Ubilinux extremely slow

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Matej
Matej New Member Posts: 2 ✭
in UP Board Linux
Hi guys,

I'm using 1GB RAM, 16GB eMMC UP Board and want to set it up to work with Arduino and Processing. It doesn't seem I could install Win 10 on it (below the official 64bit Win 10 requirements), so I installed Ubilinux on it yesterday, thinking that would be the most optimised OS to work with the UP board.

The installation went OK and the system loads reasonably quickly. The problems start when you actually want to do something. The system gets extremely slow, almost frozen when you have more than 3 tabs open in Chromium) - happened several times, regardless of what pages were open. The system also gets frustratingly slow when you open Arduino and Processing IDE (and not really doing anything). Then when you want to run a Processing sketch the system again almost freezes and it takes several minutes for simple actions (like stopping the sketch) to be processed.

I spent many hours yesterday trying to figure it out, thought it may be something with JAVA (regarding the Processing issues), installed the newest Debian Oracle JDK8, helped a little bit (with some errors Processing was throwing) but didn't solve the freezing issues.

Any ideas on what may be causing this or what I am missing?
Seems crazy that 3 Chrome tabs would make the system so slow.

Many thanks!
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  • WereCatf
    WereCatf New Member Posts: 201 ✭
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    You do realize that 1GB RAM is very, very little for desktop-use? The most likely reason for your slowdowns is because the system is running out of memory; open Chrome with 3 tabs, then check how much free RAM you actually have with 
    free -h
    in console.
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  • Matej
    Matej New Member Posts: 2 ✭
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    Hi WereCatf, thanks for your reply. I do realise it but hoped I could make it work.

    Many people use Processing on Raspberry Pi and I hoped that UP even in the low configuration could work with it well.

    Checked the free memory as you suggested
    Ubilinux launched, only terminal running - around 532MB free
    1 chromium tab - 172 MB free
    2 chromium tabs - 36 MB free
    3 chromium tabs - 39 MB free (but the shared memory went up from 97 to 135 MB)
    4 chromium tabs - still similar values but everything getting much slower

    Processing 3 launched (not running a sketch) - 290 MB free
    Running a sketch throws multiple errors, sometimes about lack of RAM, sometimes about Java VM initialisation.

    Do you think setting up a swap partition would help? Or are there any other options or something I'm missing.

    Overall, making the Processing to run on Ubilinux is proving very difficult for me. There's not much documentation compared to Ubuntu as well (I'm not super proficient with Linux) - do you think Ubuntu would be easier to work with in general? (It probably won't solve the "slowness" issue, however, it could only make it worse I guess).

    Anyone here having an experience with running an Arduino and Processing with the UP board on Ubilinux, Ubuntu or other?

    Thanks.
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  • WereCatf
    WereCatf New Member Posts: 201 ✭
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    I have absolutely no experience with this Processing-thing at all, so unfortunately I cannot provide any help there. But yes, setting up swap would probably help a little, though I can't say how much. It's at least worth trying.
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