[Sunhelp] X Window System

[James Lockwood]

On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, Wes Hofmann wrote:

> Well it's a 110Mhz MicroSparc II with 64MB of ram.  I guess I'm pretty
> limited in both areas. :)

RAM is likely to be your biggest problem.  Dump CDE if you're using it.
Don't use huge background images, don't use opaque window moves.  Use a
lightweight window manager like fvwm1, avoid pigs like Enlightenment, KDE
or similar.  Stick to one toolkit for frequently used programs if
possible (of Qt/GTK/Motif/etc).

Netscape will always be slow, unfortunately.  When things really bog down
try using vmstat and iostat to see if it's because you're dipping into
swap.  Enable priority paging if you haven't already, it makes a
substantial improvement on machines with small amounts of RAM.

A 110MHz uSparc-II is still quite a decent desktop if you can stay out of
swap.  Most 2.5" drives are noticably slower and performance really
nosedives when you run out of physical RAM.

-James