Is Ubuntu slow?
Poma
Thus far, I always heard that Linux helps run the PC faster than Windows. I
got RH9 installed which gave me the proof that the internet surfing or
downloading was indeed faster on RH9 than on Windows.
However, as I could not listen to any MP3s, I stopped using RH9. Much later,
I got Ubuntu V5.10.
But my experience with it isn't very good as there's no difference between
Windows speed or Ubuntu speed while surfing the internet.
Can anyone tell me why is it so?
Rgds, Poma
Colin Wilson
Did you look at all ? - I was able to play mp3s under redhat as far back
as 5.9 beta
praf
My Ubuntu install is very slow, but I should be blamed for that. In the
first days after installation I started installing indiscriminately all
kinds of software, programs, codecs. Half of what I installed is
useless. Now my system is bloated and sluggish. My next project is to
trim down the system. Where should I start. For example I want to remove
the sound juicer, but add/remove programs does not list it.
As for the internet experience I don't think things can be compared. At
different times speed can vary in a wide range. Download speeds can be
very different than they were a hour ago. I use to use Firefox under
Windows and continue to do so in Ubuntu. Things are pretty much the
same. Why would be Ubuntu faster, it is using the same TCP/IP.
ray
Might be able to help you out if you could tell us how and what you're
measuring.
Chris
> As for the internet experience I don't think things can be compared. At
> different times speed can vary in a wide range. Download speeds can be
> very different than they were a hour ago. I use to use Firefox under
> Windows and continue to do so in Ubuntu. Things are pretty much the
> same. Why would be Ubuntu faster, it is using the same TCP/IP.
The difference is that Firefox under Windows is looking at the internet
through layers of "filtering" crap that is /essential/ if you want Windows
to be in any way "secure".
Whether you choose "Norton Internet Security", "Kaspersky Internet
security", "F-secure" or whatever nonsense package (none of which actually
work properly), they all significantly slow down the display of web pages
to no great effect.
Under Linux, you might have a basic firewall in place, and your router
should be doing NAT for you, you'll usually find that web pages are
displayed /much/ more quickly.
One of my demonstrations of the advantages of Linux over Windows has two
computers sharing the same router, displaying the same pages from the 'net.
The Windows computer is usually the customers' own one (so that it hasn't
been tweaked by me), and the Linux computer is usually a /slower/ machine.
The Linux machine is generally between two and three times faster than the
Windoze one!
A further demonstration is to locate all the spyware, trojan and virus files
on their Windows machine using Knoppix - it usually scares the heck out of
them!
Chris
Poma
"ray" <r...@zianet.com> wrote in message
news:pan.2006.09.06....@zianet.com...
Allright, in other words this is what I wanna share.
Earlier, I had a *40kbps* connection thru cable. Whenever I downloaded any
file, the max download speed I got is 2kbps...it varied between 1.5 - 2kbps.
Seldom was the high of 2.5 achieved.
But the same files on RH9 got downloaded at speed of 3.5-4. 4.5- or even
5kbps. Sites like CNN that usually takes longer to come-up unlike Yahoo came
up faster.
But after I got Ubuntu, I have not seen any significant difference between
it and WinXP. And this despite now my speed being 64kbps.
Is Ubuntu indeed slower than RH9?
Rgds, Poma.
MacDork
has *some* effect on this, there are a lot of other reasons why Ubuntu
feels slower to you, now:
-- Your ISP could be having issues.
-- The sites you've gone to could be having issues.
-- There could be more users on your network -- you're on a cable
network, so it's typical for your speed to drop when there are other
users downloading files at the same time.
-- You might be using a different browser?
-- The browser you're using could be a little better optimized for RH9.
There are many more factors that could be influencing your download speeds.
I'm not sure what you mean when you mention that you couldn't listen to
MP3s -- were you downloading them? Were they on your hard disk, but the
machine simply couldn't play them? And honestly, it's been about 7
years since I had speeds like yours, and those were with dial-up, so I'm
having a hard time relating. The speed difference between 40Kbps and
64Kbps really isn't that big, to be honest. In Europe it's common to
have 10 Mbps connections, and I *think* some Asian countries are
introducing 100 Mbps.
