Should my laptop be so slow?

giwrg98 · 2012-06-12 14:58:10

I have a Compaq 615 with these specs: http://pastebin.com/iHbLzsZU
I have the MATE DE installed but my computer is again very slow. For example, when I have Firefox and a terminal open, the computer becomes very slow even when switching windows. Is that normal?

masteryod · 2012-06-12 15:57:11

2.2GHz k8/k10 dual core CPU with 2GB of RAM is capable of much much more then just displaying browser and terminal so there is definitely something wrong.

Something to look at:
- gpu drivers/hardware acceleration (what is your output of "glxinfo | grep render"?)
- cpu scaling

There also can be hardware related problem, overheating, hdd/memory failure etc. To determine this, plug and play different than Arch distro live cd like Ubuntu/Mint and see how it works.

PS Check if some process is not eating resources, you can paste output of "top" command too

PSS This slowdown occurs only with browser opened?

Last edited by masteryod (2012-06-12 16:00:51)

giwrg98 · 2012-06-12 19:30:46

masteryod wrote:

2.2GHz k8/k10 dual core CPU with 2GB of RAM is capable of much much more then just displaying browser and terminal so there is definitely something wrong.
Something to look at:
- gpu drivers/hardware acceleration (what is your output of "glxinfo | grep render"?)
- cpu scaling
There also can be hardware related problem, overheating, hdd/memory failure etc. To determine this, plug and play different than Arch distro live cd like Ubuntu/Mint and see how it works.
PS Check if some process is not eating resources, you can paste output of "top" command too
PSS This slowdown occurs only with browser opened?

glxinfo | grep render:

Error: unable to open display

As for cpu scaling, I don't know what are you talking about
Also, firefox is eating from 30 % up to 50 %(but only for a moment )
I am now downloading Ubuntu and to try firefox.

masteryod · 2012-06-12 19:42:11

giwrg98 wrote:

glxinfo | grep render:
Error: unable to open display

Run it as a normal user not as root.

giwrg98 wrote:

As for cpu scaling, I don't know what are you talking about

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cpufreq
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop

PS What exactly is your experience with Arch and Linux in general?

PSS I did quick peek through your posts and I've got advice: read Arch wiki more carefully and also get familiar with tools you use (read man pages and read wiki!)

Last edited by masteryod (2012-06-12 19:56:04)

giwrg98 · 2012-06-12 19:50:32

masteryod wrote:

giwrg98 wrote:
glxinfo | grep render:
Error: unable to open display
Run it as a normal user not as root.
giwrg98 wrote:
As for cpu scaling, I don't know what are you talking about
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cpufreq
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop
PS What exactly is your experience with Arch and Linux in general?

I had been using Ubuntu for quite a long time and I started experimenting with Arch Linux and FreeBSD. I am quite a newbie in Arch.
As for the glxinfo command, I ran it as a normal user.

masteryod · 2012-06-12 20:00:38

giwrg98 wrote:

As for the glxinfo command, I ran it as a normal user.

Strange... did you install graphics card drivers?

giwrg98 · 2012-06-12 20:06:30

masteryod wrote:

giwrg98 wrote:
As for the glxinfo command, I ran it as a normal user.
Strange... did you install graphics card drivers?

I have installed xf86-video-ati

masteryod · 2012-06-12 20:08:49

Hmm... just to be sure what's the output of "whoami" command?

Last edited by masteryod (2012-06-12 20:09:04)

giwrg98 · 2012-06-12 20:12:50

It's giwrg98

masteryod · 2012-06-12 20:17:17

Ok.... but you are typing from terminal emulator inside DE not from TTY?

giwrg98 · 2012-06-12 20:19:29

Million apologies for my stupidity but I ran the command through ssh...
Here is the true output:

direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RS780
    GL_EXT_vertex_array_bgra, GL_NV_conditional_render,

masteryod · 2012-06-12 20:41:07

No problem, ok so graphic part seems to be alright. Can you provide more info? Did you tried other DE/WM? Is this firefox/web browser specific or happens on other applications?

giwrg98 · 2012-06-12 20:49:08

masteryod wrote:

No problem, ok so graphic part seems to be alright. Can you provide more info? Did you tried other DE/WM? Is this firefox/web browser specific or happens on other applications?

