[Gllug] Serious operation

[Norman Duncan]

Ok

I think I am ready, scalpel, mask, oxygen, ...... a serious operation is 
necessary.

Running Suse 8.1, KDE3 on a P4 laptop with plenty capacity and little 
activity to justify it. Am running nothing complicated. Have ADSL 
connected and working fine (to get the bbc) ..... but

I seem to goo very slowly til I grind to a halt.

I launched a question in mid december (Audio conflict)  which is till 
not resolved.
But I think I have something  at a deeper level, more compounded, 
influencing the audio,video, internet and other operations (sorry if I 
cant describe this any clearer, but I'm sure your questions will help to 
clarify).          Basic symptoms:

Basic start up.... it seems to take ages to do anything:
- first open of KDE  - 65 seconds
- open netscape - 35 seconds
- - -  and so on
        what the hell is it doing & why? and how can I stop it?
I have read people saying KDE is fat and unwieldy (sounds like me) but 
this seems too much.
Closure the same --- on this fast linux: 65 seconds, ... on other old 
slow P2 w98: 30 seconds ¿¿¿¿¿**¿¿¿¿¡¡¡*¡¡*?? (sorry for the 
exclamations, but that is how I feel right now)

Audio:
- Sometimes works for hours,sometimes for a minute ot two
- In either Realplayer or bbc player, in Netscape 7 or Konqueror ... all 
the same
- When it starts going, there are are clicks,   it might come and go a 
few times saying that it is rebufferring, and then it just goes .....
- but always (when it stops) the Realplayer or other windows open at the 
time go slow (leaving tracks on screen), they don't close, they dont 
click and draw
- with or without arts it is the same
- Usually what I do to get it going again is to open KDEGUARD  which 
seems to show all the stuff that is running ..... I kill variously arts, 
kmix, realplay, .. and whwtever else i think might be interferring. ... 
and it usually gets going again (not always)

Also my tmp file seems to be getting filled with locked numbered 
directories (several for each day since I started). I  try to open them 
from su but cannot... so don't know what they are.  ..... but I suspect 
my early process of trying to install mozilla, then netscape 7 (I need 
some special java to get into an essential chat for me) then realplay 
.... and puting them on tmp (not knowing where else to put them)

Often when I look in KDEGUARD there is a bunch of stuff running ... much 
of it seems to be duplicating itself (Filling the RAM, buffers, cache, 
....)  Mengetty, nscd, java, ...and realplay ..... I kill one of these 
and the whole family goes with it. Am I barking  up a wrong tree herein 
thinking that these are filling up space and blocking each other:

I was also having screen driver problems  (lines and flashing) until 
Suse told me to run with fbdev, whilst I have a ATI radeon M6 mobile (15 
"). But this seems like a quick patch for the time being ..... not 
optimal system.

I am sure that  all of this is connected, I would like to know how to 
begin to tackle it and what questions to ask Suse..... within the warranty.

I have another 10 days of my warranty (free support) from Suse. But they 
keep telling me that this is not their problem .... that I have to pay 
on their expensive phone line (excellent customer service marketing 
this). I think that some of the problem is theirs, but have no idea even 
which questions to begin to ask them. So I feel powerless against the 
big authority (familiar theme .... no?)

Thanks for any pointers

Norm


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