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Everything Else => Zaurus Distro Support and Discussion => Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums => Archived Forums => Ubuntu => Topic started by: gr8ful on January 31, 2009, 01:26:39 pm

Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: gr8ful on January 31, 2009, 01:26:39 pm
I've been following the Zubuntu discussion off and on and I'm now pulling my C1000 out of moth balls.  

Would some of you who have installed Zubuntu compare the performance to the latest Cacko (the last distro I installed)?  

Also, what applications are you running and how are they performing (browser, abiword, gnumeric, music/video players, doc viewers, calendar/todo app)?


Thanks in advance for your response and thanks to Cortez for working so hard to breathe new life into the old Z.



Nathan
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: Capn_Fish on February 01, 2009, 12:28:31 pm
I can't really compare it to Cacko, but it is MUCH snappier than Debian. There's a bit of lag in the heavier apps (Abiword, browsers, etc.), but it's usable. Webkit browsers work quite nicely.

Hope that answers your questions well enough.
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: axeTail on February 02, 2009, 08:37:11 am
Quote from: Capn_Fish
I can't really compare it to Cacko, but it is MUCH snappier than Debian. There's a bit of lag in the heavier apps (Abiword, browsers, etc.), but it's usable. Webkit browsers work quite nicely.

Hope that answers your questions well enough.

I have found zubuntu slower than Debian.
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: tanjian2 on February 02, 2009, 09:47:28 am
Anyone know  if overclocking is possible with Zubuntu and if so how we can do it? I am keen to make the most of Zubuntu !!
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: gr8ful on February 02, 2009, 10:26:12 am
Also, are there any performance enhancements coming to Zubuntu that will speed up applications?  What's the roadmap for ARM Zubuntu?
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: Capn_Fish on February 02, 2009, 05:31:14 pm
Quote from: axeTail
Quote from: Capn_Fish
I can't really compare it to Cacko, but it is MUCH snappier than Debian. There's a bit of lag in the heavier apps (Abiword, browsers, etc.), but it's usable. Webkit browsers work quite nicely.

Hope that answers your questions well enough.

I have found zubuntu slower than Debian.
I don't know how the default setups stack up, but with the same setup on both, I found Zubuntu to be faster (it's using armv5tel optimizations, which I believe make the difference).

It may all be in my head, but same effect either way.
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: thebaz67 on February 05, 2009, 09:51:16 am
I think if you are not getting the performance you are expecting please try stopping the tskeys process.

this is mentioned in the RC1 thread but if you did not read the whole thread it is easy to miss.


You can stop it before starting the windows manager with "killall tskeys"

taken from here:

https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&...st&p=181101 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=26410&view=findpost&p=181101)


or you can comment out the tskeys from starting documented here:

https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&...st&p=181116 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=26410&view=findpost&p=181116)


I also, since I am using a C3100, put my swap area on a partition on the MD  not sure if this is faster or slower


Thanks to the folks who found this information and posted it.  Just though if this was discussed here in the performance thread it would help.

It was also mentioned that a speedy SD card helps.  I expect to try that as soon as it arrives but I saw a significant improvement once the tskeys process was stopped.




Baz
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: tanjian2 on February 05, 2009, 06:59:38 pm
Quote from: thebaz67
I think if you are not getting the performance you are expecting please try stopping the tskeys process.

this is mentioned in the RC1 thread but if you did not read the whole thread it is easy to miss.


You can stop it before starting the windows manager with "killall tskeys"

taken from here:

https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&...st&p=181101 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=26410&view=findpost&p=181101)


or you can comment out the tskeys from starting documented here:

https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&...st&p=181116 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?s=&showtopic=26410&view=findpost&p=181116)


I also, since I am using a C3100, put my swap area on a partition on the MD  not sure if this is faster or slower


Thanks to the folks who found this information and posted it.  Just though if this was discussed here in the performance thread it would help.

It was also mentioned that a speedy SD card helps.  I expect to try that as soon as it arrives but I saw a significant improvement once the tskeys process was stopped.




Baz

Done all of the above - am busy compiling some apps and thought overclocking was in PDAXrom why not Zubuntu - you get nearly 50% more cpu which is great for compiling. (Never mind the optimisations). I must admit I have swap on the MD and starting emacs is faster in Zubuntu than pdaxrom.

Anyone try building any apps? I mostly have the latest EMACS of the cvs head working - some lisp files don't get made but I don't use them.
Tried mplayer - since audacious doesn't work for me. Fails - goes round and round saying configuration changed re-run ./configure - go figure indeed.....

Went back to pdaxrom today briefly - and realised just how good it was. Zubuntu has th epotential to be better but for me it is still not there (no sound/video, can't get wireless and wpa going on my ambicom, my noname usb lan stopped working (both ambicom and usb-lan work fine in pdaxrom).
Can't get a @ symbol and the key repeat starts too soon for my chubby fingers!

