[ILUG] Mandrake 8.1

[Rick Moen]

begin Darragh Rogan quotation:

> I'm just after installing Mandrake 8.1, and evwerything seems to be
> bugger slow!?

I don't have an immediate solution to offer, but I can offer a method
of investigation.  You may find, upon applying it, that there's a simple
and easily fixable explanation.  Or maybe not:  It's difficult to tell,
based on your description.

Anyhow, if I were having those symptoms, I would want to divide that 
one big, nebulous problem into smaller ones with a narrower field of
suspects, and I would also want to get a good overall picture for what
my machine is doing.  

In the latter category, you can use "top" or "ps auxw | more" to display
all the running processes and the amounts of RAM and CPU time taken up
by each.  Look at the "RSS" (resident set size) for various apps.  Look
at how much swap you're using, if any.  

Bear in mind that Konqueror is just a bit on the large side.  On a
PII/400 with 128MB and just Mozilla and a few xterms running, Konqueror
2.1.1 takes 11 seconds to come up, for me.

> ALso - my DVD and CDRW drives arent recognised (at least you cant read
> from them) - but work when you take the CDRW off. Its a LG 8 speed
> one.

Here is where I'd be tempted to divide the big problem into smaller
ones.  E.g., from your description, it's difficult to tell whether your 
problem is hardware- or software-based.  Has anything been changed in
the hardware setup since the last time these drives have been both 
recognised and working under some OS?  Is it possible that you have them
jumpered wrong?   Can you find them in the output of "dmesg | more", or
at least find the host adapters they're supposed to be attached to?

It's possible that someone more familiar with your hardware will be
able to give you more-specific advice.  Sorry I can't be of more
immediate help.

-- 
This message falsely claims to have been scanned for viruses with F-Secure
Anti-Virus for Microsoft Exchange and to have been found clean.