Xubuntu pentium 4 not enough CPU for development

Question

I installed ubuntu 14.04LTS lately on an old pentium 4 with 1Gb of ram. It was unusable. I moved to Xubuntu and added another Gb of ram for a total of 2Gb. I set the swapiness to 10. All these changes helped a lot. Now it's an usable desktop computer, but still a bit slow for what I need.

I'm using it to make PHP development so LAMP, Netbeans and Chrome are installed. The problem is that when typing in Chrome or Netbeans, the CPU tops to 100% all the time which is a bit annoying cause there is always lag when typing. The ram is ok, it's always below 1Gb (0 mb of swap) out of 2Gb when Netbeans and Chrome (with a few tabs) are opened.

Is there something I can do or my CPU is just not enough fast?

Thanks.

PS: I would like to keep using Netbeans.

Edit -> Output of cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor  : 0
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 15
model       : 2
model name  : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz
stepping    : 7
microcode   : 0x33
cpu MHz     : 2392.190
cache size  : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 1
core id     : 0
cpu cores   : 1
apicid      : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fdiv_bug    : no
f00f_bug    : no
coma_bug    : no
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe pebs bts cid xtpr
bogomips    : 4784.38
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 128
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management:

Answer 1

You should upgrade your CPU or use a different, specialized distribution (like Lubuntu) for older hardware.
If you can't upgrade your hardware configuration, optimize your system by following those instructions:

1. Install prelink and preload to reduce the startup time of many applications (like the sub-processes used by some IDEs).
   In a terminal (xterm or Terminal are fine) execute: sudo apt-get install prelink preload
   After the package installation, complete the configuration of prelink with: sudo PREFERRED_TEXT_EDITOR /etc/default/prelink
   Set the configuration variable PRELINKING to yes.

2. Remove any non-essential daemon, like NTP, and replace heavy daemons, like the SSH daemon, with light versions. Remember to disable unnecessary network darmons, they can slow down your systems, specially during a network attack, like a brute force attack.

3. Remove the search indexer, if present, with sudo apt-get purge apt-xapian-index; reboot.

4. Configure your graphic card correctly (are DRI features enabled?) with the official Ubuntu guide.

5. Follow the unofficial guide to speed-up Ubuntu.

You can also change your graphic enviroment to, for example, LXDE, which is less heavy.
I miss the old Pentium 4, but it's obsolete, sadly.
Please, comment under here if your have more questions and don't forget to press the left UP arrow and star if I'm of any help.

Good luck!

Answer 2

Your P4 is absolutely fine for text editing and running a LAMP stack (as long as you have the memory).

However this is the most frustrating thing I could say, but try to avoid big heavy IDE's for development, because they're so slow. NetBeans is a big heavy Java IDE, despite the heaviness, all it brings to the table is, a bit of file management; syntax highlighting; some refactoring tools; and perhaps a connection to xdebug.

You need to find leaner ways of developing, try vim or emacs (I have a personal preference to the former).

Vim would really suit your computer's specification as it can't actually use more than one thread.