RAM.  Totaling up the "Used" columns, you are
using almost 100MB, 40% of which is swap, so your machine is spending
a lot of time swapping.

If you can, expand your RAM.  I'd guess that 128MB is about minimum
for decent GUI performance on RH9.  Better if you can go for 256MB.
With either of those you'll see a dramatic improvement in response.
If you can go for 512MB, that won't improve things much over 256MB,
but later down the road, you'll want it.

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
robertmcclure at earthlink.net  http://www.bobcatos.com
Grace happens.