It happens also when I have geany IDE and mate-terminal open for quite some time or after an sys upgrade. I have just added this line:

radeon.modeset=0

in /boot/grub/menu.lst to see if it works as it says here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Disable_KMS ...

giwrg98 · 2012-06-12 20:54:09

It is a bit better now (I think). I have opened geany IDE and firefox and it isn't very slow, just a bit...
EDIT: Ok, now it is very slow again

Last edited by giwrg98 (2012-06-12 20:55:14)

masteryod · 2012-06-12 21:04:29

There's to many variables, lets rule out environment, try openbox (it's small to download and doesn't do mess). And try this Ubuntu live cd to check if laptop itself is fine. Did you run this laptop earlier on any OS before Arch?

giwrg98 · 2012-06-12 21:09:58

I have tried Ubuntu when it had gnome2 and it worked like a charm. I have installed open box once but it was quite hard to configure it. I will try again

masteryod · 2012-06-12 21:32:06

I don't force you to use Openbox, I just try to determine what's the source of problem so just run it once for testing. Menu is under right mouse click, you don't have to configure it, just go with first lines of wiki. Once you run it you can run application from xterm and see if problem occurs.

Anyway it's kinda hard to guess what's wrong especially when I'm tired and sleepy FYI if you are rookie It's very good idea to learn basics of Arch in comfort of virtual machine and then install it on bare metal.

Last edited by masteryod (2012-06-12 21:45:43)

adamrehard · 2012-06-13 03:52:16

Check your hostname. According to the wiki it's a common problem of system slowness.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FA … _at_all.21

Just as a sanity check, can you post the output of "df -h"?

Can you please read this and post the output of sensors? This should let us (and you) see whether it's overheating.

That's all I've got at the moment. Hope it helps.

Last edited by adamrehard (2012-06-13 03:52:49)

giwrg98 · 2012-06-13 14:37:48

adamrehard wrote:

Check your hostname. According to the wiki it's a common problem of system slowness.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FA … _at_all.21
Just as a sanity check, can you post the output of "df -h"?
Can you please read this and post the output of sensors? This should let us (and you) see whether it's overheating.
That's all I've got at the moment. Hope it helps.

For some reason my laptop looks normal today!
df -h output:

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
rootfs          7.4G  3.4G  3.6G  49% /
dev             881M     0  881M   0% /dev
run             883M  296K  882M   1% /run
/dev/sda3       7.4G  3.4G  3.6G  49% /
shm             883M     0  883M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           883M   36K  883M   1% /tmp
/dev/sda4       291G  5.7G  270G   3% /home
/dev/sda1        98M   18M   75M  19% /boot

sensors output:

acpitz-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
temp1:        +94.0 C  (crit = +105.0 C)
temp2:        +30.0 C  (crit = +105.0 C)

k10temp-pci-00c3
Adapter: PCI adapter
temp1:        +94.8 C  (high = +70.0 C)
                       (crit = +100.0 C, hyst = +95.0 C)

masteryod · 2012-06-13 15:12:22

Your CPU is at 95 C, am I getting this right?! Is your laptop actually running hot? If so this is really bad. Is your fan working at all?

Last edited by masteryod (2012-06-13 15:13:14)

giwrg98 · 2012-06-14 11:53:43

masteryod wrote:

Your CPU is at 95 C, am I getting this right?! Is your laptop actually running hot? If so this is really bad. Is your fan working at all?

My lapto gets indeed quite hot and how can I realize if my fan is working?
EDIT: I don't know if this helps, but I have installed gnome 3 and in startx, there is an error and in gdm I tells me that it failed to load gnome session.

Last edited by giwrg98 (2012-06-14 12:46:01)

masteryod · 2012-06-14 21:44:32

giwrg98 wrote:

My lapto gets indeed quite hot and how can I realize if my fan is working?

