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Author Topic: Which flavour of Linux should I try?  (Read 15175 times)

burakkucat

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #15 on: March 29, 2013, 06:24:58 PM »

Does Debian use the concept of a runlevel?

If it was RHEL or an equivalent, I would recommend switching from runlevel 5 to runlevel 3 (from graphical mode to textual mode) and checking to see if the activity of CPU0 abates.

Stuart (Broadstairs) has expressed to what I had alluded.

Also, does Debian have a cpubalance or irqbalance or some other such service available?
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roseway

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #16 on: March 29, 2013, 06:39:30 PM »

There's certainly something amiss if one of the CPU cores is at 100%. If you chose KDE as your desktop, then you can hit Ctrl+Esc to get a graphical display of processes, to see what one is misbehaving. Or in a terminal, type top to see the most active processes in text form.

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  Eric

roseway

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #17 on: March 29, 2013, 06:47:15 PM »

Does Debian use the concept of a runlevel?

If it was RHEL or an equivalent, I would recommend switching from runlevel 5 to runlevel 3 (from graphical mode to textual mode) and checking to see if the activity of CPU0 abates.

Stuart (Broadstairs) has expressed to what I had alluded.

Also, does Debian have a cpubalance or irqbalance or some other such service available?

Debian doesn't use runlevels except in a minimal way. To shut down the X server you can type (as root):

Code: [Select]
/etc/init.d/kdm stop
or

Code: [Select]
/etc/init.d/gdm stop
depending on which desktop has been installed (kdm if it's KDE, gdm if it's Gnome or most other desktops).
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  Eric

sheddyian

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #18 on: March 29, 2013, 07:07:03 PM »

I'm back on XP at the moment, but to answer a couple of questions :

It *feels* slower.  Less responsive.  Rendering of web pages seems sluggish compared with Chrome on XP on the same machine.

Opening a window, clicking on things.. just seems a bit sluggish.

The hardware spec is hardly top end, but it's surely capable enough :

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2.2Ghz)
2Gb RAM
Nvidia GeForce FX 5200

(Under XP it will do full screen video OK, but struggles a bit with HD fullscreen)

Under Linux, dragging a window quickly around the screen seemed very smooth.  I mention this because, in Windows, if you've only got a generic video driver loaded, window dragging will be sluggish and jerky - this wasn't.

I'll boot back to Linux in a bit and have a look at some of the things you've suggested. 

I think it's running Gnome - I wasn't asked what I wanted, and that's what I ended up with :)

Ian
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roseway

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #19 on: March 29, 2013, 07:34:33 PM »

Your hardware is capable enough. I imagine that the sluggishness is the result of a misbehaving process saturating one CPU core.

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  Eric

burakkucat

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #20 on: March 29, 2013, 08:43:07 PM »

Perhaps posting the output, produced by executing the following, will let us have an overview of the hardware --

Quote
lspci -nn
lsusb


My suspicion is directed towards the nVidia graphics card being (currently) misconfigured . . .  :-\
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sheddyian

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #21 on: March 29, 2013, 09:09:49 PM »

OK, I'm now back with Debian Linux and Gnome desktop.

The 100% CPU problem went a way with a reboot :)

However, it still feels very sluggish.  Closing or opening windows, you can watch it redrawing stuff, yet I just played a full scren MPEG video and that was very smooth and took no more than 40% CPU (a bit more than under XP, I think, but way short of 100%).

I tried Iceweasel browser, and scrolling through pages in that was painful.  I'm now using Epiphany Web Browser (which also says it's just "Web Browser 2.30.6" and that's a bit better, but not by much.  The animated smiley gifs above this compose message box are flickering madly, and CPU usage is around 40% on both cores with just this one window open.

Something doesn't seem right!

Just gonna get the output of that command...

Ian
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sheddyian

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #22 on: March 29, 2013, 09:16:10 PM »


lspci -nn
Code: [Select]
00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge [1106:0282]
00:00.1 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge [1106:1282]
00:00.2 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge [1106:2282]
00:00.3 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge [1106:3282]
00:00.4 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge [1106:4282]
00:00.7 Host bridge [0600]: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T800Pro Host Bridge [1106:7282]
00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI bridge [K8T800/K8T890 South] [1106:b188]
00:0e.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6120/VT6121/VT6122 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter [1106:3119] (rev 11)
00:0f.0 IDE interface [0101]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller [1106:3149] (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface [0101]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE [1106:0571] (rev 06)
00:10.0 USB Controller [0c03]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller [1106:3038] (rev 81)
00:10.1 USB Controller [0c03]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller [1106:3038] (rev 81)
00:10.2 USB Controller [0c03]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller [1106:3038] (rev 81)
00:10.3 USB Controller [0c03]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller [1106:3038] (rev 81)
00:10.4 USB Controller [0c03]: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 [1106:3104] (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge [0601]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South] [1106:3227]
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller [1106:3059] (rev 60)
00:18.0 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration [1022:1100]
00:18.1 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map [1022:1101]
00:18.2 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller [1022:1102]
00:18.3 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control [1022:1103]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] [10de:0322] (rev a1)

Hmm  "VGA compatible controller"? is that using a generic video driver?

lsusb
Code: [Select]
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 04b3:310c IBM Corp. Wheel Mouse
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 058f:6254 Alcor Micro Corp. USB Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Not much to see there.


