Even when i don't do anything, a process named "prelink" comes out of nowhere and loads the processor up to 100%. I kill it every time, and it seems to have no impact, but it's pretty annoying.

As for the memory, i start out with about 162MB used, and end up with up to 210 used (and i only have 256, 32 of which are for the graphics card). This also happens without me doing anything

Hi.

I would let 'prelink' run. I've never come accross it, but it seems to be a housekeeping task that Linux runs occasionally to make apps launch faster. It's probably running at a low priority anyway, so it shouldn't affect you much.

As for the memory issue, it's not an issue. Linux stores stuff as buffers in memory and uses significant amounts of RAM as disk cache. For example I'm only running Mozilla Firebird and I'm using 246 Mb out of 256. If the memory's needed to launch applications, it will be made available, so don't worry about it.

Dave

type man prelink for more info on what that is. Ilikejam is right about the memory usage. nothing to worry about.