Poma
"MacDork" <mac...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:oqOdnSqdT4mX2JzY...@speakeasy.net...
Mac, thanks for the detailed explanation. Further to what you said..... I
would elaborate it pointwise.
**I'm not quite sure if there was an ISP issue as the downloads were sort of
TESTS. So for some short time I was on XP and then to test the same
files/speed etc, I booted to RH9 and there it was faster. This was done at
various times with nearly same results when XP was slow compared to RH.
**The sites may get busy during particular peak-hour time. But my experience
showed no matter what the time was XP was slow.
**While I agree that more users strain the bandwidth, however, my ISP guy
told me that each subscriber is given dedicated line, although its just
40kbps or 64kbps. I wonder if I should buy his explanation.
**RH had the default Mozilla browser while XP had IE, Firefox, Mozilla1.7.
**Maybe Mozilla was better optimized for RH.
**I agree that various factors influence downloads but it seems they don't
yield considerable influence on RH ;-)
**I was quite fascinated by Linux as its Unix based which is strongly
recommended for security and stability. I also heard the Linux gives better
sound output than on Windows and that was one of the many reasons why I got
Linux...RH9. But my joy was shortlived as RH had no MP3 player and also it
did not play any audio cd. The *sound test* was OK and yet, although it
showed that the audio cd was playing, there was no sound output.
The MP3s on HDD or cd could not be played as RH has no default MP3 player. I
tried to get Mplayer or Xmms but there was always some or the other error.
Finally, I gave up on RH9 for quite a long time and then recently got
Ubuntu only to know that it's default player Totem also cannot play MP3s.
Hope the perseverance to stick with Linux pays off.
Rgds, Poma
ray
There are several places you can go on the internet to measure your
throughput. You might try those, several times with each system, to get
some actual numbers. I've been using several Linux distributions over the
years, and I've not experienced any particular speed differences. For one
thing, the cpu is so much faster than your internet connection that it
completely swamps the difference. I'd suggest you recheck you internet
connection setup and see if you have eveything right. The only significant
slow downs I've seen have been related to: IPV6 - disable that, or DNS
servers that seem to timeout - but that only affects name resolution. The
solution there is "options timeout:1" in the /etc/resolv.conf file.
arachnid
> Finally, I gave up on RH9 for quite a long time and then recently got
> Ubuntu only to know that it's default player Totem also cannot play
> MP3s. Hope the perseverance to stick with Linux pays off. Rgds, Poma
You're going to have that problem on most of the free distributions. MP3
is patented and the holder has been suing people lately. They just had
some Sandisk mp3 players seized at a trade show and sued Sandisk for
distributing mp3 players without having purchased a license. The free
distributions can't afford royalties but there are unauthorized decoders
all over the Internet that you can install yourself. There are also some
(like lame) that fall through the cracks of the license and should be
entirely legal for individuals. However, most distro's fear they would be
treading on thin legal ice to bundle these.
Here in the US there's a similar problem with DVD's. The open-source
software necessary to decode DVD's so you can view them under Linux is
illegal in the United States. Licensed closed-source codecs can be
purchased and some commercial distributions include them (Linspire, for
example) but again the free distributions can't afford them (and as a
matter of principle many distro's won't touch closed-source). Once again,
Americans can (illegally) download DVD codecs from countries where they're
legal, which is what most people do. However the distro's themselves have
to be very careful here, because under the DMCA it's illegal for them even
to tell people where they can get this software.
If you want multimedia drivers bundled in then you need to find a
commercial distro that has purchased the official licenses. Redhat is more
a server and office OS. I've heard that the commercial version of SuSE
includes licensed codecs for various proprietary formats.
Chris
> The speed difference between 40Kbps and
> 64Kbps really isn't that big, to be honest. In Europe it's common to
> have 10 Mbps connections, and I *think* some Asian countries are
> introducing 100 Mbps.
Here in the U.K. 4 Mbps is common, 10 Mbps is often available on cable
networks, and we get 25 Mbps as /standard/ on our cable, with an option
for /50/ Mbps at slightly higher cost. We get 50 Mbps without download
limits for slightly under £1 a day.
