New User Questions

I’ve just installed Calculate Linux on a spare partition to try it out and it is certainly an interesting distro.
The installation went fine and it looks quite polished.
Emerge works smoothly.
However, on my old Presario C500, Calculate Linux seems a little slow compared to my working distro.
Booting time is just about the same but GDM login and logout takes quite a bit longer.
Also, the same applications (Midori, Thunar, Xfce apps and the Terminal) load slower and are less responsive.
I noticed swappiness is set on a high value (80) and lowered it to 10.
Are there ways to make the distro faster or where can I find a tutorial to improve the distro performance on my machine?

Hello Antonio,

Could you give us more information? I assume that you are using the XFCE version of CL?

How much RAM do you have? Is the system actually using the swap space? How full is the HDD or partition? What does htop show you about system usage?

The following post might be of help: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-796210-highlight-presario.html

Of course more RAM always helps! I am running the LxQT version of CL and it is very fast on my Thinkpad T430!

Cheers,
Bill

Hi Bill,

The laptop I’m running Calculate Linux XFCE on is a Presario C500.
I just installed the distro last night so the partition only allocates the software it comes with out of the box, plus Midori and Jwm which I installed to try Emerge.
My reference is a Slackware system I use as my working distro on the same machine, also with XFCE and pretty much the same apps, which runs very fast.
For example, on this machine I tried Linux Mint with KDE and it was pretty sluggish, but then, even Slackware with KDE was slow and I done away with KDE altogether on this laptop.
Calculate Linux runs fine, autodetection is top notch, but is snoticeably slower than my working distro, which is surprising since it is i686 optimized.
I did not rebuild the system or tried any tweaks yet (except lowering swappiness), just used the fresh install.
The most noticeable difference is loading XFCE after login, which takes several seconds longer than usual.
Also Midori is not as lighting fast as on Slackware, albeit is more stable, never crashed so far.
One of my (wild) guesses is that maybe the splash screen themes loading during boot draws some CPU power.
Also there might be some services which I don need on an old laptop which I might turn off.
I’m not an expert, just use Linux for my daily work, but I like what I’ve seen so far of Calculate Linux and wish to learn the ropes.
I would appreciate any tips.

Sincerely

Antonio

I enclose the following information about the hardware and RAM.

mac@calculate ~ $ lscpu

Architecture:          i686
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                2
On-line CPU(s) list:   0,1
Thread(s) per core:    1
Core(s) per socket:    2
Socket(s):             1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 14
Model name:            Genuine Intel(R) CPU           T2080  @ 1.73GHz
Stepping:              12
CPU MHz:               800.000
CPU max MHz:           1733.0000
CPU min MHz:           800.0000
BogoMIPS:              3457.88
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              1024K
Flags:                 fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon bts aperfmperf eagerfpu pni monitor est tm2 xtpr pdcm dtherm


mac@calculate ~ $ cat /proc/meminfo

MemTotal:         501484 kB
MemFree:           14272 kB
MemAvailable:     107640 kB
Buffers:            2240 kB
Cached:           196332 kB
SwapCached:         5512 kB
Active:           159848 kB
Inactive:         155768 kB
Active(anon):      95368 kB
Inactive(anon):   123420 kB
Active(file):      64480 kB
Inactive(file):    32348 kB
Unevictable:          32 kB
Mlocked:              32 kB
HighTotal:             0 kB
HighFree:              0 kB
LowTotal:         501484 kB
LowFree:           14272 kB
SwapTotal:        942076 kB
SwapFree:         721012 kB
Dirty:                 8 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:        116820 kB
Mapped:           112584 kB
Shmem:            101708 kB
Slab:              22444 kB
SReclaimable:       9852 kB
SUnreclaim:        12592 kB
KernelStack:        2360 kB
PageTables:         4208 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:     1192816 kB
Committed_AS:    1923828 kB
VmallocTotal:     517624 kB
VmallocUsed:           0 kB
VmallocChunk:          0 kB
DirectMap4k:       14848 kB
DirectMap4M:      499712 kB


