On Feb 13, 2008 5:35 PM, Masters IT Gmail mastersit.com@gmail.com wrote:
I am having the same problem about performance issue, well perhaps it is because I have slow memory, I have a P4 HT with 256mb DDR 400 and HD 40 gb, today I reinstalled the -OS Centos 5.1 final with gnome. I don´t know if it is okay to have only 4 megs of ram free. Perhaps I need more ram because I am using gnome I ask because is the first time I probe linux in my desktop pc, I note that is acting slow what do you think?
There are some ways to free up some memory in order to better adjust my os with a minimum amount of ram like 256mb. This pc is for learning, so I don´t know if it deserves buying more memory but your experience is more than mine.
Thanks in advance.
George from Uruguay.
George,
I'm fairly confident your system is swapping and thereby causing the issue, you can check it out with dstat for example. A old 40 GB harddrive is not improving the situation, I'm sure iostat (part of the sysstat RPM package) will tell you by showing a high await value. You need at least 512 MB to run just Gnome in a resonable paste, you may want to consider some lightweight window manager such as xfce4, blackbox etc.
- Nicolas