Desktop annoyances #1: gray display, extremely slow web

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad]

On 5 February 2010 16:42, David A. Cobb <superbiskit at cox.net> wrote:
>  I'll start by identifying my primary suspect for the source of the problem:
> I have "only" 256MiB of real memory (slightly less than 2GiB virtual).
>  Remember what Bill Gates once said -- "no one will ever need more than 65 K
> of memory."  The installation notes say this is the bare minimum to do the
> install, but that the system should function satisfactorily  once installed.
>
> My wife experiences this far more than I do, even though I can't identify
> any reason her account should be different from mine.  When she is browsing
> (usually Galeon, sometimes Firefox) the color bleaches out of the display,
> leaving everything in shades of gray.  During this condition, the UI becomes
> unresponsive.  My suspicion is that the system is thrashing pages at these
> times, so the screen is not correctly refreshed.  This also happens within
> OpenOffice.org.
>
> Possibly directly related: complex web pages just CRAWL!  Her favorite site,
> one that demonstrates the painful experience, is
> <http://www.susanboylefanclubusa.com>.  RSN, I plan to point out to the
> webmaster there that the page would be more pleasant to load if the default
> <index.html>  just pointed out to various articles.  But that is opposed to
> the trend in web pages, so I just sound like the dinosaur I am.
>
> --
> David A. Cobb -- computing t-rex

The grey screen you're talking about, is a feature from a plugin for
Compiz. It shows you that the application isn't responding. You can
swith off that plugin if you like, by installing
apt://compizconfig-settings-manager
or something similar.

I'd also recommend installing flashblock plugin for Firefox. Flash
really slows down Firefox, specially on sites with many ads.

Hope that helps,

Jo-Erlend Schinstad