calculate mac # lsmod

Module                  Size  Used by
ctr                     3272  2
ccm                     7832  1
ecryptfs               69769  0
cbc                     2408  0
sha256_generic         10057  2
hmac                    2729  1
encrypted_keys          9424  1 ecryptfs
af_packet              30711  10
bnep                    8779  2
bluetooth             317463  7 bnep
fuse                   78553  3
snd_hda_codec_conexant     9482  1
snd_hda_codec_generic    52342  1 snd_hda_codec_conexant
snd_hda_intel          20101  3
snd_hda_codec          78856  3 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_codec_generic
snd_hda_core           40477  4 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_codec_generic
snd_hwdep               4724  1 snd_hda_codec
arc4                    1536  4
snd_pcm                68300  3 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_core
b43                   373993  0
snd_timer              16475  1 snd_pcm
bcma                   35173  1 b43
mt7601u                50055  0
snd                    44500  13 snd_hda_intel,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_codec,snd_timer,snd_hda_codec_generic,snd_pcm
mac80211              401795  2 b43,mt7601u
i2c_i801               11924  0
wl                   6125153  0
iTCO_wdt                4808  0
iTCO_vendor_support     1389  1 iTCO_wdt
cfg80211              228150  4 wl,b43,mac80211,mt7601u
hp_wmi                  6050  0
sparse_keymap           2522  1 hp_wmi
coretemp                4840  0
hwmon                   6742  1 coretemp
rfkill                 12472  7 bluetooth,hp_wmi,cfg80211
joydev                  7823  0
i2c_smbus               2521  1 i2c_i801
lpc_ich                12904  0
mfd_core                3139  1 lpc_ich
rng_core                4864  1 b43
shpchp                 22002  0
thermal                 8930  0
intel_agp               8457  0
wmi                     6280  1 hp_wmi
battery                 6962  0
ac                      3095  0
acpi_cpufreq            6882  0
ext4                  376670  1
crc16                   1095  2 bluetooth,ext4
jbd2                   55161  1 ext4
fscrypto               12826  1 ext4
mbcache                 3718  2 ext4
ata_generic             2470  0
pata_acpi               2371  0
i915                 1100185  4
ssb_hcd                 1934  0
ssb                    46771  2 b43,ssb_hcd
intel_gtt              10190  2 intel_agp,i915
i2c_algo_bit            4580  1 i915
drm_kms_helper        100597  1 i915
pcmcia                 31677  1 ssb
cfbfillrect             3290  1 drm_kms_helper
syscopyarea             2894  1 drm_kms_helper
cfbimgblt               2095  1 drm_kms_helper
sysfillrect             3130  1 drm_kms_helper
sysimgblt               2095  1 drm_kms_helper
fb_sys_fops             1002  1 drm_kms_helper
cfbcopyarea             3054  1 drm_kms_helper
drm                   235751  6 i915,drm_kms_helper
pcmcia_core            10199  1 pcmcia
8139too                18912  0
ata_piix               21187  0
8139cp                 18072  0
mmc_core               86662  2 b43,ssb
mii                     3635  2 8139cp,8139too
uhci_hcd               20815  0
i2c_core               22475  6 i2c_algo_bit,i2c_i801,i2c_smbus,i915,drm_kms_helper,drm
fjes                   20414  0
video                  26667  1 i915
button                  5312  1 i915
ipv6                  307319  22
sunrpc                164350  0
calculate mac # 


calculate mac # lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family PCI Express Port 3 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7-M Family) SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation NM10/ICH7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 01)
06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Limited BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01)
08:08.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8100/8101L/8139 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter (rev 10)
calculate mac #

Hi, Antonio
Look at these two videos
https://youtu.be/au_hzfeMHB8
https://youtu.be/SEMqj1up3IA

You can do more, but for this you need to tinker with the core https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RInQBEHL4Bk