Amen, and amen again. (Though there's no surer way to provoke ire and scorn here and elsewhere than to state this very true fact.)

As for turning things off, sure it can't hurt, but no matter how many things I run at once my system, with a meager Pentium III 550 MHz processor, still flies along.

I do have 384 MB of memory and I never heard of having too much memory, so that's a good idea, adding memory.

On the very, very rare occasions when my swap drive gets used at all extensively, I do notice quite a slowdown, naturally.

One trick I learned when using Windows, though I haven't bothered to implement it with Linux, is to place the swap drive on a separate hard drive from the applications and operating system as a whole. It makes a great difference, in case the swap drive is called on much.

Jon,

There was a rather large dispute in the Mac OS X community a couple of years ago about whether locating swap on a separate hard drive was the right way to go. It does make a difference if you hit swap much, but the anti- crowd made the point that if you were paging out much, you really should have more RAM and that paging was a last resort kind of thing.

Being a quasi-religious kind of thing, it never got resolved of course...

I certainly agree more memory is preferable. I don't think it hurts anything to have the swap partitition on a separate hard drive, though--it obviously spares some wear-and-tear on your drive that has all the good stuff on it...

I'd really like to go to the maximum memory on my computer! But I can't seem to justify the cost in light of the fact that everything works just fine now. If I were a gamer, it would be different. But I'm not. I just do relatively pokey stuff.

I didn't see where he said what he has for a system. If it is over 500 MHZ suse 9.1 will run fasster than XP. If it is going that slow it sounds as if he doesn't have any swap enabled. He should check with top to see what he has for swap. If he has any at all. The only time I have ever run into speed problems like he describes is when swap is disabled or corrupt for some reason.

I had the same problem with SuSE with 512MB of RAM, so I doubt it's swap. The hard drive just kept going and going and going. Whatever it was, it was a KDE issue--I'd use fluxbox or another enviroment and the problem would go away...well, until I tried to use a KDE application. Being more of a newbie at the time, the only solution I came up with was to switch distros. I'm now using Mandrake 10.0, and so far, so good.

You didn't say what kernel your using but if it's 2.6.9 there is a problem with kswapd and that would be my guess here's a link to some info:

http://bhhdoa.org.au/pipermail/ck/20...er/001383.html

Evidently it goes haywire and ties up all the systems resources. If that's not the problem use hdparm to check your harddrive settings, it might not be using DMA. Do a "/sbin/hdparm -I /dev/hda" in a terminal and see if there is a star next to udma 5. If not you will have to change some settings to get it to use DMA.

Well all i can say, is im a newbie and i got the same shock the first time i got RH 9. but then i realized my computer was as fast as Xp not slower in my case but i had like 30 more services than Windows Xp, so prolly you should check cause is a common newbie mistake we end up running like ipv6 or apache and not using them and eventually they consume resourcers slowing down computer, and also sadly i've been discovering that gnome and kde although they can be a good tool, they can eat resources a lot, so i end up on fluxbox with rox filer , now im succesfully been working for over 2 years on Linux and i couldnt be happier so what i recommend is give it a try dont worry if its slower just learn about and youll see youll make it a lot faster than what windows can be, plus you gotta always remember all the other things your gaining, like safety. So dont worry, you made a good decision switching to linux, so give a try your already halfway to getting that box a nice go. and a newbie that once was in the exact same postion is telling you dont worry just experience a little bit more with it youll get it working fast in no time.

Good Luck

I would recommend Vector Linux. It is really fast on a slower system such as yours. Personally I want to know what you did to Windows XP to make it work on 300Mhz Processor with 128MB RAM. I've never gotten it to be usable on a system under 500Mhz with 256MB RAM.

http://www.vectorlinux.com

Also try DamnSmallLinux. it's a live distro like Knoppix, but is really small. If you like it you can install it and there is a link in the FAQ about it running smoothly on a 486DX and 486DX2 /w 16MB RAM,

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org

If you like SUSE you'll need to invest in some RAM. I would recommend you have no less then 256MB. OpenOffice itself is a major RAM hog. SUSE, Fedora Core, Mandrake and other OS's like them are meant for newbies with fairly new hardware. They're easy to use, easy to install, easy to configure, but all those bells and whistles come at a price.

Then I'm sure Windows would work just fine for them...

