Slow performance of redhat 9

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TheElectron707
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Slow performance of redhat 9

Post by TheElectron707 »

Hi!
is this only my system or its a general seen thing, i am using
both Redh-Hat9 and WinXP on my AMD-750 MHz system, with 512Mb sdram,
and 8 GB HD to both OS.
WinXp seems much faster than redhat 9 , the boot up time, appz startup
and responce time looks much faster in winxp than in linux. why? is't
linux supposed to use resources more effeciently?
TheElectron707
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Post by fawad »

Well, on Redhat the bootup is expected to be slow because most Linux distros load all services before dropping you on the console or desktop. Windows XP on the other hand, loads up just the neccesary drivers, drops you on the desktop, and keeps loading services in the background.
I can't comment on the apps startup time, but for my 800 MHz 256MB Athlon, video playing on win2k with very few services (IIS, SQL Server) is unthinkable (have to manually go in and tweak process priorities to even get an acceptable video), but Redhat 8 on dual boot with a bazillion services (stock httpd, svn httpd, mysqld, postgresql, postfix, amavis, courier, pound etc.) plays the same videos perfectly (no skipping, no jitter).
if
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Post by if »

Aslam-o-Aliakum,

Redhat slow??? it is... not only the installation (specially GUI) but in runtime it really dull on mechines like P-III 600Mhz and lower... so i recommend... not to install REDHAT 9.0 on those machine... on P-IV 1.8 Ghz it's installation is slow as usually but on realtime interfacing is not GOOD but accept able...
if u find anything which shows my lack of knowledge,
please guide me... thx
------------------------------------
Aslam-o-Aliakum-Wa-Rahmatullah-Wa-Barakatuhu
------------------------------------
if
farhanksa
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in shrike new kernel is added

Post by farhanksa »

aoa

i think they only added new kernel ..in rh 9 which u can also compile in our 7.3 or 8 any how no problem for that...
will pls any one tell wt they had added ...new ..after using 9

as the gui needs lots of resources thats y its slow but another thing is linux gui is not running as the part of kernel its the application ..processes running on there.. thats y u cannto compare the win gui with linux ones..
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Re: Slow performance of redhat 9

Post by Adroit »

TheElectron707 wrote:Hi!
is this only my system or its a general seen thing, i am using
both Redh-Hat9 and WinXP on my AMD-750 MHz system, with 512Mb sdram,
and 8 GB HD to both OS.
WinXp seems much faster than redhat 9 , the boot up time, appz startup
and responce time looks much faster in winxp than in linux. why? is't
linux supposed to use resources more effeciently?
Asalam o Alaikum!
I have the same configuration but with 256MB of RAM and RedHat 9 appeared to be slow, but after I tweaked the system the performance is manifold.

So I have some suggestions for you (in order of importance)
1. Goto the services' applet and disable all the unnecessary services
2. Disable all the icon & window animations
3. Remove the wallpaper
4. Disable the option of screensavers to start automatically

Asalam o Alaikum!
:)
Umar Kalim
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Post by newbie »

i think ELECTRON dont know how to disable running the services at startup . may be i am wrong.

give command

"/usr/sbin/ntsysv"

and uncheck all the services.
TheElectron707
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thanx

Post by TheElectron707 »

Asalmu alakum!
thank you all for all ur suggestions, i have turned off many of the services, and the system is a lot better now, but still i have been using mandrake 8.1 previously, it was faster than redhat9. and even after reading archives of other linux newsgroups, i have concluded that redhat9 is slower than mandrake 9.1 by 3-4 times. i have not myself tested the new mandrake 9.1 ... but any comments by those who have checked mandrake. is it really faster than red hat?
TheElectron707
kadnan
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Post by kadnan »

Salam
well,I think that RH`s new desktop(Blue Curve) is the main reason for that slow performance,i found not a single person who claimed that Rh9 is fast..

due to Riva TNT driver problem,i coudn`t install Redhat9,i rather installed Rh8 and upgraded rh9`s necessary packages(gnome,kde3.1 etc etc) but no X related software,i didn`t disable any service and my system is working ok,there is no CPU utilization problem ,its not using more than20%-30%
-its better you use mandrake 9.1

-adnan
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Post by zaeemarshad »

redhat 9.0 on my p3 600 224 MB 20 GB hdd runs a lot faster then winxp or 2000. though i tweaked my hdd using hdparm and got is using udma5 with 32 bit transfer and unloaded loads of services with ntsysv. its fast. good enuff for me.

regards
zaeem
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Post by basit »

Redhat 9.0 ships with new threading library NPTL that is the cause of all stucking/slow performance problems, they seems to have released the remedies for it.

