HP Pavilion zv5120us & Ubuntu

[towsonu]

I have been running Ubuntu on this machine for a while now. Although the graphics card is a little bit problematic, it's running ok. The problem is that, it looks like cpu usage is too high. I am not sure if this is related to the video card (radeon mobility 9000 igp, using ati driver) or if it's got something to do with wrong computer configuration out of the box.

Is there anyone running linux on this machine?

PS. I'm really happy that this one came with a slmodem!

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

>it looks like cpu usage is too high

Does it work slowly?
What is your uptime output?

[towsonu]

It works somehow slow. It is like the programs like to use it at maximum. For example, firefox will use 55 -70% cpu when loading some (javascripted) pages. Qemu will use 100% even when I load a page in explorer or launch any programs in emulated windows. Openoffice.org will go up to 60% saving not-so-big files.

By uptime, I'm hoping you mean how long the computer stays on? on the average, it is 3-4 hours. At least 1 hour, at most 12 hours. The speed doesn't change with time though.

[Vitaly Karasik_1 · Accepted solution]

I meant " load average" numbers in "uptime" output.
BTW, how many RAM do you have?
What is output of "free" utility?

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

I meant "load average" numbers in the "uptime" output.
BTW, how many RAM do you have?
What show "free" utility?

[towsonu]

Hmm, was I not supposed to rate the post before posting a reply?

Anyway, I will post the information later, as my linux isn't accessible to me now.

Thanks for your continuing interest, I appreciate it.

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

Thank you for a points - I became Royalty!

But I don't want to receive points twice for the same replay that I sent twice by accident :-|
And zero points for this post, please :-)

[towson]

ok sorry for the different username, I just couldn't login with my own for some reason, even after resetting password 5 times... annoying. I should still be able to login from work and score though (if cookie doesn't expire). annoying...

The output you requested:
RAM: 1GB
free:
[code]
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1166012 351940 814072 0 19392 148048
-/+ buffers/cache: 184500 981512
Swap: 2096440 12532 2083908
[/code]
uptime: load average: 1.24, 2.07, 1.70

[towson]

hmm, I see that [code] doesn't work here. I am attaching a .txt file for that output for ease of reading.

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

At least this is not memory problem...

Can you send me a "top" output from your machine?

[towson]

cpu usage is very "changing". I am attaching a file again. it has
1. when nothing is really running (no cpu usage, good)
2. firefox --safe-mode loading slashdot+digg and switching between tabs (firefox and Xorg use cpu too much)
3. R running an anova test (R exploits cpu)
4. qemu launching internet explorer (qemu exploits cpu)

I don't have prior experience with R and qemu, although their cpu usages don't look right.

Firefox (1.5) was very fast and did not use cpu so extensively doing the same things. Desktop is also much faster with the live cd. I feel this is either corrupted video driver configuration or some corruption of the OS (as if this was Windows ;) )

[towson]

Is this relevant:
I tried installing the fglrx driver for ati once from the repositories, than from ati itself. non worked, so I reverted back to ati (which works amazingly better, which is surprising knowing that they don't give out specs of the video cards).
To revert, I do: remove .deb packages and change driver section in xorg.conf back from fglrx to ati.

[towson]

Can this be related to a gtk problem I found here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=792816

PS. sorry to post too frequently.

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

Hmm...
It may be ati driver related, and may be not. Here http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-24703.html they speak about similar problem with nvidia card.

Are you running now the latest recommended updates from Ubunty?

[towson]

yes, I have all the updates. let me attach my latest xorg.conf (which _now_ uses *radeon*, which, along with some customizations, did not make any difference except increasing glxgears fps output a little) I changed to this new one yesterday, but the slowness is still there. I have all previous xorg.conf files in the system, if you decide you need them. any more output needed, please let me know.

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

Unfortunately, I don't have a machine with radeon mobility 9000, so I cannot play with this stuff by myself.

May I ask you to try to configure X with generic graphic driver "vesa" and run your graphic applications?

[towson]

I will do that as soon as I go home. However, you might wanna know that I was unable to log in with my old id (password reset does not work), so I will not be able to give any points. sorry about this.

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

Is there any [good] news?

[towson]

nope... I decided to wait until new ubuntu version, and try a couple of other distros in the meantime around april. vesa didn't help either... thanks for asking :)