The reality is, are you ready for this...Linux is not hard, its different. I'm sure most people come to Linux because they want more control over their operating system. In which case, they can handle linux being different. If they came here for freedom of viruses, or application crashes, or bloated software....I'm sorry, Linux has all of that. Using Linux shouldn't be about bringing down MS or Windows, it should be about freedom of choice. I personally have no problem with people using Windows. Whether you sue Linx of Windows, just practice safe computing.

Sorry...off topic...

Rollo: Try Slackware. Its doesn't have a pretty gui install like Red Hat, Mandrake or Suse. And for some that equals hard. But in reality its quite easy.

Netizen

I don't disagree - I like Linux. But if you want the other 95+% of people who currently use Windows to try Linux, you can't tell them to compile things, etc. They simply won't because they are NOT interested in learning the guts of their OS and don't want to spend hours and hours getting the thing up and running. They aren't technically inclined, nor are they curious about computers. To these people, the other 95% of computer users, a computer is way to surf the net, get and send email, do IM, etc. You can haughtily dismiss these folks with "use Windows then" or you can try to bring them into the fold.

I'd like normal people to be able to run an installer on a distro and end up with a good, working system that's percieved by them to be as good as Windows in terms of stability and performance. If we're on par there, the lack of spyware, etc will be such a relief that many of these people will evangelize to their friends.


Of course now you've got ME curious about Slackware...

Well, I am not one out to change the world's choice in operating systems. Do I think Windows is bad OS? Yes. Do I think Linux is for everyone? No. For some windows is simply enough. They do not want to know how their computer works, they just want it to work, as you said. Windows serves that purpose. I will never miss an opportunity to preach about Linux. However, those coming to this site don't really need to be preached to. They are here, so they have already heard or read it. For windows will be all they ever need. I just want everyone to know they have a choice. A lot of people think windows is the only real player on the field. Some becuase of the perpetuation of this belief Linux is some hard thing that only uber geeks will ever learn to use. When it only requires you to forget some of what windows and MS taught you and learn to do something different...

i dont want the other 95% windows users to try linux.

i dont care about these people.

all i care about, is that Im using Linux, and the technical computer literates use linux, so that linux can continue to grow, evolve and develop.

I built a custom case for my Mobile Phone.. its personalised and i think it is better than most other peoples phones.. but i dont care that there phones are uglyer than mine (in my opinion) and i cewrtainly dont try to talkthem into learning how to vacuume form plastic so they can build a custom case.

why is everything linux today about getting the people who dont care about computers to use linux...
lets leave those poeple behind and continue to advance !!!

am i not right ?

as other windows users leave the flock and express an interest to join the linux flock in sure many people will be willing to help... thats why we all answer questions on this forum right ?!?

Preaching to the choir...

As I was saying...thats why there is windows...

Well I'm following your discussions and taking notes where appropriate!

You have a point - without dedicated people like you guys, this strange and impressive project won't get anywhere.

But Rickg17 has a point too. It's just not realistic to insist that all Linux users be able to do things like compile stuff and fiddle with kernels. For my part I have absolutely no computing background at all - I'm a history graduate. And I simply don't have the hours - weeks, months - it takes to learn this kind of technical stuff. For information I have just spent 3 hours installing a piece of dependency-ridden software - you people probably could have done it in 10 minutes. And then I sent a post to the appropriate thread of this forum explaining how I did it. That´s the principle, right?

I switched to Linux it because I like what it represents, because the security issue has got so bad with Microsoft and - yes - because it gives me a petty kind of satisfaction not to be using the same, lowest-common-denominator software as everyone else.

But ultimately a computer is not a toy, it's a tool to increase productivity - and that means low maintenance, low complexity. We have some way to go here.

I don't have the time left in my life to do it: I'm 64 years old, I have interest in many things other than computers, and I want my computer to be a tool, not my life.

But I refuse to use Microsoft products because I think Microsoft is absolutely immoral (as well as producing pretty bad software).

The moral issue comes into play, and I hate to see Windows have such ascendancy mainly because of that, not because it's a system suitable for people with little time or inclination to fuss and tinker (though with this Service Pack 2 nightmare even Windows users are being forced to become somewhat techncial).

I have to disagree that Windows is just fine for people who are not technically minded. It's not just fine, because it's the product of a company with no scruples and an insatiable greed for money and invasion of privacy.