[GirlFromNeptune]

I just received a Mini 12 with the 1.33 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, 60 GB PATA, Ubuntu, and it is so darn slow. I should have known.. Now I regret ordering it. Maybe I got spoiled by the super fast Mini 9... is there anything I can do to make this Mini 12 fast? Or does it get just a tad bit faster with XP and that's it period.?

[reflex]

I expect the 1.8" 4200rpm hard drive is frequently the bottleneck on the 12. So, look for tweaks that reduce disk I/O.

[Insane Mini9]

my wife loves her mini 12. i just loaded windows 7RC and that seemed to be the best thing for it. i haven't tried some of the tweeks and overclocks that the sony guys (with the same hardware) are doing, but so far 7 seems to run really well...still not quite as fast as the mini 9 did, but its very close for everything she does

[dragonmule]

Okay, here are things I did to increase speed of default ubuntu mini 12

Wiped to factory install by usb dvd

checked updates, installed updates

accessories-terminal

sudo su
apt-get install nano
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys C6598A30
nano -w /etc/apt/sources.list
(add the following lines to the end)


deb Index of /ubuntu-mobile/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src Index of /ubuntu-mobile/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Now,
apt-get update
apt-get build-dep xserver-xorg-video-psb
nano -w /etc/apt/sources/list
(change the end lines to)

deb Index of /ubuntu-mobile/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src Index of /ubuntu-mobile/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

apt-get update
apt-get source xserver-xorg-video-psb
cd xserver-xorg-video-psb-0.31.0
./configure
make
make install
reboot

After doing that, 3d magically goes faster. This kills fullscreen youtube (or flash player in general) but makes playback much faster. HD flash still does not work, but if you search for "Youtube HD Bookmarklet" you will find the HD downloader which is nice as it provides h264 encoded video file that you can play back cleanly with totem movie player.

You can remove the lines from sources.conf after this, too.

Some optional tweaks:

Get rid of annoying full-screen upon opening program:
mv /usr/bin/maximus /usr/bin/maximus-old

Get rid of annoying yahoo add-on and restore bookmark toolbar to install bookmarklets
(in firefox) Tools-Add-Ons-Plugins then disable yahoo
Go to View - Toolbars - Bookmarks toolbar

Installing mplayer improves performance on certain kinds of videos. You can right-click and open with mplayer or use terminal and do mplayer -fs movie-file.mov

To set your clock speed instead of it being speedstep all the time:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure gnome-applets
and run cpufreq selector in root "yes"
right-click on panel and add to panel, cpufreq. Now this can change cpufreq to save battery/go faster on battery

Some glitches solved by adding
Option "IgnoreACPI" "true"
to /etc/X11/xorg.conf "Device" section

Speed up firefox:
Speed Up Firefox web browser|Ubuntu Geek

Dell should really just figure out some way to push all this stuff into updates. Even the 0.30 April xserver psb sucks. I don't know what happened, but the 0.31 version works much better. I guess I don't care what dell does as I can easily just go through and repeat this stuff, but it was a pita the first time. For instance, the build-dep won't work if you just go straight to jaunty. Maybe someone can figure this out, but I had to do build-dep for 0.27 vesion in order to compile 0.31 version.

edit: I did install psb-video and xorg-modules-xpsb as well from these repos, but I don't know if that makes a difference. Also, doing all of this seems to get rid of the annoying crashes. I have seen at least three types of annoying crashes with the default Dell install and updates. I am still on belmont dell, just with the jaunty version of xserver psb. These steps should work with any new version of xserver that comes out. Some of the things that work faster are firefox, nautilus, the "dell desktop" spinning icon stuff if you keep that enabled, and some silly 3d games. Basically what I've noticed is firefox works much better, especially if you are trying to use any sort of other add-ons such as firebug.

[mini twelve]

I have tried Ubuntu Netbook remix, Dell Ubuntu, Ubuntu 9.04, Win XP home and Windows 7 and windows 7 seems to be the more usable OS for this netbook, still to slow for me so I got inspiron 11z

[dragonmule]

Sorry, the forum messed up the lines to add to sources.conf

The correct lines are on https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mobile/+archive/ppa

just do hardy first and then jaunty after build-dep

[dragonmule]

Originally Posted by mini twelve

I have tried Ubuntu Netbook remix, Dell Ubuntu, Ubuntu 9.04, Win XP home and Windows 7 and windows 7 seems to be the more usable OS for this netbook, still to slow for me so I got inspiron 11z

I tried all of the ubuntu netbook remix and installing 9.04 and trying to get that to work as well with not good results. 9.04 will eventually work if you install the correct drivers, but then I lost the fluendo codecs. Keeping the codecs by going to 8.10 and then to 9.04 caused all kinds of things to slow down which I suppose could be fixed in settings or in aptitude by falling back to old versions of certain things.

Going back to factory and cutting straight to the newest version of xserver compiled for lpia (on your own machine) and controlling clock speed with cpufreq selector applet produces best results as far as increasing speed from my tests. Also disabling maximus fixes some video problems that occur with the immediate stretch in some programs.

I agree that the 11z is faster if not just for the better video chipset/hard drive and it appears that other machines with the same chipset as 11z perform well. However, the mini 12 is fully capable of much better ubuntu performance than dell ships them out with and I can see why many people are disappointed when they use the machine and the graphics are sluggish (not to mention crashes). I tried everything posted on the net and many novel failed experiments before coming up with something that worked correctly. I was unwilling to accept the performance being lower on the 12 vs the 9 when the graphics chipset that is much higher rated as far as raw specs... so it should at least run as fast. I suppose Dell discounted these machines on their outlet because they knew people like me would put in hundreds of dollars of time reading forums and compiling code to make them work correctly instead of Dell just updating their repos.

[dragonmule]

Tried this wiping another 1.8 pata and needed to do one thing at the end

apt-get dist-upgrade

with the extra ppa ubuntu-mobile jaunty appended to sources. It installed a handful of packages. This made 1080p video files play back again.

[dragonmule]

Despite running faster and coming out of suspend faster, doing all of that does not eliminate the flash/javascript/firefox crash.

I've figured out how to replicate this crash by having a lightbox window load up with a flash player. This seems to be the type of action that triggers the freeze.

I replaced the internal drive to protect the partitions on the stock drive. I will format and start clean until I figure out the simplest route to eliminating this error.

[GirlFromNeptune]

thanks guys! i think it is a lil faster now, even though some of the commands didn't work. i have to keep ubuntu since i forgot to download windows 7 and now it's too late. at first ubuntu seemed a lil boring, but now i'm actually starting to like it.

i do have a question - when adding the lines to the end of the sources list file, do we have have to do anything to save it? if we just close out of it, does it automatically save? i'm not a linux person hehe