Slow, slow, slow on Acer Aspire Nettop.

English Hardware
#1

There’s not really much to say here, aside from… SLOW! Lol, I installed OpenSUSE 11.4 on my nettop yesterday. It hasn’t really been a great experience. I installed all of the drivers for my GFX (Nvidia ION). I’m thinking maybe there’s a problem with the kernel, or maybe my PC just can’t hang. Web pages seem to load very very slow, even though I have a decent connection. Even opening up folders and settings pages takes (on average) between 4-15 seconds. On Windows XP, this machine ran like a champ. 1080p HD output, web pages opened almost instantly. I can barely play flash games now, or watch videos.

Hardware:
Memory: 2.5GB
Processor 0: Intel(R) Atom ™ CPU 230 @ 1.60GHz
Processor 1: Intel(R) Atom ™ CPU 230 @ 1.60GHz

#2

Welcome to openSUSE forums and welcome to openSUSE. We are all unpaid volunteer enthusiasts on our forum and I hope that we are able to help you.

I note your Acer Aspire Nettop (?) appears to have nVidia graphic hardware. Can you please also confirm it is not a hybrid graphic PC ? Please, can you type the following in a terminal and post here the output:


/sbin/lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A2

that will tell us EXACTLY what graphics hardware is on your PC.

In case this is a graphic driver problem, it would also be useful for you to open the file /var/log/Xorg.0.log in a text editor, copy the entire contents, and paste that contents to the paste site SUSE Paste and then post here the URL/web address it gives you. Do not post that large file here as it is too big. Just post the web site address/content where your paste is located.

Also, note proprietary video graphic drivers for MS-Windows are SIGNIFICANTLY superior in speed to those of GNU/Linux. This is true for AMD, nVidia and for Intel (although Intel are working to create open source video drivers that ultimately may be the same speed for GNU/Linux as is for MS-Windows).

Also the proprietary video graphic drivers for GNU/Linux (which are significantly slower than their MS-Windows counterparts) are SIGNIFICANTLY faster than the open source graphic drivers for GNU/Linux. Ergo the open source video driver for GNU/Linux are incredibly slow in comparison to any proprietary video drivers for MS-Windows.

Typically on some nVidia graphic hardware the way to play back 1080p in GNU/Linux is to use the nVidia ‘vdpau’ technology with the nVidia proprietary video driver.

Some time back I created a guide for vdpau for openSUSE, but I have not maintained it and it was ‘dropped’ as part of the new openSUSE wiki. One can find the old page:

For example, if the video is an h264 encoded (for this example called " the-h264-video.avi " ) , then to play this with vdpau setup and installed, one could type in mplayer:


 mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau the-h264-video.avi
#3

Ok, here goes:
Result of the first command:
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation ION LE VGA [10de:087e] (rev b1)
Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0222]
Kernel driver in use: nvidia
The xorg log:
SUSE Paste

I’m installing the vdpau now and will post back later.

#4

On 06/08/2011 07:06 AM, xlarkascendingx wrote:
>
> or maybe my PC just can’t hang.
> Hardware:
> Memory: 2.5GB
> Processor 0: Intel(R) Atom ™ CPU 230 @ 1.60GHz
> Processor 1: Intel(R) Atom ™ CPU 230 @ 1.60GHz

exactly what model “Acer Aspire Nettop” do you have?

i ask, because i find these words “Acer’s NVIDIA Ion toting Aspire Revo
nettop is getting a much-needed processor bump, with the company
swapping out the breathless single-core Atom 230 CPU for its dual-core
Atom 330 counterpart.”
<http://www.slashgear.com/acer-aspire-revo-ion-nettop-gets-atom-330-dual-core-2750364/>

which would tend to make it sound like perhaps while yours runs ELEVEN
year old technology XP ok, it just ain’t got what it takes for Vista,
Win7 or openSUSE 11.4

i can tell you this, my Acer Aspire One (model D255) 1.66 GHz Atom with
1 GB RAM and Intel Pineview graphics is pleasingly snappy running
openSUSE 11.4 with KDE4 (not quite as fast as the previous electricity
guzzling AMD 3000+, but dang close to it!) so, either your machine can’t
keep up, or something is wrong with your install and/or settings
and/or graphics driver…

-did you get your install image from software.opensuse.org or some other
place? (where?)

