You said "pc" so were you talking about microsoft windows? I'm a little
confused by the terminology, but since you're posting here I'll assume
you are running ubuntu.

My first thought is that it's probably not graphics specific; rather the
slow graphics is just a symptom. I suspect another program might have
gone astray, and disappeared from the screen but is still thrashing away
and hogging the CPU - something I've seen with browsers and other programs.

Open a terminal and run "top" and based on the output, consider these
questions:

What is the load average on the machine?
Are there any processes near the top of the list, using a lot of CPU?
Is there any swap being used?

Seems like I have raged a war on this forum...lol.....sorry for not being clear.
I am using Ubuntu as OS.

I will try your solution now, just got back now. Can you please tell me how to
check, whether swap is being used or not? I guess, swap memory is like temo
memory?

You can use the "free" command to show memory and swap use, and you can
use the "w" command to show load average, but I prefer top because it
does the work of several commands, showing load average, memory usage,
and top processes, with continuous updates.

You have nothing to be sorry for, don't worry about terminology. I just
like to make sure what we're discussing before I give possibly
irrelevant answers.

The following is the results of free command
total used
free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1026860 981960 44900 0
43944 315024
-/+ buffers/cache: 622992 403868
Swap: 1646620 0 1646620

Seems like swap is not being used. I guess its a good thing. Every other value
seems to be fine?

The following is the result of "w" command.
23:45:29 up 10:21, 3 users, load average: 1.89, 1.59, 1.06
USER TTY FROM
LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
musabbir tty7 :0
13:25 10:21m 41:33 0.54s
x-session-manag
musabbir pts/0 :0.0
23:43 46.00s 0.26s 0.02s man w
musabbir pts/1 :0.0
23:45 0.00s 0.35s 0.00s w

Do you reckon these results are appropriate?

OK, you're not using swap. But the load average is suspiciously high.

Can you run top?

You can get a single snapshot with the command "top -n 1"

Please find below the output from the terminal for the top command. Is swap not
being used is a good sign? I thought it was bad?

top - 17:43:40 up 1 day, 4:19, 2 users, load average: 2.18, 2.07, 1.68
Tasks: 121 total, 3 running, 118 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 26.3%us, 5.5%sy, 3.5%ni, 64.5%id, 0.1%wa, 0.1%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1026860k total, 1000924k used, 25936k free, 76344k buffers
Swap: 1646620k total, 7692k used, 1638928k free, 158416k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S
%CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3434 musabbir 20 0 587m 487m 17m R 37.7
48.6 178:30.00 opera
20287 musabbir 20 0 293m 67m 17m R 26.4
6.7 19:20.77 operapluginwrap
2594 root 20 0 16428 2868 2288 S
1.9 0.3 0:19.08 NetworkManager
1 root 20 0 3084 948 564
S 0.0 0.1 0:01.47 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.08 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root 15 -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.51 events/0
7 root 15 -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset
8 root 15 -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
9 root 15 -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 async/mgr
10 root 15 -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd/0
11 root 15 -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kblockd/0
12 root 15 -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
13 root 15 -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_notify
14 root 15 -5 0 0
0 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.62 ata/0

When I open system monitor, Gnome-monitor process fluctuates alot and sometimes
use upto 83% cpu

X-org process is in sleep mode, but it also fluctuates and goes as high as 20%
cpu

Do you reckon it might be a problem with flash version? Because,
everything starts slowing down as soon as i start watching videos on the
internet.

I was having a hard time with your top output since it somehow lost all
formatting and is all jumbled together, making it very hard for me to
read. But if I'm reading it correctly, something is eating up CPU like
crazy and it seems to be opera and its pluginwrapper.

What happens if you shut down opera and use, say google chrome instead?

I manually tried to format the terminal output, but, I guess it did not
work out when I eventually sent the email.

What generally happens is when I move to new browser it works great, but
after two or three weeks it gives me similar results. I started with
firefox, then chrome and finally thought opera is the best. But, each
one of them have disappointed me.

But, do you reckon it might be a flash problem?

Here is my top output - I'm running google chrome on desktop 1,
thunderbird on desktop 2, firefox on desktop 3, and lotus notes on
desktop 4. Firefox has 3 tabs open on facebook, running flash-based
applications. As you can see my load average is much lower than yours,
so something is eating up your CPU, and top says it's opera.

It's hard to say whether its a flash problem, but I'm not familiar
enough with opera to interpret the results. Are you running 32 or 64 bit
ubuntu?


top - 16:18:14 up 1 day, 23:34, 8 users, load average: 0.11, 0.26, 0.24
Tasks: 194 total, 1 running, 193 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 2.9%us, 3.7%sy, 0.3%ni, 92.9%id, 0.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si,
0.0%st
Mem: 3080196k total, 2749296k used, 330900k free, 83108k buffers
Swap: 2000084k total, 0k used, 2000084k free, 1285904k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+
COMMAND
1 root 20 0 2844 1692 544 S 0 0.1 0:01.32
/sbin/init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00
[kthreadd]
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00
[migration/0]
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:05.06
[ksoftirqd/0]
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00
[watchdog/0]
6 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00
[migration/1]
7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.54
[ksoftirqd/1]
8 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00
[watchdog/1]
9 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:03.30
[events/0]
10 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.66
[events/1]
11 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00
[khelper]
46 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.46
[kblockd/0]
47 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.34
[kblockd/1]
50 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00
[kacpid]
51 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00
[kacpi_notify]
143 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00
[kseriod]
185 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00
[pdflush]

