Make old system more lightweight

[Member andfree]

Hi. I use a Compaq Presario 2106EA laptop with Intel Celeron. I have upgraded RAM to 512MB (it was only 256MB) and I have installed antix 16, but it’s still too slow, especially when it browses to web. Any idea how to make the system more lightweight and fast? Thanks.

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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Don’t use the web with a modern browser. Nothing we can do about that. Use dillo of links2 -g

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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inxi -Fxz

from a terminal is needed when asking questions like this. My signature link below covers this.

My IBM T23 which is Pentium 3 is not too slow. But I am not going to require it to use Firefox on a pentium 3 laptop. One must compromise using legacy gear. In 2017.

Example: https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/web-browsers/#post-1925

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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Also. SamK gives some good tips on this forum for older gear.

https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/tips-for-improving-performance-on-ancient-kit/

https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/zram-misconceptions-and-doubts/

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Forum Admin dolphin_oracle]

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dillo in combination with streamlight (included on antiX full) for youtube videos isn’t a bad combo.

[Member fatmac]

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Modern web browsers are the main problem for older hardware, they just eat up the ram – maybe try chromium – it is, I think, what is run on Raspberian, the Debian based distro used with the Raspberry Pi, an ARM processor with 1 GB ram – it’s just about usable on that micro computer.

(Only have one or two tabs open, any more & it’ll slow right down.)

Linux (& BSD) since 1999

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

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they just eat up the ram

and cpu. Trust me on this. CPU over usage is worse than ram usage.

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

Linux Registered User # 475019
How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems

[Anonymous]

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Any idea how to make the system more lightweight and fast?

regardless which web browser :

1) choose a “window manager only” desktop session (not xyz+rox, nor xyz+spacefm)
2) remove non-essential session autostarted items (conky, clipboard manager, trayicon accessory widgets)
3) run “sudo sysv-rc-conf” and disable autostart of unneeded services
4) man sysctl and read about vm.swappiness, and verify it is set to a low value (5%)

After performing 1-4, by using “htop” you might find another couple non-essential processes still contributing to the baseline memory usage footprint,
but probably none which are significant. Make a note of the baseline amount of RAM used/free.

When testing/comparing various browsers, to verify the current baseline prior to browser launch, first login to a console and launch htop.
After launching the browser (use same/known homepage, across all browsers tested), note the “free” reported by htop.
When configuring settings for a web browser, if you can manually specify (limit) its cache size, choose a value smaller than the known “free” available on your system. Doing so will (hopefully) avoid performance-killing swapfile use.

If using firefox:
visit “Options” and select “never load” for Flash; for any other installed plugins, choose “always ask” (or “never load”).
visit “about:config” and specify browser.cache.disk.enable=false
(other tweaks to various browser.cache.* prefkeys may provide additional, but minimal, benefit. YMMV. Websearch to learn more)
-=-
Beyond these quickie steps, there’s PLENTY to be gained by using adblocking (general goal: disallow loading of content form 3rd-party sites) browser extentions, and by tweaking browser preferences. The “user.js” (hosted on github and) mentioned at the “ghacks.net” website is a good reference. Don’t blindly “paste” the full content of the user.js ~~ read the inline comments and decide which preferences can/should be changed to suit your browsing habits/destinations.

[Forum Admin Dave]

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Anonymous wrote:

regardless which web browser :

1) choose a “window manager only” desktop session (not xyz+rox, nor xyz+spacefm)
2) remove non-essential session autostarted items (conky, clipboard manager, trayicon accessory widgets)

This should be what the min-WM options do.

Computers are like air conditioners. They work fine until you start opening Windows. ~Author Unknown

[Member andfree]

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Many thanks to all of you for the plenty of answers. Dillo is very much faster, but it’s not for all uses (Google Maps, for example). Chromium seems to be a nice alternative. I’ ll test more of your advice.

$ inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: antix1 Kernel: 4.4.10-antix.1-486-smp i686
           bits: 32 gcc: 4.9.3
           Desktop: IceWM 1.3.8
           Distro: antiX-16_386-full Berta Cáceres 26 June 2016
Machine:   Device: laptop System: Hewlett-Packard product: Presario 2100 v: KE.M1.54 serial: N/A
           Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 002A v: NS570 Version PQ1A74 serial: N/A
           BIOS: Phoenix v: KE.M1.54 date: 12/17/20022
CPU:       Single core Mobile Intel Celeron (-UP-) 
           arch: Netburst Willamette rev.7 cache: 256 KB
           flags: (pae sse sse2) bmips: 3190 speed: 1595 MHz (max)
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RS200M [Radeon IGP 330M/340M/345M/350M]
           bus-ID: 01:05.0
           Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4
           drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1024x768@60.00hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.5, 128 bits)
           version: 3.0 Mesa 10.3.2 Direct Render: Yes
Audio:     Card ULi M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device
           driver: snd_ali5451 port: 1000 bus-ID: 00:06.0
           Sound: ALSA v: k4.4.10-antix.1-486-smp
Network:   Card-1: National DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller
           driver: natsemi port: 2400 bus-ID: 00:12.0
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Atheros TP-Link TL-WN821N v2 802.11n [Atheros AR9170]
           driver: carl9170 usb-ID: 001-002
           IF: wlan0 state: N/A mac: N/A
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 60.0GB (39.4% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: TOSHIBA_MK6025GA size: 60.0GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 53G used: 21G (41%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 2.18GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda2
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 45.0C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 135 Uptime: 21 min Memory: 113.8/433.0MB
           Init: SysVinit runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 4.9.2
           Client: Shell (bash 4.3.301) inxi: 2.3.43

[Member cyrilus31]

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I agree with Roky. CPU is the main issue with modern browser if you have at least 512 Mo of ram.
My pentium 4 often reaches 100% in firefox but ram use is about 300 Mo with 4 tabs open.

[Member andfree]

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Qupzilla seems to be quite fast, but still I can’t say if it’s faster than Chromium. But I have a question. In metapackage-installer (“Browsers”) there is Qupzilla with the discription “Latest Qupzilla lightweight browser” and there is also Firefox_latest with exactly the same discription (“Latest Qupzilla lightweight browser”). Why? Anyway, I installed Qupzilla and not Firefox_latest.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by andfree.

[Anonymous]

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Why?

C’mon, pretty obvious that it’s just a copy/paste typo.
To help the issue receive attention, could split this into a new topic… but I’m unsure what’s the attention-getting subforum for “bug reports”

[Member andfree]

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Anonymous wrote:

4) man sysctl and read about vm.swappiness, and verify it is set to a low value (5%)

I ran “man sysctl” and I also pressed “h” for help, but I found nothing about vm.swappiness. I copied all the displayed contents to the attachment.

EDIT: I can’t upload the attachment, so I paste its contents here:

SYSCTL(8)                                   System Administration                                  SYSCTL(8)

NAME
       sysctl - configure kernel parameters at runtime

SYNOPSIS
       sysctl [options] [variable[=value]] [...]
       sysctl -p [file or regexp] [...]

{ SNIP}
(posting the entire content of the manpage here is pointless, and would pollute future search results)

.
.
SKIDOO WAS INVITING YOU, COACHING YOU, TO ______READ______ THE MANPAGE

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by andfree.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by andfree.

[Moderator BobC]

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The epiphany browser takes a lot less memory than firefox, and it might be able to do the things dillo can’t handle. Chromium was another memory hog if I remember right. I agree dillo is light and quick.

As skidoo suggested, I try to run all of what are normally active tray icon programs (like the volumeicon or wicd) instead as programs that I run when I want to from toolbar buttons (like alsamixer or wpa_gui), saving memory and cpu cycles.

I do run conky, but I increase the time interval so it only runs once every 5 or 10 seconds on my slower machines, and any tasks it has to run externally, I only run once every few minutes.

The nice thing about having a very low resources machine is that if you tweak everything to run well on it, when you get a faster machine running that same code it will just FLY!

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by BobC.

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