LinuxQuestions.org - Performance slows over time with VMware. Why?

I have an AMD Athlon box (2800+, I think) running Fedora Core 1. I run VMware (4.5 something) on it. In VMware I sometimes run another instance of FC1 and sometimes XP and sometimes both and sometimes neither. There is tons of RAM on the host (1GB) and each VMware guest OS is allocated 256MB. Tons of free HDD space. This setup works great and I am pleased except for one thing. After VMware has been running for a few days and I have been doing lots of stuff in the guest OS's, performance slows noticeably both in the guests and in the host OS itself. Rebooting guest OS's helps. Rebooting the host seems to return everything to normal.

Now, I'm not sure if the slowdown is simply the host slowing down (FC1?) or if it's related to VMware. My sense is it might be the host only.

Does FC1 (or linux?) suffer from some flaw(s) that would slow performance over time and/or after running certain programs? Interestingly, I run a server with Redhat 8 and it sometimes runs for 3 or 4 months without a reboot and I notice no change in performance. Any ideas where my problem may lie? Should I try a different distro? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Apollo