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Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 2:19 pm
by Matt
Chewi wrote:Eclipse is almost entirely written in Java so it's unlikely to be a platform-specific bug. Are you tied to an old version? If so, it's probably already fixed. I used to be the main Eclipse guy for Gentoo but I got tired of it and switched to Emacs.

I installed beta1 of Ubuntu 12.04 for the in-laws the other day. It's a little buggier than I expected (several random "something broke" pop-ups now and then) but it's quite usable for a beta. Father-in-law went apeshit partially due to the initial shock and partially due to connection issues that cropped up after I left (seemingly the router's fault) but they seem happy now.

I have other big news but can't say owt just yet. :wink:
I need version 3.x or something like that for the Borland Together Tool licence and it's damn near impossible to find for Windows :(

I'm sticking Ubuntu on an old P4, 1GB RAM for our lass (when I get the PC back from my old shared house) because it's only capable of running Windows XP, fuck that headache, so she's going to have to learn to use Ubuntu. I do it through love (and so I don't have to deal with XP's "oh wow, have 6 months gone by already? *BRRZZZT* Yep, reinstall time!!").

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 2:22 pm
by Chewi
Matt wrote:I'm sticking Ubuntu on an old P4, 1GB RAM for our lass (when I get the PC back from my old shared house) because it's only capable of running Windows XP, fuck that headache, so she's going to have to learn to use Ubuntu. I do it through love (and so I don't have to deal with XP's "oh wow, have 6 months gone by already? *BRRZZZT* Yep, reinstall time!!").
If you do, make sure you install unity-2d or it will be slow as molasses.

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 2:32 pm
by Matt

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 2:36 pm
by Chewi
Yep, that's exactly it. Some more recent guides tell you to add a staging repository but the latest versions are now officially part of 12.04 so you don't need to do that any more.

By the way, if you're doing it soon, I'd just go with 12.04. It's close enough to the final release that installing 11.10 now would be a waste.

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 3:12 pm
by Matt
Ah nuts. If I had this conversation a week ago I was in our shared house with 50mbit to myself...now I'm back with 2mbit (if I'm lucky). I'll make sure to grab 12, though!

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 9:54 pm
by Mik
It's even worse, guys, I now use a Mac and a linux machine at work. 15 year old me, would shoot me in the fucking face right now.

I can't copy and paste shit anymore stupid cmd key.

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 1:47 pm
by Chewi
Mik wrote:I can't copy and paste shit anymore stupid cmd key.
I feel for you. I just had an interview in London (not Google) where I had to use a Mac to write code. :|

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 3:04 pm
by kaos
I had to actually buy a mac.
I use it for nothing other than cooking out games to iOS

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 3:13 pm
by Chewi
kaos wrote:I use it for nothing other than cooking...
I wondered how that sentence was going to end. I gather they can get quite hot. :lol:

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2012 5:55 pm
by kaos
It does look a bit like a hotplate.

http://www.apple.com/macmini/

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 11:44 am
by Matt
I've installed Ubuntu 11.10 (I know I know) and Unity 2D is already part of that (I was happy to find out) but it's still as slow as sin :( I know, it's a P4 and such but by gods. I think it must be the CPU because the RAM usage seems fairly average (around 4-500mb of 1GB used. Peak was 800mb when I was installing NVidia drivers from Additional Drivers and also attempting to use the software centre). I did install Preload and I think I should have set the swap space myself instead of letting Ubuntu give me a gig. Some places I've seen say use 1.5x the amount of physical RAM and others have said go 3x the physical RAM. I always thought 2x was the ideal (think you told me that?).

Basically Jo wants to use this computer to browse eBay and listen to music. Last night when scrolling up and down on pages the music would crackle and stop for a sec or two which means it won't do as it is (she'll get pissed off with that in no time and I'll have a Jo-sized headache on my hands). I'm also sticking Dropbox on so she has her files across the computers on the house. There seems to be an issue with heat too as it gets super hot (though I noticed there's no 80mm fan on the back sucking the hot air out and thermal throttling is on). Perhaps using GNOME, KDE, XFCE?

Can you think of anything else I can do to remedy this before I admit defeat and put Windows XP on? Could I try upgrading to 12.04? Or perhaps 10.04 the netbook editions?