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sheddyian

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #23 on: March 29, 2013, 09:32:13 PM »

Having thrashed about in both provided browsers, and not worked out how to open a new tab, found scrolling to be painfully slow, I thought I'd see if I can install Google Chrome.  Turns out I can - there's a 64 bit version for Debian.  Hoorah!

At least when I'm comparing performance, I'm comparing more similar things.. in fact, it ought to be better, because my XP install is all 32 bit, this is 64 bit on the same hardware.

Downloaded and (eventually) worked out how to install it, that all seemed to go ok.  But where is it?  Can't find anywhere to run it, it's not on the menus anywhere.

I CAN set Google Chrome as my default browser now.  but I've no way of starting it!

The logical place would be applications..internet, but it's not there, nor under other menus.  Do I have to put it there myself?  It self-installed itself from a .deb package, I imagined it'd do all that for me.

EDIT : just redownloaded Google Chrome for Debian 64 bit, reinstalled it (installer recognised that I already had it, asked if I wanted to reinstall, I said YES.)  Still can't find how to run it when it's installed!

Ian
« Last Edit: March 29, 2013, 09:37:33 PM by sheddyian »
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asbokid

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #24 on: March 29, 2013, 09:36:34 PM »

It's Chromium isn't it? Although for sure you'd have spotted it under [Applications | Internet ].

Can you run it from a shell?  chr <tab completion>

cheers, a

« Last Edit: April 01, 2013, 06:42:22 PM by asbokid »
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sheddyian

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #25 on: March 29, 2013, 09:40:51 PM »

Hi Asbokid :)

I knew I should have been clearer in my post - it's definately Google Chrome, and not Chromium (though I think they're related?).

Got it by going tohttp://www.google.com/chrome which after a few redirects, gave me a download button "For Linux (Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/openSUSE)", after which I could select 32 or 64 bit.

Just gonna try command line thing

Ian
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sheddyian

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #26 on: March 29, 2013, 09:47:28 PM »

Well, chr <tab> gives me "chrt - manipulate real-time attributes of a process."

and typing chrome gives me  bash : chome : command not found

and it's still not under any menu I can see.  Yet, if I go to System, preferences, preferred applications, I can set the web browser to "Google Chrome" and it's got the Google Chrome logo there.

I'm floundering because almost all of this is very new, and so far isn't very discoverable - partly why I thought if I put on a web browser I'm familiar with, I'd be able to open new tabs and feel a bit more at home :)

In this browser, I can right click a link and open in new tab. And I can reuse an open tab by typing a new address in, but I see no button or menu option to open a new blank tab.  What gives?  /rant

Ian
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asbokid

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #27 on: March 29, 2013, 10:02:51 PM »

The Debian community generally frowns upon installation from non-official sources or repositories, the Google monster included!   That's probably why it won't appear in the menus, etc, and is somehow installed outside the system path.

Maybe try installing Chromium with:

Code: [Select]
$ sudo apt-get install chromium

cheers, a

EDIT:... ahh.. I think I get it..  You downloaded the Chrome package for debian using the web browser, but didn't explicitly install it.
So the package is sitting there helpless, somewhere in a browser "Downloads" directory!   If so, once you've found that directory, install Chrome with:

Code: [Select]
$ sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb
« Last Edit: March 29, 2013, 10:15:40 PM by asbokid »
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sheddyian

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #28 on: March 29, 2013, 10:19:37 PM »

I definately installed it - twice :)

It downloaded, and I was disappointed I wasn't asked if I wanted to run/open/install the file I'd downloaded, but I found it in the "downloads" folder, double clicked it.. which opened it in  a package viewer, which wasn't what I wanted either.

But right clicking the .deb package for Chrome, one of the options was "install" and that's what I did.

And later that's what I repeated, and it promted me that I'd already installed it, did I want to reinstall.

And the fact that I can now choose "google chrome" as my default browser strongly implies it's installed, just that I can't see it on any menu or find an obvious way of opening it :(

But lets try Chromium...

Ian
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sheddyian

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Re: Which flavour of Linux should I try?
« Reply #29 on: March 29, 2013, 10:33:55 PM »


Code: [Select]
$ sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb

I've just tried that first - in a terminal window as "ian", it failed,
Code: [Select]
We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:

    #1) Respect the privacy of others.
    #2) Think before you type.
    #3) With great power comes great responsibility.

[sudo] password for ian:
ian is not in the sudoers file.  This incident will be reported.

But opening a root terminal and repeating the command, it installed ok, and I am now using Chrome!

So maybe I didn't have the right permissions/privileges earlier when I installed it via the desktop?

Anyway, it's defaintely faster than the other two supplied browsers, but I'd say it's still slower than Windows XP.  The animated gifs are still flickering badly.  Even closing a window seems to take a moments thought before the window disappears.

It's frustrating because this is the 3rd time I've tried to use Linux on a PC.  First time, in late 1990's, I couldn't get it to work at all with my graphics card (s3 based, can't remember what now).  Windows was more than happy with it.

2nd time, more recently, I just couldn't get it to boot after it had installed - again, Windows ran fine.

Still, I'm making progress - at least it boots, even if's slower than Windows  :lol:


Ian
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