WIBU installed Ubunutu, and switch to Xubuntu help

[grandkodiak]

I bought an Acer Aspire 1 netbook because it was a great price (used in decent physical shape) and it was listed as 100% compadible out of the box with Ubuntu. I took the easy way out and just used wibu installer at work to put on ubuntu (I have 64b kubuntu on my home pc, but i wanted to give gnome a shot!). the problem is that it is DOG slow, uninstalling or updating etc. takes forever... i guess its just too much for the netbook. I was thinking I should go with xubuntu, but I'm not to familiar with the process now that ubunutu is already on there. is the interphase whats slowing me down, or is there a core problem? ie. if I use

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude install xubuntu-desktop

will it still be slow because the core ubunutu install is still there? should i (and how do I) uninstall the wibu ubunutu installation and start again with xubuntu from scratch?

[james147]

the problem is that it is DOG slow, uninstalling or updating etc. takes forever.

Can you expand on this? Is it just networking that is slow? if so I doubt xubuntu will help much. If this is the case then it might be that your wireless (have you tried a wired connection?) is acting up and if you give us more info we might be able to help.

I have been running a full kde environment on my netbook for ages and not had any problems with it being slow so I don't see why it wouldn't be able to handle gnome.

As for install xubuntu, it shouldn't matter if gnome is installed or not (if the interface is the problem), but if it is the core then it wouldn't make much difference which ever way you install xubuntu so there should be no harm in trying to install xubuntu-desktop on top of ubuntu. However, I don't see why it should be having that much trouble with it and there is likely an underlying cause. If you give more info we might be able to help better.

[grandkodiak]

Internet is decent speed, it seems to be mostly opening system or preinstalled apps. when i go to the software center it takes almsot a minute to load, then navigating around takes forever. if i uninstall even a small program, it takes a few minutes, and sometimes freezes, and the only way for it to refresh is to log off then back in. i dont have it infront of me but when i get home ill update and tool around with more things see if i can narrow it down. its odd, i figured it was just because its a slow computer... i forget the specs but its like 1.6ghz, 1gb ram... ill confirm later.

[james147]

What happens if you use apt-get to upgrade/install/uninstall things? Is that also slow?

My netbook is 1.6ghz (dual core) with 2 gigs of ram (upgraded from 1 as I sometimes run vms on it) and haven't had a problem with it. One other thing you could do is to check your resource usage, if your filling up the ram then it might slow down (my computer can call to a halt if I fill up the ram as I tend not to have any swap space )

If you plan to use it allot then consider upgrading the ram to 2gigs, it really isn't expensive for 2gigs of laptop ram these days and a great way to gain some performance when you have lots of apps open (or a few web pages).

I am not sure how much the wubi install is slowing it down (since it basically creates a filesystem in a file on the windows ntfs partition, so has to go though 2 levels of file system, though i doubt that should make such a huge difference). You could try an install directly to the disk (there are lots of guides on how to dual boot with windows out there), that is if you don't find your programs are taking up more ram then you have

[vw72]

The original Acer Aspire Ones came with 512K of ram. Not a lot, but more than enough to run Xubuntu. If you completely disassembled them, you can actually add an additional 512K.

Xubuntu has a lot of extra stuff and can be made to run faster by installing from the alternate CD and doing a command line install. Then instead of adding xubuntu-desktop, install xfce4, xorg, lightdm and whatever apps you want by using apt-get. To keep it minimalist be sure to include the no depends flag.

That is the approach that most of the aspire one specific distros used when the aao was new.

[ardvark71]

Hi....

If you mean WUBI, that could have something to do with it, especially (I would think) if you have a lower amount of memory.

Regards...

[grandkodiak]

It has 1gb ram, and yes I ment wubi

Ive been playing with it, and read up on how wubi is just a large file install, I figured it was just an auto partition installer to make it quick and easy. I decided to delete it all, make a live usb and install in its own partition. i did run into something i coudnt figure out, the laptop already had 3 partitions, i forget now but 1 was an Acer recovery, one might have been a boot, and the other was an ntfs where windows 7 was. I split the windows 7 partition in half and was going to make a 1.5 or 2gb swap partition but after I made the split ntfs/ext it wouldnt let me make another, said there were a max of 4. i couldnt figure it out so I just decided to go without a swap... im only using basic apps and internet in the car with this.

i now have kubunutu and gnome unity and tried xubunutu and xfce. gnome and k where the slowest but marginally. its about maybe 25-40% faster now that its its own partition install, but im still noticing "slower then i expected" situations. (it doesnt crash anymore atleast when i install/uninstall more then 1 at a time.) kubunutu software manager doesnt open at all, it just crashes at startup. apt-get is decent speed in all gui's, and gnome software center works. the real hog seems the gnome software manager though, clicking the icon it takes almost 20-30 solid seconds to open, then is slow to switch between windows (all software, installed, history). but when you click to uninstall something, its very very slow, even if the programs only a few mb's. theres a few second delay between going from an uninstall to when it starts, then a delay of about 20 seconds, then the screen dulls out, then brightens back, dulls out, brightens up then goes to a white loading screen, shows the program list, goes BACK to a white loading screen, then you can move on to the next uninstall/install.

clicking any icon on the unity bar takes a few seconds too... doesnt really seem to care the size of the program thats loading, there seems to be in inherit delay with unity maybe? i with i could try with kubunutu's software center (forget the name of it) but it wont even run...?

ps. i tried gnome 2d thinking maybe the lack of decent video ram is causing the delays, but i didnt noticec a difference either way.

[james147]

The reason you where only able to create 4 partitions is due to legacy reasons, the inital creators of the disk layout never thought that more then 4 partitions would ever be needed (these are known as primary partitions) o how wrong they where. To fix this another partition type was created called the extended partition which takes up one of the primary partitions but allows you to sub divide it further into more partitions effectively removing the 4 partition limit. However, to switch to using this you will need to delete one of the partitions. Note that not all operating system will boot from extended partitions (notabally older windows) but linux is fine with this.

Another solution to the swap problem is to create a swap file, basically a file on the main kubuntu partition that contains the swap filesystem. See here for how to create a swap file (scroll down to the section "Four-step Process to Add Swap File")

[grandkodiak]

will do on the swap