Author Topic: Vector Linux  (Read 1470 times)

Aloone_Jonez

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Vector Linux
« Reply #15 on: 7 August 2004, 16:47 »
quote:
Originally posted by WMD:

So you did try Vector, huh?  How's it compare to RH9? (speed, ram)



Its a lot faster than RedHat, even without an accelerated graphic driver and all the eye candy turned on its still faster than both Redhat and Windows.

I don't know about memory though, KDE had an easy to use GUI to deturmine the memory useage.

How do I find out how much physical memory Vector Linux is using?

Out of my 256MB (take 32MB used up my my on board graphics card) so that's 224MB, RedHat used used over 60% of my physical memory. 30% for disk buffers, (this would depend on the programs I was running) and the other 30% for it's code, the rest was swaped to disk.

I sure Vector uses far less as it will run on 32MB.
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flap

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Vector Linux
« Reply #16 on: 7 August 2004, 16:57 »
If you're not using KDE, that's probably why it's faster.
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WMD

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Vector Linux
« Reply #17 on: 7 August 2004, 22:42 »
quote:
How do I find out how much physical memory Vector Linux is using?

In a console, run top or procinfo.
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KernelPanic

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Vector Linux
« Reply #18 on: 8 August 2004, 00:29 »
The command free is more to the point.
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insomnia

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Vector Linux
« Reply #19 on: 10 August 2004, 02:47 »
I just noticed it runs OpenGL and WineX faster than any other disrto I use(might change if you add to much packages).
It's a good distro for gamers.

[ August 09, 2004: Message edited by: insomnia ]

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Aloone_Jonez

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Vector Linux
« Reply #20 on: 10 August 2004, 03:09 »
Memory usage under fluxbox while running X-term and X-calc, in the root user area.

Total: 218.46, I have 224MB of system memory, so what's happened to the last 5.54MB?
Used: 97.93MB
Free: 120.54MB
Buffers: 7.91MB
Cached: 60.33MB
The swap partition was completely unused!

X is the biggest resource hog using 8%, the other processes all used less than 2%, 1% was the norm. I added all this up and it came to 15%, these figures are probably rounded up anyway so it's probably far less than 15%.

97.93 - 7.91 - 60.33 = 29.69 = 13.59% of total memory!

This is all very good but why dose Linux allocate large amounts of memory for a Cache?

I wouldn't like to run this on 32MB of memory.

[ August 09, 2004: Message edited by: Aloone ]

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insomnia

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Vector Linux
« Reply #21 on: 10 August 2004, 04:17 »
quote:
Originally posted by Aloone:

I wouldn't like to run this on 32MB of memory.

[ August 09, 2004: Message edited by: Aloone ]



I would(and I did).  ;)
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Aloone_Jonez

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Vector Linux
« Reply #22 on: 10 August 2004, 13:26 »
quote:
Originally posted by insomnia:


I would(and I did).   ;)  



It must allocate memory according to your hardware, I would imadgine if you only had 32MB it would load less and use the swap partition more.

This is very good as, RedHat often used the swap partition causing my PC to slow to a crawl on some occasions, this hasn
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KernelPanic

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Vector Linux
« Reply #23 on: 10 August 2004, 15:11 »
Linux puts alot of data to cache to improve performance. Whereas Windows often leaves large amounts of memory unused, what Linux does in this situation is different.
Instead of memory that isn't allocated to an application or the kernel being 'free' (read: wasted) Linux uses this for caching data.
Now I don't know all the exact details of how this works, but I believe it improves performance considerably. I think all UNIX systems I/O buffer in this way. You could read the kernel source if you are really interested.

I think that when you open an application that asks for a chunk of memory and there is none free the kernel just flushes some of the cache. This way news apps can still run.
Seriously though, look through mm/ in the kernel source i'm sure it can explain it better than me  
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WMD

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Vector Linux
« Reply #24 on: 11 August 2004, 02:06 »
Cache size is determined by system memory.  If you have 32MB in the system, it'll probably used about 8MB for it (at least that's what my 32MB system did).  As for the lost 5MB of memory it isn't reporting, I have no clue.  It always seems to report a smaller number on all machines.

On this note...is there something that lets me control the size of the caches?  Because my system, after a half hour or so, seems to go up to 100MB buffers and 260MB cache, which puts it really close to the top.
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KernelPanic

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Vector Linux
« Reply #25 on: 11 August 2004, 22:02 »
quote:
Originally posted by WMD:

On this note...is there something that lets me control the size of the caches?  Because my system, after a half hour or so, seems to go up to 100MB buffers and 260MB cache, which puts it really close to the top.



Why is that a problem?
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WMD

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« Reply #26 on: 11 August 2004, 22:54 »
Because if I then launch a new program, it spends time either swapping or dump huge cache sections.  I could probably speed up program startup a bit by figuring out a good cache capping point.
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KernelPanic

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« Reply #27 on: 12 August 2004, 00:35 »
You actually notcie it swapping?
Can you observe it with free?

You might be able to tweak it a little by changing the bdflush interval.

[ August 11, 2004: Message edited by: Tux ]

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WMD

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Vector Linux
« Reply #28 on: 12 August 2004, 06:10 »
I leave top running in a separate desktop all the time...I notice it reports 260MB cache, so I switch to another desktop and launch Mozilla...it takes unusually long, and when I go back to top, the cache is down to 150MB or so.

It never swap in huge amounts, mostly just a MB or so at at time, but it seems pointless to do that if it's willing to shrink the cache 100MB or so.  

Where can I adjust the bdflush thingy?
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Aloone_Jonez

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Vector Linux
« Reply #29 on: 14 August 2004, 20:41 »
VL 4.3 was released a few days ago.

I'm downloading it now.

323.8MB is big on a 5k connection that needs to be reconnected every 2 hours (fortunately my download manager will auto reconnect), its going to take more than a day.

How easy is it to do an upgrade installation?
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