O.T. Ubuntu 9.10 weirdness....

My dear old mum's PC needed a bit of a OS upgrade, and not wanting to
spend on hardware (it is 5 years old), I opted for what I hoped was an
OS to give the hardware an easier life and be easy for her to use.

As she needs very little in the way of anything beyond internet, piccie
browsing and some letter writing, I tried the Netbook version.

Very slow operation and I found the CPU running at 100% constantly????

Everything else appears OK, everything works, it just stutters along
though. I've used the same CD for a couple of other applications (an
Acer netbook and a IBM R52) and had no issues.

Steve

 

Might be worth trying Xubuntu, which is a bit lighter. I installed that
on a really old laptop my sister got, and it didn't seem too bad.

 

try #sudo top to see what's using all the cpu - could be just something
easily fixable (like couchdb which will stop after a little while).
--

 

Ta

I'll give it a go

Steve

 

Dunno, why you asking us?

One thing to watch out for (which won't be the problem in this case) is
that IPv6 is enabled by default and if the router doesn't support it,
you'll end up with a 20 second wait for nothing whilst the IPv6 DNS time-
outs and it defaults back to v4.

Disabling IPv6 is the way to go, without upgrading the router.

 

As mentioned up there ^ somewhere, run top to see what is causing grief.

It *may* be that system files are being indexed after install (I forget
which indexing utilities are installed out-of-the-box.)

Do an upgrade too before trying something else.

Also: as mentioned in this thread, xubuntu will work well on low spec
systems if you can live with <thinks> xfce?

 

Actually Xubuntu isn't lighter any more.. but there is an easy fix
using the LXDE desktop in place of gnome... Start wigth a regular
Ubuntu install (not netbook remix).

Next, install the "Lubuntu-Desktop" package.. Logout and then back at
the login page change the session setting from Gnome to LXDE ....
Login again ands as if by magic, a nice snappy desktop interface.

Runs well enough for me on an old Pentium 700mhz laptop with 256Mb
Ram.

 

That's pretty much the hardware I had installed Xubuntu onto. Like the
tip though. Ta.

 

Puppy Linux, its the future

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, YTC#1

Not Solaris, then?

 

Not if you want something small and light that runs on slower procs

 

Well, Xubuntu seems to have done the trick, as mouse operation is a lot
smoother and the hard disk isn't chuntering away to itself.

Time is a bit short ATM so the main thing was to install the OS and
change the BT voyager modem to a modem \ router and get it up and
running. XFCE is the desktop, and yes, she can live with it.

All she needs is four icons - on, off, word processor and internet.

Steve

 

"Oooh, they got the internet on computers now"