-how did the Live CD run…it should be a little slower than an
installed version, but even it should open folders and setting dialog in
MUCH less than 4 - 15 seconds!

-did you get the 32 or 64 bit version

-did you do this prior to installing: http://tinyurl.com/2ebcf27

-did you have any errors or warnings during the install?

-have you accepted all available updates via YaST Online Updater?

-what desktop environment are you running?

-opening My Computer, what does it say about your display adapter and
driver being used?

-does turning off Desktop Effects give better performance?

–
dd CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
via NNTP openSUSE 11.4 [2.6.37.6-0.5] + KDE 4.6.0 + Thunderbird 3.1.10
Acer Aspire One D255, 1.66 GHz Atom, 1 GB RAM, Intel Pineview graphics

  • When your gecko is broken you have a reptile dysfunction! *
#5

Thats missing 90% of the log file ! ie none of the 1st 90% is present. Can you please try again ?

Good luck with vdpau. Just what are you installing re: vdpau ?

#6

It’s the R1600, Revo I think.

-did you get your install image from software.opensuse.org or some other
place? (where?)

opensuse.org

-how did the Live CD run…it should be a little slower than an
installed version, but even it should open folders and setting dialog in
MUCH less than 4 - 15 seconds!

It ran ok, I don’t really remember. I ran it long enough to install lol.

-did you get the 32 or 64 bit version

32 bit.

-did you do this prior to installing: http://tinyurl.com/2ebcf27

No.

-did you have any errors or warnings during the install?

No.

-have you accepted all available updates via YaST Online Updater?

Yes, I think so.

-what desktop environment are you running?

Not sure? I think GTK or something like that, I have been using GTK2 themes.

-opening My Computer, what does it say about your display adapter and
driver being used?

I’m not really sure where this menu is.

-does turning off Desktop Effects give better performance?

Not really. I’m going to do the online update again, just in case.

#7

SUSE Paste

I installed it via the download manager, but I’m not really sure what to do with it lol. I’ve used Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Kubuntu and this is far different from the others lol. It makes my brain hurt!

#8

Ok, I note:


 23341.238] (II) NVIDIA GLX Module  270.41.06  Mon Apr 18 15:11:28 PDT 2011

so you are using the latest nvidia proprietary graphic driver and I see no errors suggesting your performance will be unusually bad (unless I missed something).

ahh … ok. … your first post referred to performance comparisons to winXP. Did 1080p play ok on Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Kubuntu ?

ie are you using LXDE ? Gnome ? KDE ? Xfce ?

#9

Well, I’ve never had the other OS’es on this setup, I was just stating that I’ve used them before lol, sorry about that. I’m using Gnome I believe. I actually haven’t had any problems today, I ran the update manager again last night and saw there was 73 updates! I also just got a message saying important updates were available. :slight_smile: Thanks for all the help.

One last thing: whenever I login or restart the computer, my resolution gets reset. I think it may have to do with my setup being connected to a 18.5" HDTV. Is there a way to set custom resolutions in the OS, so that Nvidia and OpenSUSE can recognize them?

#10

Everything seems to be fine now, I re-ran the software update and it seemed there were 72 updates I missed. LOL

One more thing; my resolution seems to reset every time I restart. I don’t think the OS is recognizing my custom resolution from Nvidia.

#11

I recommend you start a new thread asking for help on this to get the attention of our video gurus. Post in the hardware section with a title something like: “Need help for custom resolution setting with nVidia graphic hardware” and in your help request include the content of post#4 from this thread (ie the output of that lspci command and also the Xorg.0.log file link).