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I was of the opinion that ubuntu is a bit lighter then windows 7. I did first install with disk encryption, the system crashed a lot, and when I tried to update the graphic card driver AMD/ATI system also crashed.

I reinstalled the OS and now it runs a bit better but still a little slow.

My system specs are:

  • Ubuntu version 14.10
  • Cpu intel core i5 m460 2.53ghz x 4
  • 4 GB of ram, system only shows 3,5 though
  • I have an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 1 GB, but the system shows intel@ Ironlake mobile.

So I guess my 3D-card is not currently in use. The HD has 500 GB but only 5400 RPM.
I think that the slow system comes from here ?

Is there anything I can do to get it a bit boosted or any solution getting the 3D- card to work properly?

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  • How did you install it?
    – Parto
    Feb 10, 2015 at 17:41
  • From a USB driver. made with universal USB install program, from the 14.10 iso file from this page
    – eXo
    Feb 10, 2015 at 17:47

2 Answers 2

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Your hardware seems powerful enough. Mine was less powerful (Core2 Duo E8400 @ 3 GHz, GeForce GT 8800) and still ran quite well and responsive (outside of the few occasions in which I wanted to crunch some numbers, compile large pieces of software, or play modern video games).

If the open source Radeon driver aren't enough for you (e. g. for modern 3D video games), you should give the closed source driver from AMD another try. Start with What is the correct way to install proprietary ATI Catalyst Video Drivers (fglrx) directly from AMD? and post a new question, if you run into issues.

As for the restricted main memory there are two possibilities:

  • You're on a 32-bit installation, but you'd be better off with a 64-bit one. The latter would make full use of your main memory and run (especially) arithmetic operations a little faster.

    You can check with uname -m. i386 mean 32-bit, x86_64 means 64-bit. If you decide to re-install Ubuntu, you can even continue to use your old settings, if you don't format the target file system in the process.

  • Your integrated graphics adapter uses some of the main memory as graphics memory. If you have an integrated and a dedicated graphics adapter, you may want to disable the integrated one to release the memory, if you don't care about the higher power consumption.

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Try to get your 3dcard working properly. You might have to find a driver from a third party as Radeon might not have a driver for linux, if that doesn't work i know Unity doesn't play nice with certain chip sets. It can have a hard time processing certain graphics - so if you can't get your 3dcard working properly move to gnome-session-fallback or XFCE or something similar.

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  • so i did get the computer to run on amd graphics from fglrx, but under systeminfo it still says intel@ironlake. I did get a small boost in perfermance tho.
    – eXo
    Feb 10, 2015 at 19:33
  • You could try to increase the size of your swap file then - sometimes it helps, i would try a different 'flavor' then. I've had luck with gnome-session-fallback and XFCE. XFCE is less graphic intensive for a gui so you should see a performance boost. The gnome option basically just gives you older versions of the gnome interface - but they work well. Feb 10, 2015 at 19:46

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