[ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu unusably slow

[Simon Greenwood]

On 7 February 2013 10:43, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:

> On 7 February 2013 10:31, Simon Greenwood <sfgreenwood at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ..
> > On 7 February 2013 10:17, Gareth France <gareth.france at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ..
> >> Thanks Alan. I think the thing that gets to me is that aside from
> whatever
> >> I may choose to run on it I expect a machine I paid £300 for to run
> properly
> >> to begin with. None of these solutions address the problem. They more
> sort
> >> of side step it. I doubt I'm going to find the problem, I'll just have
> to
> >> avoid Packard Bell next time I upgrade.
> >>
> >
> > In all honesty, that is the place to start. Packard Bell machines are
> built
> > to a price, and it's fairly likely that they need OS-based accelerators
> to
> > work properly. I'm not familiar with that processor but there are
> probably
> > features that aren't supported by Linux and require Windows-native
> software,
> > and the GPU will be integrated and underpowered. I've had similar
> problems
> > in the past with more expensive machines and have since learned my
> lesson.
>
> The guy is not talking about just not getting the ultimate out of the
> machine, he has problems such as "tonight it ground to a halt, the
> hard drive access light went mad and the mouse stopped moving. Then it
> moved in jerks and a variety of windows greyed out and came back again
> over and over."  That is a software problem of some sort.  Something
> is gobbling up his processor or/and his RAM.
>
>
Yes, I agree, and as previously described, I have seen exactly this
problem, and on what would seem to be a more powerful machine. In the first
instance, disable Flash and see if that stops or reduces the CPU load. In
my experience it will. However, it doesn't solve the problem, and this is
where I came to a halt with trying to analyse it. It is likely to be a
combination of the Flash plugin, Compiz and the physical hardware, possibly
one that hasn't been identified before, so to get some progress, it needs
to be documented.

However, I believe my point still stands: for all the work done to maximise
compatibility, there are always going to be machines that don't play for
less obvious reasons, especially at the low cost end of the market, and the
rule still should be that if you want to use a Linux desktop of any kind do
a little bit of homework. There is the official compatibility wiki but if
you get the model number of any laptop and put it into Google, someone will
have attempted to run Linux on it and reported on it.

s/
-- 
Twitter: @sfgreenwood
"TBA are particularly glib"
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