2

Hey guys I'm a new linux user, I figured it would be the best for the laptop I just purchased because it's said to be faster than Windows 7. I'm currently dual-booting with Windows 7 Professial and Ubuntu 12.04. The laptop I am using is the LG X Note P210

Specs:

Intel Core i5 470UM Dual Core clocked at 1.33GHz

12.5" HD LED LCD Screen at 1366 by 768

4GB DDR3 @ 1333 MHz RAM

Integrated Intel HD Graphics Card

4 Cell Battery with 3150mAh

It comes loaded Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit, it runs fine on that but my Ubuntu 12.04 runs slower than it and I don't understand why, it definitely has decent specs to run even a 64-bit operating system and do some gaming. Granted I know it's not the best but for a laptop it does the job so Ubuntu should work especially since it's said to make older units with worse specs run even better.

I'm not all that familiar with coding and all so what are things I can do to optimize speed without overclocking? Boot up is fine, its program response time I believe, once Im in the actual OS, it lags, slows down, apps stop working, take forever to load up apps.

user75129
  • 23
  • 2
  • 6

4 Answers4

1

Your slowness may be due to the fact that you are using Intel HD Graphics. Linux does not have very good 3D graphics support for Intel Chips. Also, in 12.04, Compiz eats a lot of memory. Use a 64 bit Ubuntu with either Gnome 3 or Cinnamon desktop for graphics effects. They use less amount of memory than compiz. Or if you want, you can use Unity-2D, faster with no 3D effects. 32bit Ubuntu cannot use more than 2 GB of RAM. If you use 64 bit, Ubuntu will use 3.7GB of RAM

Ubuntuser
  • 9,816
0

I'm not really sure why people are still perpetuating the myth that Ubuntu is faster than Windows? The desktop used by Ubuntu - Unity - is every bit as much a beast as is Windows and requires quite a bit of processing power and memory.

I have two suggestions for you:

  1. Install the 32bit Ubuntu. You only have 4GB of memory so you wont really be benefiting and this may be contributing to a slight slow-down.
  2. Try an alternative desktop. There are a number of alternative desktops for Ubuntu. Because you only have Intel integrated graphics available, you may prefer to run something rather lighter. XFCE is a popular choice.

You can either install a version of Ubuntu specifically designed for XFCE - Xubuntu. Or you can install XFCE as an alternative desktop, see here for instructions.

Julian Knight
  • 1,721
  • Now when I install XFCE, should I keep it at 64-bit or downgrade anyways? Also how would I remove unity? Is there anything I lose by going ot XFCE? – user75129 Jul 05 '12 at 17:42
  • Or how would I downgrade to 32-bit? – user75129 Jul 05 '12 at 18:00
  • I'm afraid that it is a fresh install. Just grab the 32bit version instead of the 64bit. I know it seems odd, but the 64bit versions of OS's only really benefit machines with >4GB of memory since they add a significant memory overhead themselves. – Julian Knight Jul 05 '12 at 19:31
  • Re XFCE, you can simply install XFCE as an additional desktop. The package you need will already be available in the repositories you have. A quick check shows me that the package to install xfce is xfce4. This is a "meta" package which means that it will install a load of other packages itself. Once installed, you can switch between desktops by logging out, then you will get a gear icon next to the user name selected for login. Clicking on this will allow you to choose your desktop type. – Julian Knight Jul 05 '12 at 19:38
  • You may find that you do loose some features when doing the above. But it should be enough to give you a feel for things. If you are not comfortable with doing all this, maybe try a "live" version of Xubuntu? They should have a DVD image you can write to DVD and boot off. If you like the XFCE desktop, you might want to consider going the whole hog and doing sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop which will give you the complete XFCE equivalent to the Unity (default) desktop. – Julian Knight Jul 05 '12 at 19:41
  • Sorry, I'm answering questions in reverse order! To just try out XFCE, no need to change to 32bit, either just run the live DVD version to see if you get on with it or install it using the instructions above. If, however, it really does meet all of your needs, I'd then recommend a fresh install of the 32bit version of Xubuntu. – Julian Knight Jul 05 '12 at 19:43
  • To get a Live CD version of Xubuntu, go to http://xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/ then choose an appropriate mirror site near where you are. Then select xubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso. Burn that to a CD (or USB stick) and then boot from it. – Julian Knight Jul 05 '12 at 19:49
  • I decided to turn to Unity 2D 64 Bit and it now runs perfect. But I do appreciate your help! It was awesome!!! – user75129 Jul 06 '12 at 05:37
  • No worries, I should have thought of that too! – Julian Knight Jul 06 '12 at 09:22
  • 32 bit installation will probably be slower on new hardware like this. Why are you suggesting this? – gertvdijk Sep 26 '13 at 07:00
  • @gertvdijk: No 32bit won't be slower. This is a myth. There are still many problems with 65bit OS's on WinTel platforms. Compatibility is still an issue and we are still not seeing any real benefits unless you need the additional resource space 64bit brings. If you never plan to use more than 4GB of RAM and never more than around 2TB partitions on disks, stick with 32bit. – Julian Knight Sep 29 '13 at 19:17
0

I installed the Lubuntu desktop to speed up my old laptop after finding Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity sluggish. Now there's a marked improvement in speed, I love it.

aquaticlizard
  • 44
prak97
  • 1
-1

I had similar experience with my Xubuntu 12.10 running on SSD, it was able to boot to the Xfce desktop within 8-10 sec from cold start, but somehow the boot time gets delayed to 1 ~ 2 minutes one day, I tried all different tweaks I googled but still without any luck. however, the problems finally solved after I tried to clear & rebuild the font cache by the command: "sudo fc-cache -fv" I guess the broken font cache may have caused the problem during login.

Mario
  • 1