Hi! Your idiot author is back. I hope all of you are well. I have a Dell Inspiron 3847 (it was given to me) and have installed Mint 22.3 on it, thinking that Windows 10 and insufficient RAM made it slow. RAM upgrade and Mint install done, the machine is still quite slow. My next thought is to update the BIOS. What is the correct way to do that in the Linux environment? I'm in the process of downloading "Inspector," although I don't know if it will do more than the the Mint "System Information" utility in "System Settings." When looking at software downloads, I see many "BIOS" related packages to choose from. Before picking a path and a package, I thought I'd check with you, my friends, for any advice.
Dell...
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CaffeineAddict
Well-Known Member
Note that updating BIOS won't make your laptop much faster if at all, and on top of that you need to be careful to follow procedure exactly, if something goes wrong your laptop will be bricked.
Slowness is most probably due to HDD.
Slowness is most probably due to HDD.
The Dell 3847 is a big ol' tower, but I do get what you're saying. My thought was that maybe the BIOS implements an outdated driver. I'm running out of ideas. The hard drive is relatively new and was wiped slick (wrote all 0's) and formatted before installing the OS. Same performance as when the computer was running Win 10.
Ok so before we can make any upgrade suggestions we need to know what you have on board, as you are using mint, open a terminal and run inxi -c followed by inxi -M , copy a nd paste back the result,
this machine came with a plethora of cpu's fitted from the archaic Pentium to the I7
this machine came with a plethora of cpu's fitted from the archaic Pentium to the I7
bob@Jolson:~$ sudo inxi -c
[sudo] password for bob:
CPU: dual core Intel Core i3-4170 (-MT MCP-) speed/min/max: 798/800/3700 MHz
Kernel: 6.17.0-29-generic x86_64 Up: 30m Mem: 4.12/15.54 GiB (26.5%)
Storage: 1.14 TiB (4.0% used) Procs: 253 Shell: Sudo inxi: 3.3.34
bob@Jolson:~$ inxi -M
Machine:
Type: Desktop System: Dell product: Inspiron 3847 v: N/A
serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Dell model: 088DT1 v: A01 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Dell
v: A08 date: 06/29/2015
[sudo] password for bob:
CPU: dual core Intel Core i3-4170 (-MT MCP-) speed/min/max: 798/800/3700 MHz
Kernel: 6.17.0-29-generic x86_64 Up: 30m Mem: 4.12/15.54 GiB (26.5%)
Storage: 1.14 TiB (4.0% used) Procs: 253 Shell: Sudo inxi: 3.3.34
bob@Jolson:~$ inxi -M
Machine:
Type: Desktop System: Dell product: Inspiron 3847 v: N/A
serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Dell model: 088DT1 v: A01 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Dell
v: A08 date: 06/29/2015
Hello, @Brickwizard ! Good to "see" you again!
Rocketing-warp9
Well-Known Member
If you are still on a old 'Spinny disk "Hard Drive Your best bet for a speed bump is a SSD upgrade if you can. an I3 does create a bottleneck eventually, however. Still, a SSD upgrade should help out at least a little.
Thank you! I have the spinning disks in a couple of laptops, without things being this slow. My SSD machines aren't noticeably faster than my spinning disk ones, but I don't really stress any of my devices. But this Dell PC is quite slow - and its slowness is the reason my sister gave it to me to keep.
still not up to form hands still playing up so will be short,
your I3 is mid range solid but will never set the house on fire,
the Dell model: 088DT1 v: A01 will only accept a max of 2 x8Gb of ram..
