Hello, I've been a Linux user for five years. I recently switched to SuSE, and I've encountered a problem that has completely confounded me. It's a bit convoluted for me to describe, so please bear with me. This is SuSE 8.0. I'm having problems with the speed of my PPP connections - but only in X. At the console, my download speeds are normal, but in X things slow to a crawl and nearly stop. As far as I can tell, this affects all services: fetching my mail, doing ftp or http - all are affected. It also occurs regardless of the tool I use for initiating the connection: wvdial and KPPP both give the same bizarre results. Here is something even more bizarre. This appears to happen *only* with windowing environments that I've compiled myself. I first remember noticing it after building and installing WindowMaker for myself. When I switched back to the SuSE-provided Gnome setup, things worked perfectly! So I decided that I had made some poor configuration choice when building WindowMaker, and I didn't worry about it. FWIW, the modem is an external serial modem connected to a Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop - and obviously I know the hardware's fine since it works normally at the console. Now, yesterday I finished compiling and installing Gnome 2. And the first thing I noticed when I started it up and connected to the Internet was that things were slow again! So - there appears to be some issue or other with X on SuSE that affects PPP/network speed when running a custom window manager/GUI. Any suggestions? I'm baffled. I've googled this, but apparently my problem is unusual. Thanks in advance, Fred Noltie