Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by Faizi

Why is Slackware so d*mn fast

Faizi — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 02:44:49 +0800

First of all, this is not a thread to discuss which distro are the best, just to share my experience with fellow forumers,

I have stopped using Linux for my desktop for the last 2 years, and the suddenly last weeks for no apparent reason, I got fedup with my Windows XP and decided to use Linux again as the Operating System on my desktop workstation and my laptop.

My Desktop Spec:
Athlon XP 2600+
2GB DDR333 RAM
Ati Radeon 9600

My Laptop Spec:
Intel Celeron M 1.5Ghz
256MB DDR2 RAM
Intel built in display

Been a slackware user before, I decided to opt for something else, hopefully to gain new experience and upped the fun factor ante, so I decided to try Fedora 10.

What a mistake it turn out to be, the Fedora 10 live CD took around 15 minutes to boot, and in the middle of running the installation process, I stop with disgust due to the unresponsiveness of the system. So I downloaded the Fedora 10 installation DVD and try it on the laptop, but still the same, so I try it on my desktop. On the desktop the installation process went smoothly, but the GUI environment proved to be sluggish, with Gnome or KDE, even after some heavy tweaking, I even recompiled the kernel. Being determined, I reformat and tried again to lighten the system by installating only the necessary base packages and installing X and fluxbox using yum after booting into the system. Even fluxbox seems sluggish. So Fedora 10 was a no-no for my old system.

Then it was time for Ubuntu 8.10, and to cut the story short, it was the same as Fedora 10.

So I give Xubuntu 8.10 a test, as review said it is lighter compared to Ubuntu or Kubuntu. The installation process went smooth, and I actually enjoyed using it after all the updates and I even managed to use compiz with emerald on the desktop. But after a while I got bored as I didn't get the speed and responsiveness that I wanted when comparing to my past experience when using Slackware.

Maybe I should try FreeBSD, and I found out about PCBSD. After googling and reading reviews, it seems to be fast, considering the fact it use FreeBSD. I downloaded the DVD and installed it on my laptop, then I regret as KDE 4 seems to be a bit heavy on my laptop. I got bored and didn't even try it on my desktop.

I got scared, why are the current Distros are all seems to be sluggish in performance? Is it due to the factor to turn it to be more user friendly, that they have to run all the automated services and build a huge kernel?

What the heck, I downloaded slackware 12.2 and installed it on my desktop. The last version of Slackware I use was Slackware 9, so what have changed since then?

Slackware still have the same simple ncurses based setup, I was suprised though that they have enabled ntfs-3g support during installation and gave me the option to set the permission on my ntfs drive. Other than that, Slackware still use KDE 3.5 and boy it was so responsive on the system. It even managed to detect all my hardware.

I managed to get my A4tech 7 button mouse to work, installed the ATI driver, and set my LCD monitor to use the resolution I wanted. I recompiled the Freetype and install TTF font to enable AntiAliasing with subpixel hinting support and my slackware look as good as any other current distros. I run glxgears and got a framerate of 1,3xxx, compare to 9,xx on xubuntu.

Even as I'm typing right now, I'm running a 256MB virtual webserver with vmware player, opening 4 firefox windows, thunderbird, amarok, pigdin, xchat, Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 and am compiling virtualbox in the background, and I didn't feel any performance drop. Wonder how it will goes after I recompiled the kernel with performance patch.

Oh, and for my laptop, I installed Vector Linux 5.9, which is a slackware based distro, and it work like charm.

I'm glad that slackware still stayed true to their philosophy of KISS even during the time of other distros trying to be bleeding edge, but sacrificing stability and performance.

"Segmentation Fault" while "updatedb"

Faizi — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 16:38:25 +0800

Hi guys

Lately my home's box keep getting the error "segmentation fault" while issuing the command "updatedb". After I reboot, the error will go away, but after prolong use, e.g 2 or 3 days, the error would resurface.

I'm using Slackware 10.2 kernel 2.6.14 #2, running X and KDE 3.5 beta 2

Here is the last line of output that I get after running "strace updatedb"

CODE

lstat64("chunker.xsl", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=20211, ...}) = 0
lstat64("profile-chunk-code.xsl", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=39835, ...}) = 0
lstat64("division.xsl", <unfinished ...>
+++ killed by SIGSEGV ++

The same error everytime. Been googling for some time, but still couldn't find the solution.

