Ubuntu slow performance on T61

[skullone]

Hey Thinkpadders
I loaded my laptop with Ubuntu 8.04 (64 bit) on my laptop a few weeks ago, like it so far, things typically "just work".
However, speed on Ubuntu is abysmally slow. I am not a stranger to Linux, and I've done some performance tuning already, setting disk parameters, power saving, etc.

Loading up Firefox from a fresh boot takes a good 15 seconds, while on the Windows partition it takes about 2 second.
This trend is pretty universal, Rythmbox takes about 5 seconds to open without a library added yet, Synpatics Package Manager is slow.
In general, things are just very slow and feel bloaty.
I've heard sporadic reports of others feeling the same way, but then others say Ubuntu is faster than anything.

My T61 is configured as follows
Core2Duo 2.2Ghz
4GB DDR2
160Gig Toshiba 5400 rpm drive
Intel GMA 3100

I hate to compare performance to Windows, but its really night and day.
I prefer Linux/BSD personally, would rather use it on my workstations, and I used to be a -huge- fan of Ubuntu, but the last two releases seem to have gotten substantially slower.
Just for testing, I also installed the 32bit Ubuntu, and saw pretty much equal performance (even factoring in that it could only use 3gigs of ram, not the 4gigs in 64 bit mode)

Note: I also use 32bit Windows XP (64 bit has crap driver support, huge knock for Windows for not having 64bit ready by now)

Can anyone make any suggestions to improve performance at all, above the usual suspects like HD tuning and power saving options?

Edit: Just saw another post by someone recommending Linux Mint for pretty much all my above issues.
I'll give that a try sometime this week, and report back

[teetee]

Not sure if this will help but..
0. Create a new user and log in as the new user to see if the slowness is user profile specific?

1. setting up hostname correctly:
http://www.cpqlinux.com/hostname.html

2. find the speed bottleneck while starting up apps(ex. firefox). Is there a process(s) taking all the CPU time running services or the hard drive is busy(I/O time) doing something else?

3. disable IPv6 ( Link)

[madcow]

are you using the final release or the test release? I found that the test release were slow. The final release is a lot faster. It seems reasonably fast on my thinkpad x41 1.5 Ghz Pentim M.

[skullone]

I'm using final releases

Have to report though, installed Mint Linux while at work (Mint Linux XFCE)
And it is so snappy, Firefox loads in about 4 seconds from a fresh boot, and everything else is much ... crisper
Thats the only way to describe it.
Ubuntu/Gnome felt sluggish, and everything took longer to load, navigate, etc.

I'll continue my way with Ubuntu to try and see what exactly it is that is causing performance issues though, it has to be software related

[Volker]

Make sure that everything is prelinked etc. Don't fill your hard drive to the brim, or you will get fragmented files (you can check files with filefrag).

All in all, I'm not surprised to see ~15sec cold start-up for firefox with a 5400rpm hdd. Hard disk drives are slow. But once it is cached in ram, new windows open instantaneously. And with 4gb ram, it'll stay cached forever. Make sure to suspend-to-ram instead of reboot.

Firefox for windows preloads itself at boot, thats why it seems to open so much faster. You can get the same effect if you automatically start firefox at login.

[archer6]

I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 Gusty Gibbon on my R51e.

It's just a test, as I have run other Linux distros on older Thinkpads and wanted to try Ubuntu, and installed it on the only other ThinkPad I had for testing. What really surprised me, is that this R51e is a bottom of the line model. Config is: 1.5 Celeron, 756mb ram. Therefore I did not expect much in the way of speed but I must say that I'm shocked at just how fast this runs. The install went very fast and smooth, everything works, and I could not be happier.

My question to those of you who have experience with 7.10 and now 8.04 is, how much slower is 8.04?