[ltp] Lightening Debian

[Charles E Taylor IV]

On Tue, 3 May 2005 11:29:43 +1200
cr <cr@orcon.net.nz> wrote:

> I've just installed Debian Sarge on my  Thinkpad i1200 (550MHz, 64MB
> RAM) and  it's very overloaded in X with Metacity as the default window
> manager, it  just about grinds to a halt.   I'd hoped it wouldn't, since
> Debian Woody  (with Sawfish as default window manager) runs quite
> happily, even apps like  Opera, Quanta, Gimp etc without a trace of
> sluggishness.   

It's not the window manager that's killing your speed here, most likely
(though metacity does suck :) ).  It's the rest of the environment - stuff
like nautilus.

Really old Gnome versions are a lot lighter in terms of memory/CPU usage
than the current Gnome releases.  Have you considered using a lighter
desktop environment than Gnome - maybe XFCE?  You should still be able to
run all your Gnome apps - just with less overhead.

Also, upgrade the RAM.  Your laptop can probably take more than 64MB
(probably at *minimum* 160 or 192 MB), and memory doesn't cost THAT much
money.

Heck, my ancient 380XD (233 MHz Pentium MMX) can take 96MB. :)

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------
*  Charles Taylor <tomalek@mindspring.com>
*  Chemistry instructor / Mad scientist / Linux enthusiast!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
*  Web: http://home.mindspring.com/~charletiv/
--------------------------------------------------------------------