Puppy is very slow with high io wait in Lenovo flex4

[dustmitegerl]

Hi,

I'm new to puppy linux, using a live boot usb drive on a lenovo flex4 laptop. It's on a 16gb multi-boot drive, made with yumi, alongside kodachi. The only customization I've done is increased the swappiness from 5 to 10 and created a swap file of 256MiB, as attempts to increase speed. The problem is, puppy is running really slow. It gets stuck in lagging periods where all apps, not just internet ones, take many seconds to process clicks. It does seem to be the worst when using pale moon and claws mail, but other apps also cause the lagging in the absence of those apps.

CPU usage rarely goes above 5% and is usually lower than 2. RAM usage is likewise low, around 10%. My file system, saved on the usb drive, takes up about half its allotted memory, ~6/14.4GiB. The only thing that seems off is that gatotray shows my io wait spikes whenever I change tabs/instances, close and open apps, especially pale moon.

Any suggestions?

I know that puppy, being small, isn't meant for handling big processes necessarily, but so far I've done very little, mostly just navigations. I think there must be something wrong.

[dustmitegerl]

I should have been more specific about io wait -- when I'm online but not loading anything, it sits around 50%. When loading something through a lag, it spikes to above 90%.

Also, I am using the current lts release, 9.5, linux kernel 5.4.53.

[6502coder]

Please provide more info:
viewtopic.php?p=816#p816

[bigpup]

release, 9.5 tells us nothing.
What is the specific name of the Puppy version iso?

using a live boot usb drive on a lenovo flex4 laptop. It's on a 16gb multi-boot drive,

If you can, make sure to plug it into a USB 3 port.
Make sure it is a USB port for data and power.
USB 3 port is best to use.

When you boot Puppy, are you using the normal boot entry?

When you boot the computer.
Are you seeing the Puppy boot menu or are you booting a menu entry, for Puppy, you added to a boot loader already there?

Menu->System->CPU Frequency Scaling Tool
Make sure driver is set to intel_pstate.
(This is the best one for Intel processors).

Try changing the governor.
Try powersave
Try performance
These are the only governors intel_pstate has.
You will see others listed, but only these will do anything using intel_pstate.

Does anything change switching to using the different governors?

/

[s243a]

If I/O is slow, then I'd avoid using a swap and turn off automatic save.

[dustmitegerl]

Please provide more info:
viewtopic.php?p=816#p816

What specific Puppy version?
fossapup64 v9.5

Computer specs or make and model?
lenovo flex4

CPU?
intel i7-7500 @ 2.7GHz, 2 core

Memory?
16gb

Graphics hardware?
amd r7 m460, intel integrated hd graphics 620

Network hardware?
qualcomm atheros qca61/4a wifi network adapter

How is Puppy installed?
live usb, via yumi multiboot software, with which it's partitioned, onto a 16gb usb drive in a usb3 port

The partition(s) are formatted what format?
fat32

Puppy is installed on which partition?
1

Thanks everyone for your help -- at this point, the live usb isn't booting anymore, so i think maybe the usb drive is just trash. It's pretty old, and I've used it for installing different linux releases before. I'm going to try it on a new drive and see how it goes. ~

If a installer program was used to do the install. WHAT PROGRAM????

[amethyst]

I'm pretty sure your problems related to a faulty or corrupted usb flashdrive. Once you have installed on the new drive, run the system without making a swap file or savefile for a while. This will give you an idea what the speed should be like.

[bigpup]

Using the Gparted program, to completely start over fresh, can have some affect, on how the USB drive, will work.
Make a new partition table
New partition(s)
New format for partition(S)

But, it still could be going bad.