10.04 too heavy for my hardware

[NoOp]

On 05/26/2010 07:00 AM, Thomas Blasejewicz wrote:
...
> My impression is, that response time is **always** slow.
> Thanks to you, I now know how to set/monitor CPU frequency. Setting this 
> to maximum improves things somewhat, but
> I have the feeling, that it is still considerably slower than it was 
> under 9.04.
> For example:
> move cursor over one menu item (e.g., "setting") and then to another 
> item (e.g. "system"): it takes 4-5 seconds for the second menu to display.
> OpenOffice blank document: max -> min / min->max (size): 3-4 seconds
> change input method English-> Japanese (pretty fast, appr. 1 sec.), but 
> Japanese->English 2-3
> etc.
> I just tried the "System Monitor" thing. Here too, clicking on a menu 
> item or switch between items takes several seconds to produce a response.
> As far as I can tell the "%CPU" is for all processes "0".
> 
> So, almost **every** operation requires a signficant amount of time.
> Under 9.04 I did not take any notes about that, because response time 
> never made me wish it would be faster ...
> 
> If this is considered normal for the given combination of hard/software 
> ... my apologies for being so nervous.
> If this is NOT normal ... I would like to know, if there is anything 
> that can be done about it.
> That's all there is to it.
> 

It's not normal. I found the bug report that applies to your graphics
card in the laptop[1]:
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati/+bug/544496>
[[RS100] desktop became slow after upgrading to Lucid]

Looks as if the problem occured in 10.04 as 9.10 was acceptable for the
bug author.
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati/+bug/544496/comments/7>
<quote>
Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-video-ati

I upgraded my laptop to Lucid somewhere around Alpha 2.

The first thing that I noticed is that the display was much slower than
in Karmic. I tried to run with and without modesetting, but there is no
difference.

Compositing worked fine in Karmic, however it is useless in Lucid, which
means that performance of both 2D and 3D regreessed.

CPU load of Xorg is high as soon as there is some activity on the screen.
</quote>

More:
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati/+bug/531372>
[[Radeon 9200 PRO] desktop environment is slow when KMS is enabled]

Of the possible workarounds I see that you've turned off visual effects.
You might try disabling KMS. You can test this by adding the
'radeon.modeset=0' to the end of the kernel line in grub. Note this will
be temporary for that session boot session only. Once you reboot it will
revert back to the default KMS on.

See:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Editing%20Menus%20During%20Boot
for how to edit the grub menu during boot. That example shows editing
the initrd line. However in your case your will be adding
radeon.modeset=0
to the end of the 'linux' line.

1. Boot the laptop. When the grub menu first starts up on boot, press
'Esc' then press 'E'.
2. Use the down arrow key to move the cursor down to the line beginning
with 'linux'. Press the 'End' key to move the cursor to the end of the
line. Should look something like:
linux	/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-22-generic root=UUID=...9b90-52f5f150340b ro
  quiet splash
At the end of the line enter a space using the spacebar and then enter
the kernel parameter (exactly):
radeon.modeset=0
The line should then look like:
linux	/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-22-generic root=UUID=...9b90-52f5f150340b ro
  quiet splash radeon.modeset=0
If so, use Ctrl-x to boot.

If you notice considerably better performance with radeon.modeset=0 then
you can permanently add this to grub (post back & I'll show you how). If
the performance is the same (or worse), the turning off KMS had no effect.

[1]
*-display UNCLAIMED
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Radeon Mobility U1
vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
physical id: 5
bus info: pci at 0000:01:05.0
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz
capabilities: agp agp-2.0 pm bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=66 mingnt=8