YDL 2.2 on Performa 6400-Speed and monitor isues

[Shawn Dunn]

On Sun, 23 Jun 2002 15:40:45 -0400
Cenobyte <cenobyte@mac.com> wrote:

> Hi all-
> 
> OK, I finally got YDL 2.2 to install on my old Performa 6400. After some
> initial problems it finally installed without incident. Here are the system
> specs. 
> 
> However, there are two glaring issues that are making me regret getting into
> YDL in the first place. But if I can get some help resolving them, I might
> want to spend more time exploring Linux.
> 
> Performa 6400
> 88MB RAM
> 30GB hard drive
> Mac OS 9.0
> 
> 
> Firstly, I'm using GNOME as the GUI and the overall system speed and redraw
> rates of the windows is ABYSSMAL! It's like using Virtual PC. I didn't
> expect G4 speeds, but this is ridiculous. There is about a 15 second lag
> between clicking something and having actually do something. Moving a window
> and having it redraw is just as painfully slow. I was under the impression
> that YDL would operate at usable speeds on an older Mac, and don't want to
> install it on my G4 as it is how I make my living and I can't afford to use
> it as a Linux Laboratory. I get the same pitiful performance using KDE.
> 
> Secondly, I had difficulty getting any of my monitors to display the GUI or
> the graphical installer. I currently have the 64oo working with an NEC M500
> at 800x600. At installation I kept getting an error message and it dumped me
> into the text based installer. No biggie, except that no matter how I
> configured the monitor setting in Xconfigurator I can only get a GUI to work
> with the FailSafe setting. Of course, the color depth and display quality
> are awful. 
> 
I previously had Ydl-2.0 and 2.1 installed on this machine (debian-3.0 now), and it's very similar to your 6400, Performa 6360 (603ev/160, 136MB, 60GB 7200 RPM HD), and I can tell you, that without putting a graphics accelerator in that machine, Gnome/KDE performace is abysmal, give windowmaker, blackbox, or some other WINDOW manager a shot, instead of a DESKTOP manager, they consume much less resources.  course, if you have another video card floating about, and can get an accelerated X-server working with it, KDE/Gnome performance is no worse than MacOS9 (imho), as far as the XF86Config, try running Xautoconfig-4 as root, always worked for me....., oh yeah, make sure you check your fbdev settings before you do that fbset as root, the compatible modes are in /etc/fb.modes, and you can change them with fbset XxY-freq -depth bitdepth  (i.e. fbset 800x600-72 -depth 24)



						--Shawn