(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hi, (If I misuse terms, please correct me.)

IBM R30 Thinkpad, 900M Celeron and 128M RAM. Wary Watcher 5.1 (5.1.1?) ran very nicely, but Wary 5.5 is startlingly slow; even the mouse pointer is choppy.

Can I alter 5.5 to improve performance by removing, adding, or changing the included programs? Or, must I use a different OS? And, if I must use a different OS (within the Puppy family), then what is the difference between this and another that could cause such a change in behavior?

You have a small RAM, and it is possible that the newer version is struggling with it. Try to add more RAM, or create and use a swap partition.

If you boot from CD, copy the big sfs to your hard drive, or install Wary to hard disk (frugal is preferred).

Wary is for old PCs, so a good fallback for you is use the old Wary.

Try slacko on your machine. The original Thin slacko is good (version 5.33).
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=78228

or install Wary to hard disk (frugal is preferred).

Whilst I always do frugal myself, I have modern hardware. I have found that a full install suits OLD hardware better. Worth trying both to see what works best for you.

I think that it's something with Xorg. (If I understand correctly, Xorg handles the mouse too?)

I have the little red dot in the center of the key board. When I use that as a mouse, Wary is wonderful. I also installed Red Hat to experiment, and the auxiliary mouse works perfect.

I've noticed that the mouse works great in Wary until just before boot is complete.

How do I change the Xorg settings?

It had something to do with the PCI IRQ's. I changed them in BIOS to auto select, and now the laptop works great (considering it's age and power).

Apparently, Red Hat does something to over ride it while Wary accepts the default.