Cris
Chris
> Finally, I gave up on RH9 for quite a long time and then recently got
> Ubuntu only to know that it's default player Totem also cannot play MP3s.
You need to use Automatix. It's a script that loads all the "missing"
codecs and other stuff into Ubuntu. It's really easy to use. The other
alternative is EasyUbuntu, which is similar to Automatix but simpler (and
less capable).
> Hope the perseverance to stick with Linux pays off.
A little research with Google will help you out enormously!
Chris
devlin
Celeron and 768 MB of RAM it runs OpenOffice 2.0 A LOT slower than my
other PC with a AMD K6-2 400mhz processor and 256 MB of RAM.
All the apps that have Windows counterparts seem to run slower on the
machine with Kubuntu and much higher end specs.
Devlin
Man plans, God laughs.....
fda
> I noticed the same thing. I installed Kubuntu in my PC that has a 1.7G
> Celeron and 768 MB of RAM it runs OpenOffice 2.0 A LOT slower than my
> other PC with a AMD K6-2 400mhz processor and 256 MB of RAM.
>
> All the apps that have Windows counterparts seem to run slower on the
> machine with Kubuntu and much higher end specs.
Could it be due to the fact that with Kubuntu you use *two* graphic
libraries ? (I guess that even though KDE libs are installed, /some/
parts of Ubuntu /still/ require some obscure function of the GNOME
libs). This could perhaps lead to severe processor cache inefficiencies.
Just my two cents.
Man-wai Chang
> I got Ubuntu V5.10.
> But my experience with it isn't very good as there's no difference between
> Windows speed or Ubuntu speed while surfing the internet.
Maybe you should try Fedora Core 6 ...Ubuntu is ok for older hardware.
--
.~. Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY. http://www.linux-sxs.org
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (Ubuntu 6.06) Linux 2.6.17.13
^ ^ 20:55:01 up 3 days 1:49 0 users load average: 1.01 1.01 1.00
news://news.3home.net news://news.hkpcug.org news://news.newsgroup.com.hk
Jon Solberg
>> However, as I could not listen to any MP3s, I stopped using RH9. Much later,
>> I got Ubuntu V5.10.
>> But my experience with it isn't very good as there's no difference between
>> Windows speed or Ubuntu speed while surfing the internet.
>
It's good for new hardware too. Your point being?
--
Jon Solberg (remove "nospam" from email address).
Hackje
> Man-wai Chang said the following on 2006-09-12 14:56:
>> ...Ubuntu is ok for older hardware.
>
> It's good for new hardware too. Your point being?
>
Ubuntu is good for hardware ?
(lol)
Hackje
Richard Johnson
"Hackje" <hac...@zeelandnet.nl> wrote in message
news:UvadnYw2Sfp...@zeelandnet.nl...
Linspire 5
Suse 10.1
Knoppix
Xandros
Fedora
I found that Ubantu and Kubantu works on every machine I have. Those
machines range from 2 home builds (AMD and Intel), IBM Thinkpad A22M,
Toshiba 2805 Satellites (401 - 503), Dell 6000 and an older Dell 500 MHz
machine (not sure of the model number at the moment). It recognized every
video card, modem, wireless card, built in network, sound, and input device
they have. I have not found it to be slow at all. In fact because of the
testing I have settled upon Ubuntu and Kubuntu as the OS on 2 of my
machines. By the way, all are able to work with my Linksys print server and
the HP network printer I have in the network too. So, they are my primary
Linux learning machines.
Rich
devlin
I stumbled upon some info on hdparm and played w/ my settings and holy
crap my system loads apps ALOT faster.
What I did -
made sure dma was turned on:
sudo hdparm -d /dev/hda
changed hard drives acoustic management to highest setting (noiser HD,
best performance)
sudo hdparm -M 254 /dev/hda
I don't even see the OpenOffice 2.0 splash screen anymore it loads so
fast I don't see it LOL! Your results may vary depending on processor
speed and hard drive. I am using a 1.7ghz Celeron, 768mb, 20G hard drive.