Ubuntu – Why is Ubuntu 14.04 so slow on the laptop?

performance

I just installed Ubuntu 14.04 on a Dell laptop with 1.7Ghz Pentium M and 1Gbyte memory.

Graphics are Intel® 852GM/855GM x86/MMX/SSE2, OS type is 32bit.

The whole system is VERY slow. When I launch the applications manager, for example, I need to wait in order to see the letters I typed appear!

It is as if the CPU was overloaded and no memory available, but I only have Firefox running.

How can I make the system run smoother? It used to have Windows XP installed and it worked fine.

Best Answer

Because you only have 1GB of RAM! That isn't the only problem, but it is part of it. Simply, your computer can't handle the intensity of Unity's graphics.

Windows XP is not nearly as CPU / Graphically intensive as Unity, the default desktop of Ubuntu 11.04+. It is based on compiz and has all sorts of fancy graphics, such as the see through dash and the expanding launcher. I would advise installing Lubuntu or Xubuntu, or putting XFCE or LXDE on, and using that rather than unity.

I have both on 3 old XP computers, and they are running well (typed on a 2006 Lubuntu laptop with 683 MB of RAM).

It is as if the CPU was overloaded and no memory available

The CPU probably is overloaded / there probably isn't enough RAM available. Try installing and using midori - it is lighter, and is what I'm using at the moment.

My pronouns are He / Him

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The problem was graphics. Don't know why, but the open drivers which I didn't uninstall prior to installing (manually) the new ones messed up things.

fglrxinfo showed the correct info, so I thought it was okay, but fgl_glxgears were going only up to 60 FPS (with tearfree and vsync off).

So I cd-ed to the location where I had fglrx driver already in the .deb format and I:

sudo service lightdm stop
sudo apt-get remove xserver-xorg-video-radeon
sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx*
sudo dpkg -i fglrx*.deb
sudo service lightdm start

fglrxinfo still correct, fgl_glxgears @ 800-1000 FPS ...

Much better.

10x for the pointers

UPDATE: another thing I've noticed ... sometimes (usually after resume from sleep) jupiter switches to performance governor but the CPU frequencies are stuck at lowest (as id it was using powersave governor). Use Jupiter of whatever you use to switch governors and change the governor to ondemand (and then back to performance if you wish). CPUs will then go over the minimal frequency.

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