lucky13
Group: Members
Posts: 1478
Joined: Feb. 2007 |
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Posted: Feb. 14 2007,22:32 |
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| Quote (marc66thomas @ Feb. 14 2007,16:10) | Lucky13
Thanks for the directions for searching out my quirk. It rings true that I'm multitasking when the mouse freezes.
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That computer CAN multitask, but it will be a lot easier and smoother if you choose applications with consideration for your memory limitations.
| Quote | To clear up the RAM, my mistake 40mb ram and the swap file is about 75MB. Top reports ram 38,764 while running opera used 36,364. and Swap 76,600. I'll keep an eye out for the activity that may push it over.
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It isn't merely "running over" that's tripping you up. Opera isn't the only process running. You also have X, fluxbox or whatever window manager, init, etc. Running something as large as Opera requires everything to page back and forth between RAM and swap. The more tabs/browser windows you have open and the more processes you're running, the more likely it is that all this paging between RAM and swap is what's causing the stutters with your cursor and locking up. This is especially true if you're hitting pages with graphics, flash or java (if enabled), or other multimedia.
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As far a Opera and stuttering. Being that I like Firefox on all my other machines, and the fact that I chose opera over FF is because Opera works well for chat, mail, rss and yes browsing too.
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That's one thing on computers with 128MB of RAM (or preferably more), but another with 40MB. In theory, it makes good sense to use something that ties everything into a tighter bundle like that. In practice, though, you'll have a lot better performance with 40MB using smaller apps like Dillo and Sylpheed and nAIM. And the more console apps you run, even under X, the better performance you'll have with 40MB. Remember, too, that 40MB of RAM doesn't equate to 40MB available for all your apps if part of your RAM is set aside for video. I have a hunch you don't have a separate video carsd and thus have 37-38MB available for your use. (I think you can use the DSL Console to see how much RAM you have available.)
DSL has console apps for everything you mentioned. nAIM and nIRC come on the DSL CD-ROM. You can also install epic4 from the repository if you want more IRC features. The repo also has elmo, which is a very good little mail agent. You can use netrik or lynx to browse; they can read most sites and you'll be surprised how fast sites load without all the graphics. Snownews is a very nice RSS aggregator found in the repo; set it up with lynx as the browser. You can run all these -- and more -- in the same terminal in X, in their own terminals, or multitasking in the console using screen.dsl (terminal multiplexer that lets you run and switch between multiple console apps) and your system should run a lot better without any stuttering because I don't think they'll cumulatively tie up a third of the RAM Opera alone requires.
And even if you need a GUI browser, Dillo plus those console apps will eat up a lot less than Opera alone will.
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I can report that it boots fast and feels nimble as it changes from task to task all in one application. For me that made it a winner. |
Is it still a winner if it's what's causing your laptop to freeze up? That would be my criteria, not how nice or fancy it is, but how well it runs on your hardware with everything else. Apparently something's not right...
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"It felt kind of like having a pitbull terrier on my rear end."
-- meo (copyright(c)2008, all rights reserved)
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