Gimp, very slow on my puppy... :(

[fernan]

Hi

I' m running puppy 2.16 from CD , PIII 500Mhz , 128 Mb ram, 256 Mb swap. PCchips M755 motherboard (on board Video card). 19" LCD monitor at 1280x1024 (I've noted that working at 1024x768 is a bit faster)

I can do almost everything with puppy, but after opening a small JPG image in Gimpshop (6 megapixel, from a Lumix LZ5) becomes literally unusable.

I use to read comments from happy users running puppy in lower specs boxes than mine, so I think that there is something that I' m missing. Perhaps I need to fine tune the memory usage in Gimp...

I' ve tried running "to ram" and from HD , but performance is poor in both cases.

Same happens in Grafpup 2, running cinepaint or gimp becomes impossible.

Do I need to buy a new PC ?

Thanks .

fernan

[MU]

I have a P800 with 256 MB, and it works ok.
But I have 600 MB swap or so.
Maybe another version runs better.

http://dotpups.de/dotpups/Graphics/

or the old one:
http://dotpups.de/dotpups/Graphics/gimp1.2.pup
Mark

[alienjeff]

Do you have mobo video or a video card? If a video card, how much video memory?

If your video is borrowing memory from RAM, that could explain the sluggishness.

-aj

[Flash]

It is my understanding that working with images in jpeg will be slower than working with them in raw or some equivalent, because of the extra processing required to convert back and forth. You might try some other format, e.g. bitmap, to see if it works faster.

[Fossil]

Jpeg's are the inherent format in most compact cameras. Even if they are converted by a graphics package to a BMP or TIF it will still be a problem. TIF's are huge. For instance, I've just converted a 54 kb jpeg to a BMP, which became 921 kb.
fernan's computer has 128 megs of real ram, a swap of 256 megs and, as he points out his

"(on board Video card). 19" LCD monitor at 1280x1024 (I've noted that working at 1024x768 is a bit faster) "

is probably the major culprit, as alienjeff said.
fernan. Just out of interest, have you tried loading a 6 meg jpeg into MtPaint? Is it faster? I ask because I usually use this program for quick cropping/hilighting work on any of my camera's 5.1 meg jpegs, using my old Pentium 333 with 256 meg of ram and a 500 meg Hdb (ancient HD) swap file.
Is there any real difference in the speed between that program and Gimpshop?

[fernan]

My on board video card is sharing ram from my 128 Mb... I can change it in my bios setup (from 8 mb to 32). I think that now it's sharing 32 Mb.

Working in mtPaint is much faster (just opening the image takes at least twice the time in Gimp), but I'm triyng to do some experience with Gimp and Cinepaint, since I teach Prepress and Photo retouching in a graphic arts institute, and I'm planning (with another teacher) to introduce students to open source software, but I need to know how far you can go with Gimp and Cinepaint, what you can do and what you can't. Think that I use to work with 150 Mb images, (of course not in my PIII), so I think that 6 Mpixels are small pictures, but may be that they are not too small....

Regarding jpg, tif , or bmp, it shouldn't be a problem, since the image is uncompressed when you open it, but while you are editing it, it should be the same uncompressed size regardless the original image. When you save it, it will be compressed again....

I would like to know experiences from some Gimp users in similar hardware... or learn a bit more about memory, shared memory, and see if I can set something better...

[raffy]

A lower version Puppy may be good for your machine. Minipup (minipup.info) has Gimp that can run well in 16 MB RAM video memory. And you can save on RAM with "puppy pfix=noramsfs" at boot time.

[msumner]

Have you tested the ram? I had two 128mb ram sticks that deteriorated over time until the machine stopped working. It was always when working with jpegs that I really noticed the problem.
Installing a cheap video card and/or extra ram might also help, rather than getting a new machine.

[Lobster]

Installing a cheap video card and/or extra ram might also help, rather than getting a new machine.

The cheap video card will make the biggest difference if graphics are your priority. They are safe to buy second hand

[MU]

Installing a cheap video card and/or extra ram might also help, rather than getting a new machine.

I don't think a graficscard would help.
Even cheapest onboard ones should be fast enough.
There were speed-differences at the time of 386 processors, but since then you will encounter no difference.
Newer cards only have advantages in video-decompression or 3D with special drivers.

Programs like Gimp need fast processors and especially Ram.
If they must start to swap on the harddrive, things can become very slow.
But I really wonder, I think Gimp 1 was quite fast on my old Pentium 133 with 128 MB Ram. So there might be something else wrong.

Mark

[Lobster]

I don't think a graficscard would help.
Even cheapest onboard ones should be fast enough.

Mark

I have found inbuilt cards to be sufficient as you say. So was surprised at the sluggish behaviour.

OK so maybe other solutions

[Fossil]

fernan
Just a thought.
How much hard drive space do you have left? If you look within Gimp - Preferences/Environment it might be worth trying to alter the overall memory, undo and cache levels which can take up a lot of resources. Also, check the Gimp's own temp and swap folders.

[alienjeff]

I don't think a graficscard would help.
Even cheapest onboard ones should be fast enough.
There were speed-differences at the time of 386 processors, but since then you will encounter no difference.
Newer cards only have advantages in video-decompression or 3D with special drivers.

Some newer cards also have dedicated video RAM, which may very well help in this situation. I ran Gimp on a 600MHz PIII 384M RAM without problems.

I can appreciate that in some parts of the world more RAM isn't as readily available as it is in the states. However, I've found that the biggest bang for the buck has been to max out my machines with RAM. Slow processors and busy busses don't need the added burden or traffic caused by insufficient RAM.

-aj

[silverojo]

If possible, get more RAM. The GiMP takes a lot of resources, and runs slowly for me on every OS I've tried (Windows and other Linux distros). I don't know if I'd even attempt to run that program on a computer with the specs you mentioned. It's sluggish on mine, and I have 512 MB of RAM.

I hope this helps.

[fernan]

Thanks everybody.

I was trying different configurations from my BIOS, changing the amount of shared RAM, from 2 Mb to 32Mb. I've found that with 2Mb, X doesn't start. With 4 Mb, X works, so I will use this configuration for a while, to see what happens.

Running "noramsfs" (copying pup_216.sfs to HD) is faster than the default "toram".

Opening 6 Mpx images in GIMP takes a lot of resources (the opened image is 30Mb, and with only 5 undo levels, it becomes more than 130 Mb), so It's no possible to process that kind of images in my hardware.

Based on my experience as Macintosh user, I agree that more RAM is better than a faster processor with the same RAM.

So... I nedd more RAM, even if I buy a new computer.... but buying old PC100 Dimm sometimes is more expensive than new DDR, so may be it's not a good deal to put money in an old computer. I could use it as it is, or donate to somebody that can't afford a new one... I could make somebody happy happy whis this PUPPY
Or... forget about Gimp, and use it as I do until today. There is a lot of work that can be done with this hardware.