looks like 1.0.1 has been released. it's just a bugfix version right? because i just got 1.0 yesterday...John et al,
First, allow me to say that I love DSL. It totally rocks and is in fact my most favorite of the distros.
I wanted to ask what happened between DSL version 8.4 and pre-release of version 1.0 that has caused a performance issue in flux ? The apps run a bit slower. Can you shed some light on why this might be ? I know that for Newer machines this is not an issue.. however, for some older machines ( Mine is a thinkpad 770) there is a definite degrade in performance in the new version.
THanks ! Mark
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looks like 1.0.1 has been released. it's just a bugfix version right? because i just got 1.0 yesterday...
Yes a bug fix release. See Notes for the list.Mark,
Are you enabling dma at boottime? It no longer is the default, and requires the "dma" to be added at runtime.. ( because many computers won't boot with it defaulted )
My IBM 770's cdrom does not like dma enabled, so I added this line to the /opt/bootlocal.sh in my backup.
hdparm -d1 /dev/hda
It makes a difference in how my laptop performs.. Course, if you've got the floppy in it instead of the cdrom, you can use the "dsl dma" at boottime.
73 ke4ntMark, I would have to disagree with you. I have spent alot of time to engineer the system to use less resources. To see the results of my efforts do this:
Boot up any prior version of DSL, say 0.8.4. Now lets be fair, it must be a pristine liveCD boot, no extensions, no restore. Afterall, that is all that I have control over. So boot like this:
boot: dsl base norestore
Now close the Dillo Help screen and open an xterm and type free Note the amount of free ram
Next boot up DSL 1.0.1 and do the same. Notice there has been a reduction in actual memory used. So not only have I kept the base iso under 50MB, I have also been hard at work to reduce memory footprint.
I know that does not solve your problem. But that is all that I can control. So I suspect that any of the following may contribute to what you are seeing:
1. The temtation of starting firefox on smaller less capable machine eats up and does not always give back your ram. 2. The cache of the firefox browser is another source of quickly disappearing ram. Depending on your hardware you should drastically reduce it. 3. Loading extensions many areas here. And the fact that gnu-utils has grown in size since 0.8.4 as well as dsl-dpkg. The more extensions you load the less ram you have. 4. The size of your backup also eats ram.
Believe me when I say, I am acutely aware of the less capable hardware. Most of the hardware I own is in that category. That is one reason why I so strongly support the UCI extensions.