Is there a way to make Backtrack less ressource-intensive ?

[cravengemetzel]

Firstly, Backtrack is a wonderful distribution that serves me well, but I run old(er) hardware and it would seem that the two do not play nice together . My laptop is not that deficient, I think it is of i486 architecture (or whatever they used on the Acer Aspire 5610 back in 2006), and sports 1GB of RAM memory . But the thing is, it freezes, to the point that I cannot even watch a video (of any sort) without constantly having to move the mouse pointer .. And then it likes to shut down unexpectedly whenever Backtrack decides to use lots of CPU .

I have not had these problems since I stopped using Windoze, and to be quite frank, I do not currently have the financial means to acquire the latest available technology (I had a really powerful modern netbook, but unfortunately it recently took a fall and the LCD screen shattered) .. I have previously been running Arch Linux with a full KDE desktop, with none of these problems . I've even tried switching over to flux-for-back, to no avail .

I've been doing a lot of research into alternate pentesting distributions, but I cannot seem to find a legitimate candidate ..
If you cannot help me tone down Backtrack's egotistical resource addiction, could you at least point me in the direction of a good, lighter pentesting distribution ?

[Archangel-Amael]

A good idea would be for you to post here what services you think may be eating up your resources.
Feel free to let us know otherwise we would just be guessing.

[scottm99]

You might have a runaway process that's killing performance. Does it happen only when you're in the GUI? What kind of results do you see when you run the top command?

[snafu777]

Are you using KDE or Gnome? I switched to Gnome myself during my netbook usage because it loaded MUCH quicker than KDE. Since purchasing my new laptop I have not yet switched back to KDE, so I cannot really say if it was a hardware issue; but switching loaded BT much much much much much much quicker by an order of 60+ seconds or so (A millenium in computer time)

[thorin]

If you cannot help me tone down Backtrack's egotistical resource addiction, could you at least point me in the direction of a good, lighter pentesting distribution ?

Really that's the message you want to go with when asking for help from a community of volunteers and a free project?

No one here is going to keep you from rolling your own pentest distro to use watching videos on.....

If you actually want help try dropping the junk attitude and providing some actually useful details like real CPU and RAM specs. Information from "top", "uptime", "free", "vmstat", etc when you're experiencing the issue.