LinuxQuestions.org - How to REALLY improve linux performance?

I'm using blackbox with no desktop, and with almost no
programs on rd.5(the 's' are xfs,random,network,local others are k)
and the local dont have any program. The problem is when I run
Jboss, Postgres, Jedit, my machine starts to became slow

then if I open firefox to search for Documentation the hell starts
and things because veyr slow, so I have to keep opening and closing
which is kinda unproductive for me. I cant buy new hardware now as I'm broke.
Can I improve performance?

I'm tryed to use Dillo browser for a while but that thing sucks, very difficult to work with
I changed my terminal to aterm and put on 256 colors to try to make things better
here is my top output with the programs opened

Code:

PID USER    PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM  TIME CPU COMMAND

2233 root      23  0  113M  76M  1144 S    2.7 32.7  11:06  0 java(JBOSS)

 2376 root      23  0 63440  25M  1548 S    0.0 11.0  7:14  0 java (JEDIT)

 8943 root      15  0 28392  25M 11288 S    0.0 10.9  0:35  0 firefox-bin

 9074 root      15  0  9516 9512  6948 R    6.1  3.9  0:01  0 gnome-terminal  (dont use, just for cut and paste)

 2151 root      15  0 26096 3396  716 R    11.9  1.4  3:28  0 X

 9076 root      23  0  2352 2352  1856 S    0.0  0.9  0:00  0 bonobo-activati (no idea what it is, any clue?)

 8947 root      15  0  2348 2348  1312 S    0.0  0.9  0:00  0 gconfd-2 (tried to removed it, but coundt)

 9037 root      22  0  1416 1416  1108 S    0.0  0.5  0:00  0 bash

 9078 root      18  0  1408 1408  1112 S    0.0  0.5  0:00  0 bash

 9036 root      15  0  1384 1384  1088 S    0.0  0.5  0:00  0 aterm

 9104 root      15  0  1080 1080  868 R    0.3  0.4  0:00  0 top

 2168 root      15  0  920  804  544 S    0.0  0.3  0:01  0 blackbox

 6477 postgres  15  0  912  592    84 S    0.0  0.2  0:00  0 postmaster (POSTGRESQL)

 9077 root      21  0  592  592  516 S    0.0  0.2  0:00  0 gnome-pty-helpe (can be ignored)

 2018 root      15  0  648  484  364 S    0.0  0.2  0:00  0 dhclient (network)

 2099 xfs      15  0  2660  400  108 S    0.0  0.1  0:00  0 xfs

 2245 root      15  0  544  364  248 S    0.0  0.1  0:00  0 aterm



FREE output

            total      used      free    shared    buffers    cached

Mem:          232        229          3          0          5        70

-/+ buffers/cache:        153        79

Swap:          478        191        286

How I could improve performance? Changing to monochromatic dont
work as my video dont support. I thought about going FULL console mode
but I need jedit for productivity as is hard for me to manage the j2ee project with vim
I want to make it faster so I will be able to maybe even run Eclipse ide or netbeans or something.
Any ideas?