[CALUG] F-12 observations w/ dialup/FF

[Walt Smith]

Hi,

I'd like to offer observations, and hope to
see if anyone may have seen or heard similar.

I'm using F-12, FF 3.5.9, 2 different distro kernels and have used 
F-10 thru 3 kernels, with the same peculiarities.
I know this is purely hum observable, so if you're into
instrumentation, you'll be disappointed.

Same box for 2 cases with with 512 megs ram, DDR 2700. 2.6 ghz.

case 1:
Using modem lights, with  web pages, they blink and sometimes 
there's a bit of time when they don't blink; I'm talking maybe 
1/2 second - 1 second.  Using FF with multiple tabs.
This has been the case forever ( F9, F7 etc.. )

case 2:
slashdot often, I mean 50% of the time,  times out and I 
have to reload the web page.  I usually make sure other
web pages aren't loading.  This happened in F10, F12.

CHANGE:  I upgrade box to 1 gig megs ram.
case 1:
web lights blink a lot less and are mostly continuously on.
When they blink, it is briefly at the same time rather than
separately.  My D/L's are marginally faster, it seems.

case 2:
slashdot loads and doesn't give some kind of "connection timeout"
It properly completes.

case 3:
( only recently )
www.theregister.co.uk, on first try of the day, gets an "entrynotfound"
in the status bar, and the web page for teoma.com comes up, and
can't find the vulture !! dns is coretel.  It takes several tries
including perhaps closing the tab and retrying several times.  It takes
unknown tries ( 5-10?) but eventually works.  So far, other web pages
seem OK.

I know X and FF can eat up space, but -- *really * ??????
I don't get much in the way of swap lights on HD if they're the
only 2 apps running ... I can kill FF, and restart with the same
effect.  I really don't want to believe I need so much memory
for mundance tasks.  OTOH, I suppose I could remove the DRR's and
use "free" to show I DO have free memory..  But I don't think
it would say much except memory is free... 


speculation??

thx,
Walt.............