Sluggish Panther
I put Panther on my 1.25 15" AlBook. Install took a loooong time, but was easy enough. I was looking for the "archive and install" option, but I didn't see anything called that, it just took me through an upgrade, not sure what it did.
After the first CD is done, a reboot is required, then CDs 2 and briefly 3, then it puts me into my desktop. At this point the machine was really really sluggish. I mean, typing a directory listing in Terminal had a visible delay! Pretty much every application was slower, I tried ripping a CD and only got 3-4x (normally get 11-12). Eventually I rebooted, and the situation improved. Starting mail and iCal on start took longer than normal.
I then tried doing things that seemed sluggish before, like the ls in Terminal. Definitely faster. Some things still seemed a little slow. I tried ripping a CD got 6x to start, but seemed to be improving as time went by. Now I've been running for about a 30 minutes after that reboot and things seem back to normal. CD ripping at 13-14X now!
This behavior seems very weird, I checked Activity Monitor to see if there was anything hoggin the CPU when having slowness problems. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I also checked to make sure my power settings hadn't been changed (maybe setting performance to reduced or something). Nothing had changed.
My best guess is that something must have been going on in the background. I can't figure out what it was. If anyone has any ideas, I'd be interested to know. This is my first Mac and my first OS X upgrade, so I didn't know what to expect. It freaked me out at first that it was so slow. As I'm typing this I'm realizing that things are much better now. That is a relief.
I wonder if this initial sluggishness is what people with older computers running pre-releases were complaining about?
-Spyky
After the first CD is done, a reboot is required, then CDs 2 and briefly 3, then it puts me into my desktop. At this point the machine was really really sluggish. I mean, typing a directory listing in Terminal had a visible delay! Pretty much every application was slower, I tried ripping a CD and only got 3-4x (normally get 11-12). Eventually I rebooted, and the situation improved. Starting mail and iCal on start took longer than normal.
I then tried doing things that seemed sluggish before, like the ls in Terminal. Definitely faster. Some things still seemed a little slow. I tried ripping a CD got 6x to start, but seemed to be improving as time went by. Now I've been running for about a 30 minutes after that reboot and things seem back to normal. CD ripping at 13-14X now!
This behavior seems very weird, I checked Activity Monitor to see if there was anything hoggin the CPU when having slowness problems. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I also checked to make sure my power settings hadn't been changed (maybe setting performance to reduced or something). Nothing had changed.
My best guess is that something must have been going on in the background. I can't figure out what it was. If anyone has any ideas, I'd be interested to know. This is my first Mac and my first OS X upgrade, so I didn't know what to expect. It freaked me out at first that it was so slow. As I'm typing this I'm realizing that things are much better now. That is a relief.
I wonder if this initial sluggishness is what people with older computers running pre-releases were complaining about?
-Spyky
Comments
The new features are cool but overall the speed reminds me of 10.1.
Originally posted by advocate
I have also noticed a drastic performance hit with Panther. This is on the rev. A 17" PowerBook. I've rebooted several times, and some things have gotten faster, but most notably is the much much slower log-in process (took :90 as opposed to :40 on my Cube running Jaguar) and the delay when launching most apps, particularly Safari.
The new features are cool but overall the speed reminds me of 10.1.
Well my speed issues seemed to have "fixed" themselves. This sort of worries me, because I don't know why the occured to begin with, and I don't want them to come back.
As for your speed problems. I dunno, give it time.
Oh, and favorite unadvertised feature: color Terminal.app! Woohoo. I used to use Xterms just for this feature (for syntax highlighting in vi). But it seems silly to start X-server just for that, plus XServer has crashed twice on me (in < 3 weeks).
I'm not used to paying for software (coming from Linux), so this update would be dissapointing to me if I had payed $129, but for $20, it is very nice, even student price ($69) would have been okay. I definitely like the new finder, and as mention, color Terminal. Haven't seen much difference in Mail yet.
Overall, am happy, now that speed has returned to normal (or maybe even slightly better, but hard to tell)
-Spyky
Don't you know the rules: "....asking for technical support for pirated software is also not allowed and will be treated in the same manner as posts that directly ask for pirated software."
I wonder if they will just assume your copy is pirated and lock this forum warning you that the "First offense gets a slap on the wrist. Second offense is a little harsher."
That is the treatment I got.
-Dr.Bimane
At any rate, since today's the day, we're not locking anything. You were singled out because you posted support questions in a prerelease build thread long before Apple rolled out the upgrade.
I've had to give it the ol' ctrl-command-power twice now, when System Preferences hung up and took the whole system with it. Not a kernel panic, mind you, just the rainbow ball spinning, and spinning, and spinning...
That said, I'm still not regretting the upgrade. I really like Exposé and the new Mail features. The more I poke around, the more I like the graphical refinements as well. Just wish it weren't so jittery right now.
BTW this copy is 100% legal...FedEx was here at 9 am!
If some permissions are set wrong, the OS will log every error opening, reading or writing to a file to its system logs, and that can really drag the system down.
Originally posted by Dr.Bimane
Hmm.....you are talking about and asking for advice on Panther but it is not yet officially released.....thus, you have a pirated copy?
Don't you know the rules: "....asking for technical support for pirated software is also not allowed and will be treated in the same manner as posts that directly ask for pirated software."
I wonder if they will just assume your copy is pirated and lock this forum warning you that the "First offense gets a slap on the wrist. Second offense is a little harsher."
That is the treatment I got.
-Dr.Bimane
No, this is not a pirated copy. I ordered from Apple and it arrived this morning (11:45 AM EST)
-Spyky
Originally posted by Ti Fighter
does the upgrade disk even have disk utility when you boot from it? If it does, format your drive and then install, that will clear up any problems.
Yeah, I think I might do that. Unfortunately I have a lot of work to do over the weekend, so I don't have time to play with my system. I will do that as soon as I get a chance to back everything up and reinstall.
I really shouldn't be playing with Panther at all yet (or messaging on this board), but it was just too tempting sitting in the package there
And yes, it seems the upgrade disk is the full thing, 3 CDs + XCode. Don't think there is any difference (other than no retail box).
I'm repairing permissions now, looks like is fixing a bunch of stuff. Why doesn't it do this automatically at end of install. It sure did a lot of other stuff (it took an hour and half for 2 CDs! Slowest OS install I've seen).
-Spyky