Basit
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Post by Faraz.Fazil »

Well, fawad answered it really well.
Im using winxp sp1 and redhat9 dual boot as well, but on my system, redhat9 doesnt seem to be slower than winxp.

I am sure a little tweaking of display settings and disabling of unneeded services,switching between better window managers,blah blah will considerably imrpove ur rh9 speed.

IMHO, the sawfish window manager is quite slow.So u may try changing to a different window manager.Also nautilus file manager has many unneeded windows and special effects enabled by default that use a lot of ur system resources...so u may need to tweak those as well.

Basit, if im not wrong nptl is The Native POSIX Thread Library for Linux...its intresting to hear that it is the cause of the slow performance in rh9.Where is the remedey/fix located? I tried searching on redhat.com but couldnt find it.

As for nptl here is some info for u folks:

> http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3 ... 709,00.asp

A brief article about what is new in 9. Page four has a description of
Redhat's new release strategy.

Also, quoting:

"To enable NPTL, RH9 arrives with the GNU C Compiler (GCC) 3.2.1 and the GNU libc 2.3.2 with support for NPTL."
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Compile your kernel

Post by lemon »

Correct me i am wrong one way to fine tune the linux to your needs is to re compile the kernel from the source and chose only drivers specific to your hardware it will greately improve the perfomance issues also,

in pre compiled kernel such as in RH 9 distribution huge amounts of unnescessary hardware support is enabled so as to cater the needs of general pc population so it is better to compile the kernel in accordance with your hardware.

Caio.
Wasay Ahmed
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Post by Faraz.Fazil »

Well there are different views on whether recompiling the kernel improves performance or not.I discussed this issue with some fellows on another forum sometime back.Here is the extract

=============================================
Hi all,
>
> I have searched the web for the answer to my question
> but have found conflicting info.

> What exactly are the benefits of recompling the kernel
> (besides support for new device)?
>
> Some say that
> it optimizes the system to work more efficiently.

> However after reading:
>
> http://www.mandrakeuser.org/docs/install/kupgrade.html
>
> The writer states he has never seen kernel recompling
> produce a faster machine. Other posts on the web seem
> to hint that kernel recompiling is a thing of the past
> or a signal . Whats the deal here? I've tried
> recompling before and have had mixed
> results. However, I noticed that you have the option
> to specify the processor type (which makes me think
> that would make it perform faster?).
>
> TIA

VIEW #1
=====================================

It depends on what you compile into your kernel. That article at
mandrakeuser.org is very old, I think it was originally written in the 2.2
kernel days. With the 2.4 kernel series, there are many patches that can be
added to improve performance and responsiveness. Also, you can save some memory
by choosing only the drivers for your particular hardware.

VIEW # 2
======================================

Sure, I'm a big fan of pushing machines to the limits of their
performance. In fact, I've been rebuilding kernels for years and still
get quite a few hits to my kernel rebuild guide (enough so that
searching on 'linux kernel rebuild' on Google still has it in the top
five). The main argument is that CPUs have gotten a lot faster in the
past couple years so that the contribution that the kernel makes to
overall performance is less and less.
I'm not saying that changes to the feature set of the kernel won't make
a difference. Clearly some of the scheduling and latency patches make
noticeable performance gains. However, there's little to be gained from
say, not building all loadable modules or even just rebuilding for a
particular CPU. In the case of modules, the module loader is very smart
about freeing resources so there's negligible overhead in the
loading/unloading of modules. The extra few K of memory used for the
module loader itself is insignificant on today's machines. Even without
the fact the major distributions build processor specific kernels,
optimizing for Athlon vs i686 will still not gain any real-world
improvements. It would be better to rebuild the most used libraries than
the kernel.
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Post by lemon »

the post clearly states that compiling the kernel saves memory,

and more memory is directly proportional to fast performance,

that memory can be used to run X and other programs that are memory hungry instead of swap. So it speeds up.

Also in this case the person having speed problem is running graphic intensive programs that need memory.

So if we have tried closing services,killing proceesess,hdparm,removing themes why not try this.
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Post by Faraz.Fazil »

Yes lemon, that is why i presented both sides of the picture.
lemon wrote:the post clearly states that compiling the kernel saves memory,

and more memory is directly proportional to fast performance,

that memory can be used to run X and other programs that are memory hungry instead of swap. So it speeds up.

Also in this case the person having speed problem is running graphic intensive programs that need memory.

So if we have tried closing services,killing proceesess,hdparm,removing themes why not try this.
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