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Very slow Ubuntu

12 years ago

Hi Folks,
I fully realize I should ask this question on a Ubuntu Forum, however, they are waaay too technical for me. Hopefully you folks can muster up more patients then other sites. Here goes:
I use DSL, my Ping is 13.48 Mbp down and 1.93 up. The old machine has 2 Gb memory. It has a AMD 64 3500 processor, Ubuntu 1204 LTS 32 bit Operating System, With Fire Fox 28.0 Browser, T-Bird Mail 24.4.0. 68 GB HD with Windows Vista on another partition approx. the same size.
If I have the desktop pulled up and click on the Icon for Fire Fox, it takes 8-9 seconds before Google will load....other programs load as slowly.
Anyone have any ideas what I can do to speed this machine up?
Once again, thanks for all the great help.
Steve

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Comments (4)

Richard (Vero Beach, Florida)
12 years ago
I run Ubuntu based Linux but I'm far from an expert, just muddle through, so keep that in mind.

If Firefox load times were your only problem, I'd ask you if you run Adblock Plus, and if so, how many subscriptions are you subscribed to? I believe loading several thousands of filter rules before you even get a glimpse of your homepage can slow things down quite a bit. 8 or 9 seconds? Could be worse.

I don't know about "other programs" though. If I remember correctly, the first time I installed/upgraded to the new "Unity" desktop my older machine wasn't happy with it, and truthfully, neither was I, so I reverted to something closer to the old gnome desktop I was familiar with.

Another lightweight desktop environment is xfce. I'm using that right now, looks something like this:
- {{gwi:2104968}}{{gwi:2104968}}
BTW, there is an absolute beginners section on "Ubuntu Forums".
pipsydoodles
12 years ago
On top of checking if add-ons are the concern here, I would also point out that ram/video card may be an issue here. While I realize that if we really wanted to Ubuntu (32 bit) only really needs 128-256 mb of memory to work. However, to make it run efficiently with firefox and so forth more is needed. Accordingly, one way to increase performance would be to increase ram. Slap another 2 gigs ( I dunno if companies make 2gigs any more) in there and it should work better. Furthermore, there is also a program called zram that has done wonders with other machines ( I would try this first). Beyond that all I can really say is double check for any viruses and maybe disable IPv6 if you haven't done so already.

Lastly, viruses are theoretically possible on linux based OS's just very, very unlikely. In fact it is more likely you have a virus on your windows partition that is effecting memory consumption.
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User
12 years ago
There are some things that might be running that can slow your system to a crawl. And they might be loading themselves at startup.

Restart the machine, and open the "System Monitor" .... take a screen grab of it and then log onto the Internet, go to Google and see what each thing does.

Search for Ubuntu and the name of the process and see what it says about it.

I forget what they were, but I had to kill off and uninstall some things that Ubuntu or Gnome or KDE thought were fabulous utilities ... finding various tech forums all griping about it.
esteban_2009
Original Author
12 years ago
Hi Folks,
I apologise for the delay in thanking each and everyone.
We had a mini-family emergency that has taken president over almost everything else.
When things calm down, I will get back with you.
Thanks for the responses.
Steve

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