Tell me more ×
Ask Ubuntu is a question and answer site for Ubuntu users and developers. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 3 down vote favorite

I think my system more than meets the minimum/recommended requirements for Ubuntu, but its still running slowly. Especially when I try to multitask by having 4-6 windows open, then it becomes quite slow and often hangs completely.

Before this, I was using Linux Mint previously which ran perfectly (but due to some software not working, I've moved to Ubuntu).

My question is, if I replaced my Ubuntu with Xubuntu, will it run faster (equivalent to how Linux Mint was running)? Or do I have to go down to Lubuntu?

share|improve this question
What version an distro are you actually using? Is it xubuntu, lubuntu (because of the tags) or ubuntu. Is it 12.04, 12.10? – Luis Alvarado♦ Jan 22 at 20:52
You should have enough RAM to run Ubuntu, what processor and graphics card do you have? – Seth Jan 22 at 20:54
Maybe give a bit more information about those 4-6 windows. Are they terminal windows running some task within? Or browser windows or video player? That will help us to suggest the next step of action(or question :P). – John Siu Jan 22 at 21:00
1  
@iSeth Processor: Intel® Core™ Duo CPU T2450 @ 2.00GHz × 2 , graphics card: 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller – Click Upvote Jan 22 at 21:06
1  
@ubfan1 May be that's the thing, I don't have a swap created. If I reinstalled and manually created a swap, is that going to improve things substantially?/ – Click Upvote Jan 22 at 23:40
show 4 more comments

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Running these commands may help in speeding things up a little by freeing some caches, but this won't fix the cause:

sudo su -

enter your password

sync
echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
echo 2 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
share|improve this answer
up vote 1 down vote

Sorry I cannot comment on your question. You may not have to reinstall if you can resize your partitions or have some unallocated space left over to create a swap partition. A swap partition would be advisable with only 2gb of ram. Try using gparted perhaps to do this.

share|improve this answer
How much of an impact will swap have? – Click Upvote Jan 22 at 23:53
Quite a lot! I personally find 2gb RAM to be a minimum for ubuntu if you want to do a few things at once. Even 3gb still eats up swap when using eclipse IDE and a browser with a few tabs open. The computer will run faster if it does not have to use swap space, and my other answer will speed give you a little boost when needed. – Mark Aroni Jan 22 at 23:57

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.