BT 5 Lag issues. Help please =)

[Keeame]

I first played around with backtrack with virtual box on XP. I finally then partitioned my hd and had XP with BT. BT then became very laggy, although it was still usable. From there I then used google, this forum (as well as others) and found no solution to lag. Most lag issues I found were dealing with a virtual machine or booting off a USB drive. So, I figured I'll just erase XP and use BT as main operating system. (I did this because since I have installed BT on my pc I havnt touched XP and thought this could be the problem) So BT is the only OS on my pc now and it is still laggy. Its as if everything moves in really slow motion, things take a little longer to open, and at first it was doable but now its getting beyond annoying.

I've been reading a lot on linux and doing a lot of research. I just have no idea why BT is doing this to me, as I have seen no similar issue. I'd love to be able to use linux (especially bt) because I find that linux > any other OS the more I learn.

If there is anywhere on this forum that deals with this exact problem, I'd love to read it. I have searched this forum but there is a chance that I missed it. Any help with be AMAZING, and I thank you all ahead of time for your replies.

my laptop info

Dell XPS M1530
HD - 250g
Ram - 4G

As of now under the BT infocenter

Total Physical Mem - 3.44gb
Free Physical Mem - 2.88gb
Shared mem - 0
disk buffers - 22.5mb
disk cache - 270mb

Total swap and free swap the same at 9.48GB

All memory is mostly free... ><

Anyhelp would be great. =)

Thanks for your time

-Chris

[Dudeman02379]

The way you describe the computer as "laggy" makes me think it could be a video problem. Try doing some research on installing and configuring the proper drivers for your computers video card. There are a lot of threads on this forum that address video issues.

[maverik35]

I agree with dudeman, to me It could be very possible that your problem is the video driver...Also, check the type of disto you downloaded (BT5 32 Gnome, BT5 64 Gnome, BT5 32 KDE, VM, etc)...I recommend the 32 bits Gnome or KDE...There are some problems with the 64 bits as I have read in some posts...
Am I reading Swap space 9.4 gb?..Wow...
Try first to reduce swap area, the "2X memory RAM = Swap" is no longer applied, why?..Because it was for older compueters, with 1Gb ram max, if they had to use some software that used lots of memory, they had to use the swap area..In linux, the Virtual memory = Ram + Swap area...Kernel moves data in between them as necessary to optimize apps..In this case, if you had a pc with 1 or 1.5 gb mem, you could use the "2x" rule...But if you have enough memory (3 or 4gb) you will end up without using the swap space..But again, it depends on the software or program you use...In this case, you might not even use the swap space...
I've read that big swap spaces reduce speed, and I quote:

"One negative about providing too much swap space is that errant
programs may run for an extended time and use up RAM and swap space.
This probably causes system slowness due to excessive swapping, and
could lead to the wrong process being killed by the OOM killer when
the kernel runs out of memory (see the OOM Killer section below).
This failure can be prevented by not defining huge amounts of swap
space unless you know that it is required. In other words, swap
space can be an area for system slowness, so allocate it wisely."

This is just for the record, so, try first reduce the swap space..If it still slow down your computer, then try installing the video card driver in case...

Best of luck

[stdape77]

I agree with the Video part. But will say i am using 64bit and no problems, and thanks to sickness a lovely script for updating. But saying that i run it on my laptop also which has an ATI Radeon, 2gb memory and that still works good.
also on a 1gb Netbook.
i made a 1gb swap space, so maybe yours is way tooo much? .

[Keeame]

Thanks for your replies. I updated my drivers, and searched through some settings and found the problem.

I turned off all desktop effects and instantly made a HUGE difference. Its still has some lag spikes rarely.

Is this a common issue with desktop effects and should i report this problem to bt staff?

Thanks again for your help! nice helpful community...for once. =)

-Chris

[byteme]

While using swap unnecessarily does happen, it generally shouldn't be a problem on a PC with 4 GB RAM.

Try the "free" command in the terminal. This will show you whether swap is actually being used:

~$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       4026904    3988024      38880          0      81680    1585732
-/+ buffers/cache:    2320612    1706292
Swap:      3998712          0    3998712
~$

Try the video card drivers first as suggested, and also look at the output of top (in terminal as well).

[KMDave]

Did you install the nvidia drivers?

It might be the reason for the behaviour. Also do you have the 128 MB shared memory card or the 256 MB non shared?

[Keeame]

keeame@bt:~$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 3612244 663884 2948360 0 81468 238148
-/+ buffers/cache: 344268 3267976
Swap: 9936892 0 9936892
keeame@bt:~$

This is what came up. I have installed all drivers that were missing. Lag is rare now, but does occure. If theres something wrong with swap, which i believe there is, how should I go about fixing the problem?

Thanks for all the help! xD