Too slow under linux

[Nightshade]

I'm having trouble getting a decently playable version of uplink running under linux. A clean install runs very fast, but doesn't respond for about 5-10 seconds every couple minutes, which is very annoying. 1.2 wont give me any sound at all. And 1.3/1.31 is so very slow it's not any fun to play. Is there any way to work around some of these issues to get a version that actually runs well?

[JohnWho]

Hm, what distribution and kernel are you using? (you can find out your kernel version with "uname -r"...) And are you running KDE as a desktop environment? Then you might try running Uplink with
 artsdsp ./uplink
This will provide a workaround for the sound... I had that problem on my system... (I'm using RedHat Linux 9 with Uplink patched to 1.31.)

Also, what graphics chip are you using (NVidia?) You can find that one out by looking at your /proc/pci file and look for the "video adapter" entry (or something like that).

[Nightshade]

This is on my RedHat 9 workstation, still with the stock 2.4.20-8 kernel. After getting ALSA configured last night, I fooled around some and got sound working in all the versions, so that's no longer an issue.

I'm using an RV100 chip (Radeon 7000 PCI), and even though it's not that great, if I can run Q3A fine with it, I should be able to run Uplink fine with it. (Which I can, until 1.31).

More playing around showed me that the 1.2 patch gives me even worse 'pauses' every minute or two, lasting about 10 seconds. As opposed to much shorter ones with a fresh install. 1.31 still runs dog slow, and I think it may have to do with the switch to SDL. I've noticed that most programs I've run using SDL are terrible for performance.

I would just use 1.2, to get the LAN stuff, if it weren't for those constant pauses. It's not some other program running that's causing the system to do that, because I would leave 'top' running, and whenever the pause occured, uplink would spike in CPU usage.

[Nightshade]

Hmm, disabling button animations seems to give me mostly playable speeds in 1.31. It's still pretty slow compared to the older versions, but it's good enough.