I'm just wondering whether the problems is software related or hardware related. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the trouble.

Slackware and Swaret

Faizi — Sun, 08 May 2005 06:48:54 +0800

Hi all

Just a little confuse over Swaret

I've just had a discussion with my friend regarding "swaret" for upgrading slackware. He stated that swaret only upgraded the packages and leave the system intact, I mean the /usr , /var, etc. . He did compare it with "cvsup" and FreeBSD

I believe that Swaret did upgrade the system and the packages, as I've noticed that if you set the VERSION to "current" , it will upgraded your slackware system to the latest that is available in the current repository. I also notice in QTSwaret (a QT UI for swaret with SPI added) , there is an option for "Upgrade Distro" , meaning that it will upgrade your slack's to the current distro released?

I'm a bit confused here , after the debate with my friend. Anyone can shed some light on me?

Thanks in advanced.

* just notice that google is down while I'm typing this.

Linux manage hdd better than windows xp?

Faizi — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 18:10:07 +0800

Does linux manage filesystems better than win32 ?

Lately I've been having problems with my Maxtor 120gb hdd... while I'm in my Windows XP , the hdd would turn off itself automatically.. I mean by this is there would be a loud "clicking" sound, then the hdd would stop spinning (I can tell by touching it) , and second later my winxp would hang. I've to do a physical reboot to get it working again.

At first I thought it was a HDD failure, but when I'm in my Slackware, the problem never occur. It's really odd though. I run "chkdsk" and perfectdisk defragmenter regularly on my winxp, and chkdsk doesn't detect any errors so far.

Is it the way that linux kernel interact with the HDD and managing the filesystem is better than Windows XP?

LINUX - Not for image editing?

Faizi — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 15:20:42 +0800

Yo

My girl ask me to scan some of our pictures to put on the image gallery of our blog, so I rumble through my store to find my trusy old Canon FB330P scanner.. it’s a bit dusty.. hope it’s still in a good condition. Haven’t use this scanner for quite some time.. the last time I fired up this baby is around year 2000.. if I’m not mistaken.. hehe. The most important part is, I haven’t tried this scanner on linux before…

So there I was, pluggin in the scanner to my Asus KN8 deluxe’s parallel port, turn it on.. hear some sound.. yes.. it’s still working. So what’s next? googling of course.. to find the driver… luckily there’s a guy doing a special project for this kind of scanner –>

http://canon-fb330p.sourceforge.net/

.. lucky me..

So I downloaded the driver, RTFM a little , and find out that it require libieee1284 to work. After a little “slocate” on my system to see if it’s available.. yes it is.. the library came with slackware as a default . I compiled it.. and it doesn’t output any errors, boy am I glad.. :-)

How to scan then? more RTFM and I found out that I have to give it command line to scan images.. no GUI, no clicking.. hmm… Actually after getting familliar with the command line of the driver, I find it easier than to click. E.g :

CODE

./scan -S 2000,2000 -c -r 300 -o [output directory]

* -S for scan
-c for color
-r for resolution
-o for output

Isn’t it easier to type one line of command than to do a lot of clicking to set the width , height, resolutions.. yes to me it’s easier and I find myself to like this kind of scanning method more than point and click.

So what’s the problem?.. the driver is working fine, and I like the simple command line.. what is it that seems to be the problem? Well, for starter.. the Image quality.. is a bit unsatisfactory to my liking… it’s blurry.. even when I set the scan resolution to 300dpi… hmm.

Thinking maybe it was cause by the old scanner.. I reboot to my windows XP pro.. and scan the same picture with the same resolutions. The output was clear and crisp.. compare to the output done with my Slackware. So it’s not the scanner..

I don’t consider myself as an “elite designer", nor do I proclaim myself to be a “linux expert".. but If I want to do some Image Editing.. my Windows XP pro would be my choice rather than my beloved slackware… good thing though that I still have the win32 on my system.. actually I was thinking of terminating its existence now and then.. luckily I haven’t made up my mind yet.. hehe.. :-D

What about you guys, care to share some experience with photo scanning on linux?