[CLUE-Tech] X-Sever/KDE "tuning"

[Randy Arabie]

I've been using RH Linux for 3+ years now, but stayed away 
from the GUI.  This was mainly due to the low budget, hand-
me-down, ancient hardware (486's) I have for home PC usage.  
And, I wasn't using Linux as a "productivity" machine...I 
didn't need it for word processing, spreadsheets, etc....

I do have a "modern" box at home that, until Saturday, was 
running Windoze 2000.  However, I liberated it, and it is now 
running RH 7.1 (would be 7.2 or another 'flavor' if my @home 
service wouldn't have died).

I like the new KDE "look and feel" however, I'm not at all 
impressed with the performance.  Things load really slow.  I 
launch an application and then sit and wait, watch the 
"spinning disc" icon down on the toolbar, it disappears, then 
I wait a little longer, and then suddenly my application 
appears.  The total time varies, but even a simple x-term 
took 23 seconds to load.

Does anyone have any tips for improving (tunining) the 
performance of X or the window manager?  

My system is an AMD K6II 500 with 256 MB RAM, and 10 GB IDE 
HD.  The video card I'm using is a S3 ViRGE/DX with 4 MB 
memory onboard.

I expect the first recommendation to be upgrade the video 
card.  That may be an option, but I'm hoping I can find 
another solution.  I don't play games, so I'm not after that 
sort of performance.  I do a little graphics for webpage 
design.  However, my wife had Photoshop 6 on Windoze 2000 and 
the system handled that fine...shouldn't Linux be able to do 
it too?

-- 

Cheers!

Randy

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Randy Arabie
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