Netbeans 6.5 very slow on Fedora 11 / Thinkpad T42

[Peter Boy]

Hi,

I use Netbeans for Java Web development, until recently on a Thinkpad
T43p. It used to work very well (i.e. a responsive GUI) on Fedora 11.

The T43p had a break down and I had to switch to a T42p as a
replacement. Netbeans GUI responsivnes is so slow, it is impossible to
work with (e.g. after clicking on the file menue entry you have to wait
13 sec until the menue opens). This is true weather I install a new
system on the T42p or just put the T43p's hard disk into it.

The hardware is nearly identical, 2 gb RAM, 2Ghz CPU etc. It differs in
the ATI video: ATI Mobility FireGL V3200 in case of T43p, ATI Mobility
FireL T2 in case of T42p. 

The problem seems to be specific for Fedora, colleagues using other
Linux distros have no problems.

I "googled" for possible solutions but only found the advice to
deactivate the gtk theme which didn't help here.

I checked with an AMD 64 desktop and another ATI card, which is
sluggish, but usable with some patience.

Questions: 

a) Did anyone else encountered such problems?

b) Does anyone tried to solve it successfully by using the proprietary
ATI driver. 

c) Unfortunately for F11 there is no catalyst / fglrx driver on
rpmfusion. Does anyone know another trustworthy source? (I would like to
avoid a manual installation as described e.g. here:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=155503 I'm not very
familiar with those issues and prefer to rely on people with specialized
knowledge, as the maintainers are  :-)  )


Thanks in advance

Peter