• System config (Laptop) : Intel Core solo 1.8 GHz, 1GB DDR2 RAM, Intel 945GM.
• Hackintosh: Leopard 10.5.2 iAtkos.
• Windows: XP Pro SP3 with all the drivers installed.
• Arch Linux: Kernel 2.6.25 Arch with Gnome 2.22.3

And here are the numbers:

Screenshots: at Flickr

Final thoughts

Memory uses of Arch is pretty impressive even with Compiz but the CPU uses is really odd. In idle mode it is using 10% and with compiz enabled, CPU uses jumped to 21%! This is not Arch specific. All the Linux distros I tried had similar CPU use pattern. Fresh installed XP is breezing fast but start up and shutdown time is pretty high. It can be attributed to the fact that it loads couple of extra services that came along with drivers such as bluetooth, synaptic touch pad, wireless, and Intel graphics. I should have disabled them before testing. Hackintosh’s performance can not be compared with an Apple Mac but still it turned out to be fastest in terms of start up and shutdown time. I can’t say anything about memory uses. Initially it was using 290MB RAM but as soon as I pressed screenshot shortcut buttons memory use jumped to 340MB. Only if I had a real Mac to test actual performance.

And btw, this post has been made from Arch.

earlier. I did fix the issue but I had to do little more than what I did in Arch Linux. In case if you have the same wireless card (Intel 3945ABG) and looking for a solution for slow net speed, I have it for you. And if you don’t have the same card or problem but still want to know how I solved the problem, please continue reading.

This solution is for Linux Mint 5 but will work for Ubuntu 8.04 too. Please update your system before you proceed.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t do much distro hopping. I’d rather like to have a stable system then jumping from one disto to other distro every other day. Yeah, I know many people who do that. May be it makes them cool (well, at least they think it does!). Anyway that’s a different story. But I hopped 5 different distros in last 3 months due to one single reason: slow Internet speed.

My laptop has Intel 3945ABG wireless card and it is my primary means of getting online. I have Comcast 6mbps Internet connection and I get above 700Kbps on my Windows system. I used to get same speed on Ubuntu until I upgraded to 8.04. After upgrade my 6mbps became 256kbps. First I thought that it could be due to IPV6. So I disabled IPV6. But it did not help. Therefore I decided to try other distros and tried (in order) Mint, SUSE, Fedora 9, Arch(present distro).  Whats surprizing is that all of them having same problem. Then it struck my mind that it could be due to driver issue. So I stared searching for 3945ABG linux driver and found that kernel 2.6.24 and up comes with Intel wifi drivers for linux(iwl3945). I went to distrowatch and found that Ubuntu 7.10 shipped with kernel 2.6.20 and 8.04 comes with 2.6.24. Same kernel with other distros I tried. But before 2.6.24 kernel, ipw3945 drivers were used. As far as I remember, Ubuntu 7.10 used ndiswrapper for wireless driver.

Therefore I decided to use windows driver with ndiswrapper to conform my doubts. I removed ‘iwlwifi-3945-ucode’ package, blacklisted iwl3945, and loaded ndiswrapper and driver. After reboot I connected to my wireless network and guess what? My net speed is back on track. I have not tried this on Ubuntu yet. Once I do, I’ll post a tutorial on it.