# Very slow system



## smoofy (Nov 29, 2012)

Hi all,
I am having a following problem. I have installed FreeBSD 9 on my older X60 ThinkPad vith Gnome2 an it is unbelievable slow. I have had FreeBSD before with Gnome on much older machines and those were not as slow as this one is and almost any installation of linux works just fine with reasonable pace. Have any of you guys encountered similar problem and is there any solution or do I need to change OS again?
Thanks


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## smoofy (Nov 29, 2012)

I also forgot to mention that machine almost always switch off due to overheating when compiling kernel or any other software so for this occasions I have to limit the CPU performance as well.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Nov 29, 2012)

Use a window manager with less resource usage than gnome? ... fvwm2... for instance, you may find advanced .fvwm2rc (or whatever) on the web that would set it up without much extra work.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Nov 30, 2012)

smoofy said:
			
		

> I also forgot to mention that machine almost always switch off due to overheating when compiling kernel or any other software so for this occasions I have to limit the CPU performance as well.



For a reason not wholly unrelated to that one, as soon as I put Freebsd-9 GENERIC on any modern CPU I recompiled the kernel to remove the debugging line and paragraph, it seemed to fix it. So
it may help in this instance if you know how to do it without too much trouble.


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## ORTO-DOX (Nov 30, 2012)

smoofy said:
			
		

> I also forgot to mention that machine almost always switch off due to overheating when compiling kernel or any other software so for this occasions I have to limit the CPU performance as well.


I have a several examples in my own experience, that high temperature of system has as result very slow system.
You can check that version by good cleaning of cooler on that notebook for better cooling (It often happens that cooler is dirty with time and CPU are warm)


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## smoofy (Nov 30, 2012)

Thanks to all for replies,
I am running CentOS 5 with Gnome2 on T40 with 512MB ram and Pentium M procesor and it runs without any trouble. I try to follow the path jb_fvwm2 sugested with kernel recompiling which I would do anyway. I have cleaned notebook already so it is not the issue as other OS's works flawlessly in it. Thing is that I would like to use gnome switching with awesome, which I am used to for work but need to fix problem with the speed first.


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## smoofy (Dec 4, 2012)

I have tried to mess around with the system in last few days. Unfortunately system is slower and slower and at the very moment is unusable even after I recompiled the kernel according to sugestion above. It is really weird as like I said before, on many years older machine with quarter of RAM and much slower CPU system is perfectly usable. I have even checked on HDD errors recently so that should not be the issue. I try to run HDD and memory check again just to make sure it is not hardware but strange is that any other OS's namely CentOS 6 and BackTrack 5 worked just fine.


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## smoofy (Dec 5, 2012)

So I am bringing you another update on previous post. Memtest and badblocks passed with no errors what so ever, no smart errors reported and system works normally from any live CD I have found. So clearly it must be FreeBSD fault. 
Tree options are coming to me. 

1. Incorectly compiled X system
2. Incorectly compiled GNOME
3. Kernel fault

Even though system seems to be ok in CLI if it is issue with kernel CPU instructions it could easily be only visible during higher load like mentioned X system and WM.
I am unwilling to give up so early so I would really appreciate any kind of relevant suggestion at the moment.
Thanks


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