Yeah, your usage is really low. To be honest, I dont know what to do.
Its so frustrating because i need to do some really urgent work. I ran
top command again with everything closed (browsers etc) and the
following were the results

top - 16:56:50 up 2 days, 3:32, 2 users, load average: 1.38, 1.71,
1.76
Tasks: 123 total, 1 running, 121 sleeping, 1 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 22.3%us, 4.4%sy, 3.7%ni, 69.1%id, 0.3%wa, 0.1%hi, 0.0%si,
0.0%st
Mem: 1026860k total, 865812k used, 161048k free, 99172k buffers
Swap: 1646620k total, 63980k used, 1582640k free, 509312k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+
COMMAND
24100 musabbir 20 0 31928 19m 13m D 77.7 1.9 1:09.10
gnome-system-mo
2570 root 20 0 190m 49m 9764 S 7.2 5.0 75:44.00
Xorg
24364 musabbir 20 0 2444 1092 828 R 1.8 0.1 0:00.03
top
1 root 20 0 3084 420 368 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.49
init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
migration/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.72
ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
watchdog/0
6 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.42
events/0
7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
cpuset
8 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
khelper
9 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
async/mgr
10 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
kintegrityd/0
11 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.16
kblockd/0
12 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01
kacpid
13 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
kacpi_notify
14 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:02.98 ata/0

It seems still my load average is high as compared to your, with most
of the CPU being used by Gnome system monitor.

The following are the results of the CPU command.

processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 13
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.60GHz
stepping : 8
cpu MHz : 600.000
cache size : 2048 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov
clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe nx up bts est tm2
bogomips : 641.41
clflush size : 64
power management:

Your baseline load average is still over 1.0, that's not good.

Ah, you've got a 600 Mhz CPU? Ah, now it's all a bit more clear to me.
For a system like that, I would recommend that you dispense with the
heavyweight desktop environments (gnome or kde) and try a low carb
ubuntu distro which is optimized for less powerful hardware -

xubuntu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu

or

lubuntu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lubuntu

But, do you reckon 600 Mhz is so bad that it can not take the load with
nothing running? If you dont mind, can I ask what the frequency of your
processor?

Also, I am assuming that I would need to do a fresh install, if I want
to install xbuntu or Lubuntu?

Well, 600 Mhz is fine with nothing running - but unfortunately, gnome
system monitor is far from nothing, and gnome itself, while much lighter
and snappier than it was a few years ago, is still more cumbersome than
the truly lightweight desktop environments which I think would be better
for your system.

If you were starting from scratch, that would be one thing, but since
you already have an existing install, you can just add the lubuntu and
xubuntu desktop environments via synaptic and see how each of them
behave on your system.

I'm adding the xubuntu desktop to my 10.04 box right now to see how it goes.

The one good thing is that now I know what is wrong with my system.

One thing which always surprises me is how you guys know about the
terminal command e.g. top, cpu commands etc? I quite like terminal, but,
I cant use commands beyond rm, cp and mv, and always need to copy paste
command from the forums.

I would be grateful if you can tell me the secret about you all learn
those core commands.

My bet the normal response will be "years of experience" I myself
spent about 25 years in Unix then retired about 10 years ago and
forgot most of what came as second nature to me from the command
line. That is why I wanted to have a go at Linux, not quite the same but
this way I can keep my hand in even a little.

Along these lines can Gnome be configured not to become active
or be taken down? I think the others can be loaded onto Ubuntu.
Lets say Xubuntu which I think then has Xwindows for the GUI
and is designed for slower processor speeds and smaller memory.

With multiple desktop environments, you just choose the one you want at
login, and that's the one that will manage your X session. You could
remove parts of gnome, if you're careful not to remove any gnome
libraries which are needed by the system, but if disk space isn't tight
you can leave them all there.

600 MHz is not "bad" but it is underpowered for any recent operating system,
including full Ubuntu/Kubuntu. For the record my oldest desktop systems runs
AMD 2600 CPU (actual speed 1.83 MHz) and my MSI netbook is, of course, 1.6
MHz but runs K/Ubuntu just fine.

I will give Xubuntu or Lubuntu a go and see whether I can over come problem of
graphics.

From top, free and cat/proc/cpu info

You have a Pentium M 1.6 ghz which runs at 600 mhz, so processor is throttling
like it should Pentium M is a Pentium Mobile, are you using a Laptop or a
desktop (with miniboard?)

You have 1 gb of Ram.

Your Pluginwrap of opera is causing a problem, you've tried another browser
(which one?) and it gives you the same problem.

Am I in the ballpark here?

I'm running a much smaller version, also Debian, a Toshiba Laptop with only 512
mb 1 ghz proc Pentium M and I have no problems. (Iceweasel with fluxbox)

So back to basics. Put in a default Firefox and see what it does, deinstall
Opera for the time being.

Also, what kind of video card do you have?

My main work desktop has this cpu:

"Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6850 @ 3.00GHz"

and my test box has this:

"Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz"

Yep, very likely. I keep Plugins disabled by default in Opera i
(Tools|Quick Preferences|Enable Plugins).

Flash causes a dramatic system slowdown and I have been plagued by
that over all versions of Ubuntu/Opera/Firefox.

I use Firefox when I have to view a website containing Flash and the
slowdown/increase in CPU load is noticeable. Often the CPU would max
out when a Flash enabled website is loaded

FWIW, I do think Steve Jobs is right when he blames Flash for unreliability
issues.

I'm running Iceweasel with flash plugins and I don't have that problem. And I
have a small system (1 GHz, 512 mb)

granted, with a lot of flash processor jumps to 90 or 100 percent, but not on
YouTube. Just sites with loads of flash.

The flashplugin still uses loads and loads of procpower....