now personably think do you need to make it faster, if so my suggestions are to put in the max amount of ram [if not already installed] And swap the CPU for a I7-4770s [there are faster but this one is 100% compatible]
you could also consider fitting a PCI to NVMe riser and an NVMe memory card
I would not bother messing with the UEFI unless you do a full upgrade,
Note you may need to increase the case cooling
Thank you, @Brickwizard ! Sorry you're having health issues! I'll take the I7 recommendation, I think. Looks like this Dell is just not the PC one would like it to be. Sadly, I've started building another one similar to it. On the one in question, I did RAM it up to 16 GB. I do get tired of waiting for it, but it's my at-home machine for now, no rush at any time. I hope you recover soon! Thanks again. TTFN
CosmicWanderer
New Member
I have a dell inspiron 3650 that I think is around 6 - 11 years old. I'm not 100% sure exactly what it is configured with, but I know it has an HDD. It runs EndeavorOS with xfce without any lag. I'm not sure how mint performs, but endeavor with xfce uses ~700MB of ram at idle. I know xfce looks ugly, but if you really want good performance (I'm trying to run light games on it, so desktop doesn't really matter to me), you could consider a lighter distro or desktop.
As far as UEFI goes, I have not updated it and I'm not sure how. I would love to know how and I was actually considering asking this question myself.
As far as UEFI goes, I have not updated it and I'm not sure how. I would love to know how and I was actually considering asking this question myself.
beanburrito
Active Member
XFCE, like any Desktop Environment (DE), is what you make of it!
You can find themes to improve the look and feel of it.
I recommend people try a Window Manager such as Fluxbox or Openbox, especially if they're playing games, no need to have all of the overhead of a DE when playing a game! Or choose whatever other Window Manager suits you.
CosmicWanderer
New Member
Is there a way to swap between two desktop environments?
Rocketing-warp9
Well-Known Member
Or if you have minimal-specs and ancient hardware- Run MX25+FB on a few computers with limited ram and makes them usable again!
Rocketing-warp9
Well-Known Member
Yes, there is! albeit, not recommended as they can sort-of cross contaminate each other. I have Lxqt and XFCE on my Mac on the same Lubuntu install.
beanburrito
Active Member
And if the user feels up to it, install Debian minimal and build from there installing only what you need for a minimalistic system!
CosmicWanderer
New Member
beanburrito
Active Member
Depending on the distro, it's often as simple as logging out of one Desktop Environment (DE), selecting another DE from the login manager/display manager and logging into the chosen DE!
Rocketing-warp9
Well-Known Member
It usually goes like this-
First Update/upgrade and make sure you have a backup if anything goes wrong.
Keep in mind, different distros have different package managers- this is for Debian/ubuntu
Then you go online-look for a DE you ant to try, and look up how to install it through terminal for the exact package.
Ex- For Unity DE-
It might prompt you if you want to continue. Should be y to accept
Then you choose what Login manager you want. Each has their own quirks between different DE's
For unity- I believe it is LightDM.
Then let it do it's thing!
Restart- Then what @beanburrito said in the post above. it should be in the top right corner if I'm remembering
correctly.
Then Congrats! in unity.
You can do different DE's than unity, but I have not tested how they would play with each other.
Just keep in mind- This can go horribly wrong sometimes-and break both DE's packages. Just a word of caution.
Hope this helps!
First Update/upgrade and make sure you have a backup if anything goes wrong.
Keep in mind, different distros have different package managers- this is for Debian/ubuntu
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -yThen you go online-look for a DE you ant to try, and look up how to install it through terminal for the exact package.
Ex- For Unity DE-
sudo apt install ubuntu-unity-desktopIt might prompt you if you want to continue. Should be y to accept
Then you choose what Login manager you want. Each has their own quirks between different DE's
For unity- I believe it is LightDM.
Then let it do it's thing!
Restart- Then what @beanburrito said in the post above. it should be in the top right corner if I'm remembering
correctly.
Then Congrats! in unity.
You can do different DE's than unity, but I have not tested how they would play with each other.
Just keep in mind- This can go horribly wrong sometimes-and break both DE's packages. Just a word of caution.
Hope this helps!
@CosmicWanderer , on
Start a thread in https://www.linux.org/forums/arch-and-derivatives.161/ and I can swing by with some ideas, Bear in mind I live in Australia for replies.
There is a little more to it than meets the eye.
Cheers
Wizard
Start a thread in https://www.linux.org/forums/arch-and-derivatives.161/ and I can swing by with some ideas, Bear in mind I live in Australia for replies.
There is a little more to it than meets the eye.
Cheers
Wizard
