Hey guys, long time Linux user here. For probably 10 years I’ve been using Linux, at first I was constantly swapping distros for fun and seeing what Linux is all about.
I’ve stuck with OpenSuse as my primary OS for the most part.
I love Leap 15 on my desktop, however on my older laptop I’ve been finding Leap 15 to be a bit too much for it at times especially since my laptop gets very hot now and shuts down at times from that. The last version of Suse I had on it (I think 12 or 13) ran pretty smooth but Leap 15 KDE is a struggle on it.
So, what might you guys recommend I try on my laptop?
I primarily just use it for multimedia purposes and web surfing etc. Music and videos are a big part of my usage. I do some gaming through Wine, like Red Alert 2. But gaming isn’t overly important as I can just switch to my Windows partition if needed for games I play.
I don’t need anything overly fancy, I like the options KDE Suse has for customization but ultimately I don’t fiddle with it too much anyways.
My Acer laptop has Intel i3 2.53 ghz and 3.5g ram. Keep in mind the laptop is like almost 8 years old.
The so called light-weight DE’s might launch a bit faster, but the things that are really putting load on a system are our ###tab browsers etc, Turn off desktop effects in that laptop’s KDE and it will do fine. My 2 cents, based on recent experiences with a.o. a 2GB RAM, CoreDuo, yet 64GB SSD with Leap 15.0 and stock KDE.
On Sun 14 Apr 2019 11:56:09 PM CDT, syoung27 wrote:
Hey guys, long time Linux user here. For probably 10 years I’ve been
using Linux, at first I was constantly swapping distros for fun and
seeing what Linux is all about.
I’ve stuck with OpenSuse as my primary OS for the most part.
I love Leap 15 on my desktop, however on my older laptop I’ve been
finding Leap 15 to be a bit too much for it at times especially since my
laptop gets very hot now and shuts down at times from that. The last
version of Suse I had on it (I think 12 or 13) ran pretty smooth but
Leap 15 KDE is a struggle on it.
So, what might you guys recommend I try on my laptop?
I primarily just use it for multimedia purposes and web surfing etc.
Music and videos are a big part of my usage. I do some gaming through
Wine, like Red Alert 2. But gaming isn’t overly important as I can just
switch to my Windows partition if needed for games I play.
I don’t need anything overly fancy, I like the options KDE Suse has for
customization but ultimately I don’t fiddle with it too much anyways.
My Acer laptop has Intel i3 2.53 ghz and 3.5g ram. Keep in mind the
laptop is like almost 8 years old.
Thanks folks!
Hi
When was the last time you opened the laptop and cleaned out the dust
bunnies and replaced the thermal compound… that may sort out the over
heating… Still have RAM lying around
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SLES 15 | GNOME Shell 3.26.2 | 4.12.14-150.14-default
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It’s serious if it gets hot to the point of shutdown, as the laptop lifespan - and any other computer hardware - will diminish considerably.
IME changing from 12/13 to 15 will not increase CPU to this point, so much, so I’d check out:
Is there any process running a core at 100%, like the indexing think in KDE, or even X? top is your friend here.
Dust cleanup, as malcolmlewis already highlighted.
Failing thermal interface between processor and cooler - this can be a b*tch to change, I’ve done it once on an HP laptop. It worked, but it’s not something I’d like to do again.
Besides shutting off desktop effects, as Knurpht indicated, you may want to check if the rendering method set to openGL (better, if your GPU support it) or Xrender (slower, more demanding). Playing with the compositing options may help a bit here.
I’d also check if when running Tumbleweed from a liveCD you also get this excessive heat. If not, it’s probably something related to item 1 above.
