What type of hardware are you using?

[Jeremy Messenger]

On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 12:16:48 -0600, Scott T. Hildreth  
<shildreth at allantgroup.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 2006-01-11 at 11:51 -0600, Jeremy Messenger wrote:
>> On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 09:53:53 -0600, Scott T. Hildreth
>> <shildreth at allantgroup.com> wrote:
>>
>> > At home, my machine is a 1 GHZ, with 768 mb of memory.  I use xfce4,
>> > evolution, firefox, gnome-office, ...etc.  It seems that with every
>> > upgrade, the 1GHZ cpu is not enough power anymore.  I use evolution
>> > at work, but I am trying Thunderbird at home now.  The new evolution
>> > is too slow on my home server.  Thunderbird is better (less cpu
>> > intensive), but not snappy by any means.  Plus I miss some of the
>> > features of Evolution, but this is straying from my question.  Has
>> > anyone else noticed this issue or is everyone else running on faster
>> > processors?
>>
>> What's version of FreeBSD are you using? There are several ways to make
>> your FreeBSD desktop feel faster/smoother by using FreeBSD 6.x
>
>   I just upgraded to 6.0.
>
>> or 7.x with
>> ULE, using either libpthread/libthr, using ccache, tweak kern.ipc.shmmax
>> and kern.ipc.shmall (see below), disable debug in kernel
>
>  I'm pretty sure I commented out the kernel debugging.
>
>> and malloc.conf,
>> follow tuning(7) and others that I have forgotten.
>>
>
>   I will check out the tuning manpage.
>
>
>> /etc/sysctl.conf:
>> =====================
>> kern.ipc.shmmax=67108864
>> kern.ipc.shmall=32768
>> =====================
>>
>> The Mozilla products and OpenOffice.org are always known to be slow on
>> low-end machine and use a lot of ram.
>
>   I was going to upgrade the ram, but I haven't seen the swap being
> heavily used or filled.  It seems to be more in the CPU.
>
>>  I never have use or follow up with
>> Evolution, so can't really make any comment on it. GNOME team are  
>> working
>> very hard to make GNOME 2.13/2.14 go faster and use less memory, which  
>> is
>> what part I am looking forward for. However, try to replace from
>> heavy-weight apps to light-weight apps. Like I am using Opera
>> (linux-opera) instead Firefox/Mozilla/Thunderbird/Evolution, TextMaker
>> (shareware) instead OpenOffice/AbiWord and etc.
>>
>
>   I really haven't noticed too much slowness with Firefox.

I use Opera everyday, so when I try to use Firefox or other Mozilla  
products. It's very noticeable. :-) Maybe the story would be different if  
I use Firefox everyday and never touch Opera.

>> Isn't it kind of shame that Linux/BSD/UNIX desktop need faster machine  
>> and
>> more ram than Win98/Win2k/WinXP in these day? :-/ Before anyone make any
>> comment on use Fluxbox, Xfce or so, look at the features what
>> Win98/Win2k/WinXP can do compare to these light-weight WM.
>>
>> Anyway, as for hardware, I have:
>>
>> AthlonXP 3200+ Barton
>> 512mb RAM
>> GeForce4 Ti4200 dualhead 128mb (AGP8X)
>> 160gb HDD (8 cache)
>>
>
> http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1644629&Sku=MBM-P4M800-340
>
> I was thinking of buying this board and processor, but I read a review  
> that stated
> the Celeron D 's still run pretty hot.

I like Pentium-M/Core Duo (I think, it's lesser hot than most Intel CPUs)  
or AMD (any CPUs), but that's up to you. You can check in hardware.html[1]  
and try to ask in freebsd-hardware@ to see if someone can help you too.

[1] http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.0R/hardware.html

>> 100% apps in here have been compiled with debug and I don't notice any
>> slowdown or whatever even in video and game too. Running in GNOME  
>> 2.12.x.
>
> I get temporary X freezes,
>
> (EE) R128(0): R128CCEWaitForIdle: (DEBUG) CCE idle took i = 1025
> (EE) R128(0): Idle timed out, resetting engine...
>
> ...I saw someone else was having this problem, I hope it is fixed
> with the new Xorg release.

Maybe you can try a few suggested in  
http://bugme.osdl.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4337 .. It might be better if you  
report to freebsd-x11@ and see if they can help you.

Cheers,
Mezz

>> Cheers,
>> Mezz
>>
>> >                                Thanks,
>> >                                   STH


-- 
mezz7 at cox.net  -  mezz at FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD GNOME Team
http://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome/  -  gnome at FreeBSD.org