[plug] Celeron vs Duron - and a Linux question

[Christian]

On Wed, Jan 31, 2001 at 12:14:30PM +0800, Trevor Phillips wrote:
 
> On a semi-related issue - with my new beastie system, when I "thrash" the HDD
> (eg; copying bulk stuff around), Linux freezes every few seconds for a pause.
> I'm pretty certain this is the kernel flushing the disk cache, but it freezes
> EVERYTHING, including mouse movement and actions. Is there something wrong with
> my setup? Is this fixable? I wouldn't mind slightly less thrashing, if I could
> maintain some mouse action, so I can keep working effectively.

Not 100% sure about this but I had this problem when I got a new system
a few years ago (before 2.2 was released).  Someone suggested that the
IDE drive wasn't set up properly (UDMA?) so I tried 2.1.131 (the latest
dev kernel at the time) and it fixed the problem beautifully.  All 2.2
kernels were fine too -- very smooth.  Anyway, since what you describe
sounds similar to the problem I had, perhaps either your kernel isn't
configured properly or a more recent kernel may support the hardware
better and give better performance?  Once again, hope this helps.