Can I ask a question? Is there any chance that the mouse could cause this problem? I started thinking about the whole situation and the only thing that I could think of that was different was that our Logitech wireless mouse crapped out and I replaced it with a no name wireless mouse that my sister gave me as a gift. When I go to the control panel in Windows XP it comes up as Microsoft Mouse. I connected it through a USB port. Could that be the problem?
If you boot with the mouse disconnected, is it any faster?
(you don’t need a mouse for Linux, you can get by with the keyboard just fine)
I’ve seen weirder things … we’re talking about the world of computing here, where pigs can fly and flyers can turn into pigs for no apparent reason :o
Have you got a wired mouse you can try for comparison ?
I know I had one, but I think i gave it away. I booted up without the mouse and thought it seemed a little faster. Then, instead of connecting the mouse to a USB port, I connected it to the mouse port on the back of the computer. For some reason it seems to be a lot better. I did want to ask one more question. In windows XP my download speed is around 83 mbps and upload speed is around 76 mbps. In Peppermint the download speed is around 33mbps and upload around 27mbps. I’m sure it’s probably a provider issue, but what is your opinion.
One the same PC (and hardware) ? … connected to the same router ? … via ethernet cable or wireless ?
How are you testing your up/down speeds ?
I’m using an Ethernet cable and if you type “speed test” into Google, there’s a speed test by Ookla that I’ve used.
One the same PC (and hardware) ? … connected to the same router ?
and are you taking an average over a lot of tests ? … a single test tells you nothing at all.
Try a non flash speedtest such as:
http://testmy.net/
(html5)
but be sure to use the same browser in BOTH Windows and Linux … such as Firefox or Chrome
Ok, I’ll give it a try in the morning. I used Firefox in XP but Firefox doesn’t seem to work well in Peppermint, so I’ll try Chrome in XP. I’ll let you know in the morning. Thank you.
Huh … Firefox works perfectly for me (and every other PC I’ve ever put Peppermint on).
What do you mean by “doesn’t run well in Peppermint” ?
BTW, about the mouse … you may find this interesting:
http://forum.peppermintos.com/index.php/topic,1334.msg12003.html#msg12003
Theory about the download/upload speeds (as it’s come up before) - the propriatory Windows driver is better than the Linux one (open or closed). Same thing happens with graphics cards, why not wireless drivers too?
My theory (hopefully being tested by the OP now)- As the wireless card should easily be able to get data to/from the router faster than the router can get it to/from the interweb (and this behaviour has even been noticed with cabled connections to the router), the Linux flashplayer is having some kind of bearing … which is why I’d like BuckWoody to try an HTML5 speed checker.
Yeah, worth a try. I think I can verify this, as my in-laws are on Virgin’s XL package which should be 150Mb, but speedtest.net was reporting less than 40Mb on a wired connection on LMDE using Chromium (older version).
I’m interested in trying that HTML5 one, it’s about time that Flash died, no?
it’s about time that Flash died, Yes!!!
(in fact it’s years overdue)
OK, I finally got over to the computer today. First of all, for some reason Firefox doesn’t seem to run to well for me. I used Firefox in XP and it was great. I hated Internet Explorer. It was too slow at everything, but Firefox was fantastic. In Peppermint, everything runs very choppy and slow with Firefox so I’ve been using Chrome. It seems to be fine.
Now, I did the speed testing as you said. In each case I performed the test 3 times. The results were different in all the situations. Here’s the results:
PEPPERMINT 5 CHROME WINDOWS XP CHROME
DOWNLOAD: 28.6 26.2 26 DOWNLOAD: 8.7 8.7 9.1
UPLOAD: 22.8 23.2 23.6 UPLOAD: 11.0 9.4 9.1
PEPPERMINT FIREFOX WINDOWS XP FIREFOX
DOWNLOAD: 91.3 86.8 91 DOWNLOAD: 13.9 50.1 6.1
UPLOAD: 41.9 37.1 40.2 UPLOAD: 18.3 20.2 23.6
As you can see, the difference is much different between the two. Using this Speed Test, Peppermint is much faster than Windows. What I don’t understand is that the speeds are obviously higher in Firefox and yet, I find that things run much smoother in Chrome. It doesn’t seem to make any sense.
Maybe what you should take from this is that internet speed tests are by thier very nature NOT an ideal measure of “real world” performance 
They all rely on technologies that may not have any real bearing on how humans perceive “browsing experience”.
Personally I don’t take much notice of them … they can be handy for “comparison” (eg. seeing if your web connection is slower today than yesterday) but even then they can be confusing.
If you read the info on the HTML5 site it discusses the fact that an HTML5 test will be more sensitive to the web browser itself … whereas a flash based speed test will all use the same flashplayer plugin irrespective of browser, but the quality of the flashplayer plugin may vary across OS’s so that’s not an accurate test either (unless you’re just testing flash).
Thank you. I understand. I do have one final question, do have any idea of why things like Google or Facebook would run better in chrome than in Firefox? Just curious.
Depends what you mean by “run better” ?
They do use completely different backends for things like rendering, memory management, javascript, etc. … so there will be performance differences.
Chrome has multi process support where Firefox doesn’t (though e10s can be enabled in the nightly builds version of Firefox) … see here:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis
and
be aware Firefox has done a LOT of catching upp since that last link was posted … though sandboxing and multi process support are yet to be added … as mentioned here:
My Windows desktop is running the multi-process enabled version of Firefox (64 bit), and I can’t say that I’ve noticed a difference. It is an i7 mind you, so YMMV I guess