Thanks
tanj
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: thebaz67 on February 06, 2009, 09:06:13 am
Well I can not answer the difficult questions but on my C3100 the @ symbol is avail using the shift key rather than the FN key

so it is shift -  rather than FN -


Did your noname usb LAN adapter stop working in zubuntu or it never worked in zubuntu?  

Are you manually setting up ip addresses or letting dhcp handle addressing?

If it is a dhcp issue have you seen this:

https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=26435 (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=26435)

This fixed dhcp for me on my socket lan card so dhclient now runs properly and gets an address.
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: tanjian2 on February 06, 2009, 09:45:51 am
Thanks for the @ - weird that its shift though I guess there is nothing else on the key for shift for.

I solved the usb lan thing - my SD was corrupted by a power fail - had to fsck it and guess the usb lan module got trashed.
So I simply re-installed the spitz additional tarnall from Cortez and that fixed it. Still NO sound - do you have sound working?

PS I have changed from lxde to icewm and feel even happier with zubuntu! More tweaking this weekend.

Thanks again
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: danr on February 06, 2009, 11:29:28 am
Quote from: tanjian2
Still NO sound - do you have sound working?

Have you run alsamixer and unmuted everything?
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: tanjian2 on February 06, 2009, 11:49:58 am
Quote from: danr
Quote from: tanjian2
Still NO sound - do you have sound working?

Have you run alsamixer and unmuted everything?
I believe I have - I found alsamixer very confusing. Does [OO] mean that both channels are unmuted (as opposed to [MM])?

Thanks
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: danr on February 06, 2009, 12:30:20 pm
Quote from: tanjian2
I believe I have - I found alsamixer very confusing. Does [OO] mean that both channels are unmuted (as opposed to [MM])?

Thanks

Yes I think so.  If you're using headphones, ensure the jack function is "headphone".  For some options you can press up and down to change the setting; for others you can press 'M' for mute / unmute.  Try experimenting with it.

Also ensure you've loaded the sound module at startup.  Your /etc/modules file should contain something like

[div class=\'codetop\']CODE[/div][div class=\'codemain\' style=\'height:200px;white-space:pre;overflow:auto\']snd-soc-corgi[/div]

but this will depend on your machine type.
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: Capn_Fish on February 07, 2009, 12:10:42 am
Quote from: tanjian2
Done all of the above - am busy compiling some apps and thought overclocking was in PDAXrom why not Zubuntu - you get nearly 50% more cpu which is great for compiling. (Never mind the optimisations). I must admit I have swap on the MD and starting emacs is faster in Zubuntu than pdaxrom.
You can just copy the pdaX overclocking script over to Zubuntu, AFAIK. All it does is edit values in /sys, I believe.
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: tanjian2 on February 09, 2009, 05:41:23 am
Quote from: Capn_Fish
Quote from: tanjian2
Done all of the above - am busy compiling some apps and thought overclocking was in PDAXrom why not Zubuntu - you get nearly 50% more cpu which is great for compiling. (Never mind the optimisations). I must admit I have swap on the MD and starting emacs is faster in Zubuntu than pdaxrom.
You can just copy the pdaX overclocking script over to Zubuntu, AFAIK. All it does is edit values in /sys, I believe.
It doesn't work. The places it reads and writes don't appear to exist in the ubuntu kernel. I found a different version hacked by yonggun for debian but it reads the cpu correctly but requires a utility called dvfm to write to /dev/ipmc neither of which I can find.

Any zaurus kernel hackers care to point me in the right direction?

Thanks
Title: Zubuntu Performance?
Post by: tanjian2 on February 14, 2009, 07:42:11 pm
Quote from: tanjian2
Quote from: Capn_Fish
Quote from: tanjian2
Done all of the above - am busy compiling some apps and thought overclocking was in PDAXrom why not Zubuntu - you get nearly 50% more cpu which is great for compiling. (Never mind the optimisations). I must admit I have swap on the MD and starting emacs is faster in Zubuntu than pdaxrom.
You can just copy the pdaX overclocking script over to Zubuntu, AFAIK. All it does is edit values in /sys, I believe.
It doesn't work. The places it reads and writes don't appear to exist in the ubuntu kernel. I found a different version hacked by yonggun for debian but it reads the cpu correctly but requires a utility called dvfm to write to /dev/ipmc neither of which I can find.

Any zaurus kernel hackers care to point me in the right direction?

Thanks
The kernel 2.26.26 does not have the cpufreq module compiled and so the cpufreq-utils can't be used. Too bad....
Got to wait and see how cortez gets on with the latest kernel.