Keeping Q4OS light

hchiper · 2020-07-30 17:44

Hi,

I have installed Q4OS a few weeks ago on a 10 years old laptop. It runs much more faster than with Win10, successively upgraded from Win8 and Win7.
Now I wonder what makes Q4OS so light for my laptop (linux version? desktop? applications?).
The underlying question is about the things not to do to keep it light (avoid getting apps outside of Q4OS repository?)
Thanks for Q4OS and thanks for your help.

Laurent

tlmiller76 · 2020-07-30 23:09

The biggest thing that keeps q4os so light is the fact that Trinity Desktop is, at it's heart, 15+ year old software that's been kept up-to-date from a security standpoint and had as much new features as can simply & realistically be added to modernize it. But the underlying code was written when single core processors were still the norm, and multiple core single socket processors didn't yet exist, thus they HAD to be light. By using this much lighter-weight desktop it allows the entire OS to run much better than it could otherwise.

bin · 2020-07-31 05:56

Perhaps the question should be "What makes windows so damn sluggish?"

You don't say whether you've used Plasma or Trinity so it's bit hard to be specific. However, the basics are the same.

The OS will stay pretty much as is. Provided you keep to Debian Buster and Q4OS repos you won't go far wrong. I use a few other Debian based repos for odd bits of software but that's about it. If your machine is busy doing other stuff such as searching for samba shares, browsing for printers, looking for mobile modems and so on it isn't productive if those are not needed.

I always remove samba stuff cos I don't need it. I always remove modemmanager likewise cupsbrowsed. That gets a few % points back. If you use 50mb wallpaper files and animated do-dads and spinny twiddly effects then you may see things slow down a bit. Open firefox with 40 tabs and it may struggle......but for normal day to day you should be fine.

If you are using an SSD then you may need to look at regular trimming and also using the noatime switch in fstab. If you want to know how to do that then ask. If you are not using an SSD - then get one!!! The speed increase is phenomenal. I use a Samsung 860 PRO and it is fst!

One if my big bugbears is huge volumes of log files that may never be needed. Q4OS Plasma writes humungous .xsession-errors files. Trinity is a bit chatty but nowhere near as bad. There are ways of getting round this by mounting log files to memory rather than writing to drives - but that's something to consider once you've got your feet under the table with linux. Great learning experience!

hchiper · 2020-07-31 08:02

Thanks for your reply, tlmiller76.
I use the Plasma desktop. I didn't try Trinity yet.

hchiper · 2020-07-31 08:17

Thanks for your reply, bin.
As I replied to tlmiller76, I use Plasma.
When possible, I use the buster-backports repo, to get more recent versions of the packages.

At first, I installed Q4OD on the laptop's original HDD with the original 2 GB RAM. I immediately noticed a huge difference in performance compared to Win10.
I was then convinced to buy 4 GB (maximum for this laptop) and an new SSD. Here too the performance increased a lot (thanks for your advice anyway).
Q4OD had already configured fstab with the option noatime. I could understand its meaning thanks to
opensource [dot] com [slash] article [slash] 20 [slash] 6 [slash] linux-noatime.

Can you explain what is the "regular trimming" you have mentioned?

bin · 2020-08-01 06:37

No probs - from what you say you're doing fine!

I was referring to fstrim which is used to 'clean up' SSDs

This is a very good article https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_state_drive

Check your drive supports trim using the 'lsblk --discard' command as shown. Some distros insert the discard option in fstab but this was not universally supported and claimed to be too aggressive.

I use the fstrim.service as described under Periodic

sudo systemctl enable fstrim.timer

but have altered my fstrim.timer (/lib/systemd/system/fstrim.timer) to OnCalendar=daily

hchiper · 2020-08-01 08:42

Thanks bin.
Well, it seems Q4OS already did the job at install time:
original fstab:

UUID=55256edd-4ef0-4844-9b36-3a8339a1738f /              ext4    defaults,noatime,discard 0 1
UUID=06610819-40c8-4bea-b23b-f25ff828d289 swap           swap    defaults,noatime,discard 0 2
tmpfs                                     /tmp           tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

original fstrim.timer:

[Unit]
Description=Discard unused blocks once a week
Documentation=man:fstrim

[Timer]
OnCalendar=weekly
AccuracySec=1h
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

Laurent

bin · 2020-08-01 16:48

Running discard in fstrim is considered by some - mostly Redhat - to put a continual load on the drive as it is constantly reclaiming space. I always viewed it a bit like full defrag all the time on a spinner.

I would not like to try to say who is right - you pays your money and you takes your chances.... I prefer to run without discard in my fstab and use the fstrim service daily, but that's just my preference.

The fstrim service is in place but may not be running

systemctl is-enabled fstrim.timer

will tell you. In theory you would not need the fstrim service if you keep discard in your fstab. That would just do the same job twice.

hchiper · 2020-08-01 17:44

I wrongly believed that "discard" was mandatory to enable fstrim and that fstrim was enabled.
I've now removed "discard" for the two partitions (ext4 and swap) and I have executed the command

systemctl enable fstrim.timer

I have left the default "Weekly".
Many thanks for your many advices

Tolkem · 2020-08-19 20:59

tlmiller76 wrote:

The biggest thing that keeps q4os so light is the fact that Trinity Desktop is, at it's heart, 15+ year old software that's been kept up-to-date from a security standpoint and had as much new features as can simply & realistically be added to modernize it. But the underlying code was written when single core processors were still the norm, and multiple core single socket processors didn't yet exist, thus they HAD to be light. By using this much lighter-weight desktop it allows the entire OS to run much better than it could otherwise.

I use the KDE version and it's pretty fast too!!

Midas · 2020-08-24 15:37

On an unrelated note, it needs to be said that bin suggestions above would be prime material for a Q4OS user wiki.

In case any inspiration is needed, here's a pointer to Alpine Linux's: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/.

Q4OS Forum

#1 2020-07-30 17:44

Keeping Q4OS light

#2 2020-07-30 23:09

Re: Keeping Q4OS light

#3 2020-07-31 05:56

Re: Keeping Q4OS light

#4 2020-07-31 08:02

Re: Keeping Q4OS light

#5 2020-07-31 08:17

Re: Keeping Q4OS light

#6 2020-08-01 06:37

Re: Keeping Q4OS light

#7 2020-08-01 08:42

Re: Keeping Q4OS light

#8 2020-08-01 16:48

Re: Keeping Q4OS light

#9 2020-08-01 17:44

Re: Keeping Q4OS light

#10 2020-08-19 20:59

Re: Keeping Q4OS light

#11 2020-08-24 15:37

Re: Keeping Q4OS light

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