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 7:48 pm
by Chewi
I wouldn't downgrade. Switching to a different but recent distro is usually a better option. I would say 12.04 is definitely worth a shot though. Some points to consider. The version of Unity 2D that comes with 12.04 is much newer than the one that comes with 11.10. You installed Unity 2D but are you definitely using it? You need to select it when you log in - it then remembers your choice. If you still have a decent amount of RAM free then swap is irrelevant. Hitting swap is always bad news and you should only use it as a safety net. If you're hitting it often then you should either get more RAM or make changes to the system. If you installed the 64-bit version (some P4's are 64-bit) then consider the 32-bit version. 64-bit can be a little faster but it uses much more RAM by comparison. I forgot about this and wish I'd installed the 32-bit version for the in-laws instead. But it sounds like the issue is really CPU usage. I don't know what graphical utilities Ubuntu provides but run "top" in a terminal and see which processes sit at the top and how much CPU they consume, especially when you are scrolling. One to watch is pulseaudio. If that's consuming too much then you may be able to tweak its config to use much less. If all that fails, and only after trying 12.04 first, try Xubuntu or even Lubuntu.

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 9:19 pm
by Matt
Cheers James!

Yeah I downloaded 12.04 LTS this afternoon while I was cleaning the house and did a clean install with that (I could have upgraded from 11.10 but for the time it was going to take I fancied a fresh install instead).

Previously, yes I had changed to 2D Unity on the log on screen and got that going properly. But, the problem I think? CPU Thermal throttling. Last night when I shutdown I noticed the system monitor had the CPU at almost 100% all the time, even idling and the case was extremely hot to the touch. So, I think the throttling was taking place and that was killing the CPU clock off good and proper. These things whack out 65C on boot alone so god knows what it was running at last night.

Anywho, I shoved a 120mm fan in there and installed 12.04 today and it was noticably faster. It's only a 1GB system so I went with 32bit anyway. This was before 2D Unity. Then I got preload installed and all the rest and did the updates and it's a crapton better. I ran top anyway out of pure morbid interest and it's Firefox that's chewing the most cycles but that's to be expected. I'd use Lastpass.com and stick Chromium on here but Jo has an absolute aversion to it for some reason (I quite like it...) so I'm leaving Firefox for their Sync feature. I also haven't noticed too much difference in having 2D Unity (but going to leave it anyway)!

I figured a different shell might use less resources but I've been reading that Unity runs in the background anyway so there isn't much point in using anythign else.

A couple of questions, though (total thread hijack now. Muhahaha). In April how will I go about updating to the relase? Just use the updates I assume? and do you recommend anything else to install on here that might squeeze some more perf out of this tiny rig?

Also, when I was looking for the forums earlier I found your folder on the server (googled Aura Chewi...). This si awesome and I'm so stealing it:

http://www.aura-online.co.uk/~chewi/metal.jpg

:mrgreen:

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 12:21 pm
by Chewi
12.04 might have contributed but I bet it was down to the fan. Thermal throttling really doesn't help!

If you have a half decent graphics card, Unity 2D probably won't make much difference. The in-laws only had some low-end integrated NVIDIA thing. As well as being snappier, 2D seemed to use less RAM. Maybe if you have a lot of video RAM available, Unity uses that instead. Note that the offending process is compiz. It's responsible for the fancy effects.

Yeah, just keep updating, you don't need to do anything special there. It's only when 12.10 comes out that you need to do a special kind of upgrade.

No other tweaks spring to mind as it obviously isn't as flexible as Gentoo. Silly desktop effects aside, they seem to squeeze as much performance as they can out of it by default.

Yeah I love that pic. Believe it or not, the guy who sent it to me doesn't like metal but he thought it was a handy guide. It's surprisingly accurate!

Re: So am I like DarthVader now or what ?

Posted: Sat Mar 31, 2012 12:28 pm
by Matt
The GPU is a 128mb AGP NVidia Geforce 6200 of an unknown Vendor... :(

But yeah it's definitely a hell of a lot snappier. Jo's talking about getting a laptop now because of easier it would be to put away (she has limited room in her sewing room) but I reckon it'll be a while before she can muster up the cash to do that. I'm telling her to upgrade her phone contract in June to a crap phone that comes with a free laptop and then she can have my HTC Desire but she's resisting touchscreen devices quite well the old git! With any luck she'll grow to like Linux and demand it on there but she was complainign the window controls were on the "wrong side" lol!