I have an HTPC and media server running Mint 17.1 which is incredibly slow. The hardware specs are:
APU - AMD A8-5600k (4x 3.6GHz)
MB - MSI FM2-A55M-P33
RAM - 4GBm, 1333Mhz
HDD - Boot: WDC WD10EALX-089BA0 (1TB, 7200RPM); Other: 4X 3TB, 7200 RPM + 1x 1.5Tb, 7200 RPM
It used to run Win 7 and there were no issues with it, but after a HDD crash I decided to try out Mint.
Since I installed Mint a few weeks ago, the computer feels like a very, very old computer. From a clean restart:
- Opening Chromium takes around 30 seconds
- Opening the file manager takes 10-15 seconds
- Taking an app like Kodi/XBMC from fullscreen to windowed can take anything from 20-60 seconds
- If try to do something like have Amarok scan my music collection, the PC basically freezes. It keeps scanning, but it eventually gets so slow that it takes 5 minutes just to wake up from sleep.
- The mouse lags in Kodi/XBMC
- Youtube videos can stutter (unrelated to buffering)
Things that do work well are:
- Video playback in Kodi. I can watch 1080p videos with no issue.
- Games. Although the system isn't particularly strong, it can play games as expected. CS:GO, D3 and Skyrim (on very low settings) all work.
- Often, when the computer appears to be completely frozen, SSH or workspaces would still run reasonably smoothly.
- Plex Media Server usually works well. However, if the PC starts getting very slow, the videos it sends out can stutter.
I basically know nothing about Ubuntu/Linux (this HTPC is my first attempt). How can I troubleshoot this?
sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda
andsudo hdparm -T /dev/sda
. (these test your drive speeds. I'm taking a guess that /dev/sda will be your main hard drive, but thelsblk
command shows the device name if I'm wrong) What do you get?