The same way you know that vacuum cleaner is working - use your ears Also look at BIOS, most of them report fan RPMs. But this is serious thing, 95 C on CPU is not good, not normal and can't be leaved as is. It can potentially damage your hardware and definitely will shorten it's lifespan.

giwrg98 wrote:

EDIT: I don't know if this helps, but I have installed gnome 3 and in startx, there is an error and in gdm I tells me that it failed to load gnome session.

I don't know what exactly are you doing and what did you do already. What kind of error? People on forum are not mind-readers. startx by default should put you into bare twm (3 very old school windows with greenish borders on black background). What you want to do is add "gdm" to DAEMONS array in /etc/rc.conf and login using gdm login manager. I really suggest to go through beginners guide* more carefully - there really is all you need to know and do, explained easy and step by step.

*and other wiki pages like gnome, nvidia/ati etc. Don't be intimidated, beginnings are not always smooth but if you are right kind of computer user Arch will open whole new world for you and will be your best companion.

Last edited by masteryod (2012-06-14 21:45:37)

oldtimeyjunk · 2012-06-14 23:59:00

My laptop gets to these temperatues - it gets to 96 celcius, but in Windows it told me it was running at 104 celcius. Most of the time, it's caused by build quality which cannot be fixed; or a faulty fan; or a blocked fan that's full of dust.
But, I've been running MATE with lower specs -1.73GHz, but because of temperature, it brings me down to 800MHz unless I force it to go back up - and at high temperature, I saw no significant slowdown except when running Flash videos.

Last edited by oldtimeyjunk (2012-06-14 23:59:56)

giwrg98 · 2012-06-15 08:17:36

It makes lots of noise and whenever I turn it off, I have to wait for about a minute to turn it on again. If I try to turn it on too soon, it will turn off imediatly. I am now about to check from the BIOS.

oldtimeyjunk wrote:

My laptop gets to these temperatues - it gets to 96 celcius, but in Windows it told me it was running at 104 celcius. Most of the time, it's caused by build quality which cannot be fixed; or a faulty fan; or a blocked fan that's full of dust.
But, I've been running MATE with lower specs -1.73GHz, but because of temperature, it brings me down to 800MHz unless I force it to go back up - and at high temperature, I saw no significant slowdown except when running Flash videos.

How do you know that it brings you down to 96 Celsius and how did you bring it back up?
EDIT: Right now I have 100 C!
EDIT2: Also, almost every time I wait and turn it on, the screen is black and it does not even show the Compaq icon in BIOS so I am forced every time to turn it off from the power button and try again.

Last edited by giwrg98 (2012-06-15 08:24:31)

axel668 · 2012-06-15 08:59:58

suppose you have a hardware problem (broken fan, cooling) which causes your CPU to scale down which then causes the performance issues.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-06-12 14:58:10

Should my laptop be so slow?

#2 2012-06-12 15:57:11

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#3 2012-06-12 19:30:46

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#4 2012-06-12 19:42:11

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#5 2012-06-12 19:50:32

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#6 2012-06-12 20:00:38

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#7 2012-06-12 20:06:30

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#8 2012-06-12 20:08:49

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#9 2012-06-12 20:12:50

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#10 2012-06-12 20:17:17

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#11 2012-06-12 20:19:29

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#12 2012-06-12 20:41:07

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#13 2012-06-12 20:49:08

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#14 2012-06-12 20:54:09

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#15 2012-06-12 21:04:29

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#16 2012-06-12 21:09:58

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#17 2012-06-12 21:32:06

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#18 2012-06-13 03:52:16

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#19 2012-06-13 14:37:48

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#20 2012-06-13 15:12:22

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#21 2012-06-14 11:53:43

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#22 2012-06-14 21:44:32

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#23 2012-06-14 23:59:00

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#24 2012-06-15 08:17:36

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

#25 2012-06-15 08:59:58

Re: Should my laptop be so slow?

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