Older Laptop - Possibly faster with F11?

BobNutfield · #1 7th April 2009, 07:53 PM

Hello Everyone,

I have auxilliary laptop that I use as a workhorse on the move. I have been running F9 on it for several months and it worked satisfactorily. Knowing that F9 will no longer be supported sometime soon after F11 is released, I used Preupgrade and went ahead and upgraded to F10. The upgrade went fine, but there are little niggly issues that are more of an irritant than they are serious (Firefox fonts, etc.) But my main problem is that the lappy runs considerably slower now using no heavy graphics. Even screensavers just crawl now. The specs are:

Celeron M 1.4Ghz processor
1.5G memory
Intel 82852/855GM graphics

Overall, not the most powerful system, but I certainly thought it was meaty enough to run Fedora with a little pep. It has in the past, until F10.

My question is: I have read the release notes on F11 and I know faster boot times are a goal and greater general overall speed. Is it anyone's opinion that I can realize a speed increase with F11 using this laptop, or has Fedora just outgrown these specs to expect any degree of speed? I have even tried the live CD, but I know I can not get a true picture of the real performance I will get from a live CD. If I am not likely to realize any better speed performance, I will either stick with F10 for now or consider Slackware as a replacement. I would prefer to keep Fedora, but I need a little more speed.

Thanks for any thoughts

Bob

hephasteus · #2 7th April 2009, 10:31 PM

You've got graphics driver problems with fedora 10. Fedora 10 is not slow.

BobNutfield · #3 7th April 2009, 10:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hephasteus

You've got graphics driver problems with fedora 10. Fedora 10 is not slow.

OK, thank you for that response. That is encouraging. Is there a fix? What is wrong with the Mesa driver which is being used? Is there another driver that I could use?

Thanks

Bob

Seve · #4 8th April 2009, 01:02 AM

Hello:

If you edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file
and amend/change
Driver "XXXX"
to
Driver "intel"

Save, exit and try

Ctrl Alt Backspace to restart your X server and see how it goes.

Seve

***Dan*** · #5 8th April 2009, 01:05 AM

Evening, Seve! <..

..>

Seve · #6 8th April 2009, 01:08 AM

Hey Dan.

How are things ?

Seve

***Dan*** · #7 8th April 2009, 01:24 AM

Doing great. Just down here shivering and living the dream. <..

..> (We hit 30F last night.) But on the bright side, it slowed the weeds down a bit. <..

..>

Seve · #8 8th April 2009, 01:32 AM

We had a tinge of snow flakes here ..... yikes.

Nothing serious but like you, it did freeze here during the night.

It's all over now ........... I promise

Seve

***Dan*** · #9 8th April 2009, 01:51 AM

I'll take your word for it ... and go fill the heaters again ... just in case. <..

..>

I wonder though, you guys are always generous to sending us those Arctic cold fronts. Do you ever get any of these good old Texas swelters we send up thataway?

Seve · #10 8th April 2009, 02:15 AM

Well of course.

I'm no meteorologist but I think a lot of those fronts etc. (from that part of the US) are seriously moderated by the Great Lakes in this part of Ontario.

Mother Nature is looking out for us .....

Seve

***Dan*** · #11 8th April 2009, 02:35 AM

Dang!

Back to the drawing board! <..

..>

BobNutfield · #12 8th April 2009, 08:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seve

Hello:

If you edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file
and amend/change
Driver "XXXX"
to
Driver "intel"

Save, exit and try

Ctrl Alt Backspace to restart your X server and see how it goes.

Seve

Thank you for that suggestion, but that is already in my xorg.conf file:

Quote:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "intel"

I guess that Fedor is just too heavy duty for a Celeron M 1.4GH. Just not enough to get a smooth response.

Thanks for the help

Bob

cenomanien · #13 8th April 2009, 10:50 AM

Hello,

Have you tried, as recommended in this thread http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=207320 , modifying your xorg.conf as follows :

Code:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Videocard0"
    Driver "intel"
    Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
EndSection

On a laptop less gutsy than yours (Pentium M 1.3-GHz, 512-MB memory, 82852/855GM Intel graphics), F10 is running fine considering the hardware; and F11 is OK with default installation + nomodeset boot option.

Schelling · #14 8th April 2009, 04:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BobNutfield

Thank you for that suggestion, but that is already in my xorg.conf file:

I guess that Fedor is just too heavy duty for a Celeron M 1.4GH. Just not enough to get a smooth response.

Thanks for the help

Bob

Hi, I have an Asus Eeepc 900, 512 ram and a Celeron processor running Fedora 10 with Lxde instead of Gnome, and it works beautifully, maybe you should try something like that.

Raúl

BobNutfield · #15 8th April 2009, 07:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cenomanien

Hello,

Have you tried, as recommended in this thread http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=207320 , modifying your xorg.conf as follows :

Code:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Videocard0"
    Driver "intel"
    Option "AccelMethod" "XAA"
EndSection

On a laptop less gutsy than yours (Pentium M 1.3-GHz, 512-MB memory, 82852/855GM Intel graphics), F10 is running fine considering the hardware; and F11 is OK with default installation + nomodeset boot option.

Wow, what a difference. I have used this option before with Slackware to solve a problem, but it did not occur to me to try it with Fedora. Thank you. That solved it. Scrolling in firefox is now normal.

I am now going to study the notes for Fedora 11 and determine if there is any benefit to upgrading. I don't necessarily have to have the newest version, but I always upgrade shortly before the version I am using loses its support..

Thanks again for the tip.

Bob