There was an issue with the RH9 kernel that caused excessive swapping, iirc. I find Fedora Core 2 competitive in terms of speed but Windows is still faster.

The issues that make Linux feel slower than Windows XP on the same hardware (and these issues are acknowledged to exist) are not something that would be fixed by changing distribution, so I'd ignore people telling you to use Slackware or Debian to be honest. The problems lie inside things like the kernel and the X server which are mostly the same between distros.

What's the general feeling people have of Firefox?

It should ship with XP instead of Internet Explorer.

I mean the Linux version, compared to, say, Opera.

Ah, right Opera and Firefox aren't the same thing really...Opera is a mail client too and is in fact much more like Mozilla. Also, it's only free when you're okay with the ads (who aren't too intrusive)

Firefox takes pride in being light-weight and fast, and it's exactly that. Besides, it's one of the easiest non-packages to install in linux. I tried Opera on Windows, but switched to Firefox since then. In my opinion, and I'm not alone, it's the best browser out there.

If you are concerned about speed, choose Opera over Firefox. I do like Firefox a lot and I would use it more often but it eats RAM like chocolate chip cookies.
One of the reasons (IMHO) your office system is a little slower using Red Hat than XP is the fact that Linux needs more memory, quite a bit more I would say. So in my (4 weeks) experience, to balance the speed difference means putting in more RAM. But even if you don't do that: the advantages of a Linux systerm over Windows have been great to me. I save time every day by not rebboting, dealing with frozen stuff and so on. I do spend a lot of time though on learning more about Linux. It kinda sucks you in...

Linux is generally designed to use as much ram as it needs so that it doesn't need to swap to disk. If you want to change the behaviour you may want to change the swapiness value in:
/proc/sys/vm/swappiness

There are a few posts on LKML about it that should give you an idea of suggested values.

im using suse 9.1 personal using kde 3.2 and all i can say is that it smokes windows xp hands down. granted my computer is far from slow (3.0 p4, 1 gig ram) the performance i gain using linux over windows is extraordinary. and about firefox, i love it. blazing speeds and no security holes, what more can you ask for? if only it could understand ie code....

My experience with Linux: it takes awhile to learn how to get things going, but when it gets going, it's fast and smooth! This includes web browsing, games, and applications. For basic computer usage, I prefer Linux!

XP is smooth????

That's funny... I eat chocolate chip cookies like RAM. Or something like that.

Linux is not more resource intensive than Windows. Installing Red Hat is like installing a Compaq Easy-Recovery CD and having it come with 70 extra services and apps at boot time. You can disable lots of stuff in Red Hat. Ask a Red Hattite how to do it.

If you're interested in speed, and are actually listening to the guy who said try slackware, try Arch Linux, it's easy and fast with a good community. Try Debian.

I hear Mepis is really user-friendly and it's based on Debian. The problem with the actual Debian distro, Arch Linux, and Slackware is lack of polish in the installation and configuration process. I don't know how knowledgeable and brave you are, but if you go with anything without a reported "Easy install process", print up at least two howtos or have another computer with internet access handy before you jump in feet first.

Be prepared to fail. Because it's kind of hard at first for most people. But it's worth it.

Man, I ramble. Try MEPIS. I hear you'll be pleased.

XP is Smooth(TM)




Man, I had to google for this one, because I thought you were utterly full of crap.

i'm a newbie with linux but not with windows and i'm impressed with linux. i recently discovered firefox and found it to be the best so far (compared with opera, ie, konquror).
one thing i would like to say is that linux takes a lot more time to boot up compared to windows. since i'm using a laptop, its not justifiable to put it on all the time like i would do with desktops. is there anyway this thing could be improved in linux? anyway it's great and keep it up.

You might want to edit the services that runs by default in Linux during boot time. In SuSE's YaST(Judging by your profile, you use SuSE) you will find a runlevel option that you can disable/enable services. One example of service is ssh daemon which is used to remote access. Very few peoples use it (I do it, a lot actually) that you can disable during the boot time... Take a look in there and tweak a bit .

could you give me more information on how to do it or any place where i can refer about it. i'm a newbie to linux and i dont want to spoil anything.
and thanks for your advice.