Ubuntu x64 really slow on Turion64 X2 laptop?

[Darren S]

Got a works laptop in dual-boot. First partition with standard XP32 and the other half of the drive with Ubuntu x64. Laptop has a Turion64 X2 CPU and 2GB of mmory onboard.

Flies along with XP, but it's dog-slow with Ubuntu. There are 180+ updates to apply (I'm running v8.10 btw) but it hangs when I try to install one of the updates at the top of the list. Started working from the bottom up and so far, so good.

It's still slow though. Like clicking on something takes 3 or 4 seconds for it to react.

Just wondered if anyone knew of a particular issue with the x64 edition and maybe Turion's specifically? All power features are set to maximum and have no power saving features enabled. Or ones that I can see anyway?

Cheers,
D.

 

[KDF]

open a terminal and type

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

try installing all the updates via a console and see if it runs faster.. if you use a pata hard drive then use hdparm and see if your using DMA.

also in a terminal type

top

and see what your system is up to. (to exit top just press q)

 

[Darren S]

Cheers m8. I tried the terminal command above and it downloaded the updates a lot better. It did lock up at one point though, but after a hard reset, it carried on with the remainder. Now that they have downloaded, how do I actually install them?

I'm pretty sure that it's a lack of hardware support on this specific laptop. The laptop fan constantly runs at 100% in Ubuntu (i.e. - fecking noisy!) and it is hit and miss as to whether or not it restarts or shuts down properly when asked.

There's also a random graphics card problem - even after downloading and installing the latest ATi graphics for it. It flickers like mad, despite being in a very normal 1024x768 resolution at 60hz. Restart the laptop and Ubuntu may (or may not) appear perfectly clear.

Windows continues to work fine, however. I'm half inclined to try Ubuntu x32 and see if that's any better?

Which version do you run, btw?

Thanks again,
D.

 

[Dink]

have you tried kubuntu on it?

I've got my laptop dual booting kubuntu and ubuntu and out of the 2 kubuntu seems to run better (both version 8.10)

 

[Daz]

Darren S, what laptop you got?
Have you ever run any previous versions of Ubuntu or any other distributions? Did they do the same?

 

[KDF]

Now that they have downloaded, how do I actually install them?

It installs them for you straight after they are donwloaded.

I'm pretty sure that it's a lack of hardware support on this specific laptop. The laptop fan constantly runs at 100% in Ubuntu (i.e. - fecking noisy!) and it is hit and miss as to whether or not it restarts or shuts down properly when asked.

There's also a random graphics card problem - even after downloading and installing the latest ATi graphics for it. It flickers like mad, despite being in a very normal 1024x768 resolution at 60hz. Restart the laptop and Ubuntu may (or may not) appear perfectly clear.

Try disabling compiz if its running press alt + f2 which will open a run box then type

metacity --replace

If your not running compiz it shouldn't do any harm and it will reset back to what you were running before the next time you reboot anyway. If it does fix the problem then let me know and i'll tell you how to do it permanently.

Which version do you run, btw?

Thanks again,
D.

Im currently using Ubuntu 8.10, CentOS5, RHEL5, DSL, Whitebox 4, Gentoo, Debian, Suse... etc lol, but if its just my home systems you mean, they are all Ubuntu 8.10.


PS. With regards to the laptop fan thats probably just a temp probe thing.. probably fixable if linux can get some temp readings from your cpu.

 

[Darren S]

Feeling the Ubuntu love on here!

Cheers for the responses, guys. Daz - the works laptop is a HP-Compaq 6715s which I've added an extra gig of memory to make it 2GB in total. Having had a quick look on some of the Ubuntu forums, it seems a bit problematic this laptop specifically....

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=499060

I have tried running a previous version of Ubuntu on two occasions. One 32-bit version on my old Athlon XP PC and a 64-bit version on my AMD X2 6400+ PC. Both versions worked fine - very smooth and responsive.

KDF - I'll give the compiz idea a try - see if that makes a difference. The other thing I thought to try was in post 4 by 'srd' in that thread above. Right at the end of the text, it says 'noapic'. He apologies for his English on an earlier post - could this actually be 'noacpi'? I've known of a few mobo issues in my time with Windows and various ACPI settings. It might go into some way to explain the constant max fan running and maybe a power issue in feeding the CPU?

Just clutching at straws here, but I do think that the issue is hardware level based. If I click on the Firefox icon at the top, for example - it will take between 30 and 40 seconds for me to see the Google backdrop. I know the laptop is far from from cutting edge, but its a lot more potent than the old Athlon XP desktop I ran Ubuntu on previously and with something as straight forward as Firefox - it should breeze it.

Dink - what's the difference between kubuntu and ubuntu?

Thanks again...

D.