Laptop running SLOW

[Cadwalader]

Hello...
I am fairly new to Linux...I put RedHat 7.3 on my laptop in the hopes of greater stability and so I can learn something other than Windows.
My trouble is that this laptop is running so so so slow. It takes like 30-45 seconds for Konquere to open.
Here's my hardware:

Compaq Presario 1200T
633 MHz Celeron
64MB RAM (8 set aside for graphics)
RedHat 7.3 (KDE Desktop, LILO boot thingie...I don't know if that makes a difference).

I finally got the sound and the network PC card working. It's just so slow...
I looked at the running processes and there are like 56 of them running (that includes top). There are like 5 instances of kdeinit running, about 8 mngetty (what is that?), and tons of other stuff. Is there any way to stop the things from running that don't need to be running(if there are any)?
This thing actually ran faster with Windows ME on it. That is sad. I know Linux can do better than what it's doing now...


Thanks for the info. Hope I was of some help...
--OR--
Thanks for the help...
--Rich

 

[jeisner]

A couple of things I can think of that may help!
If you run:

Hdparm -Tt /dev/hda (assuming you have linux on hda)

what is the second speed? If it is 5 Mb/s then you do not have DMA enabled, try enabling with hdparm (see its help) if you can't DMA support may not be in the kernel (time to build a knew kernel)

And what file system did you use? I found ext2 to be quite slow!

But there must also be other problems, as these things will help but your system sounds to me as to be running abnormally slow!