I just installed Mandrake 9.0 and I use KDE.
Why do some programs take at least two minutes to open - OOo writer, konsole, konqueror, mozilla, desktop config thing, in fact almost everything?

I click to set them running, the egg-timer appears on the panel at the bottom, then it disappears and there is no sign of anything happening, then about a minute or two (or three) later the program appears.
Sometimes the digital clock stops flashing like the systems frozen (though the mouse still moves) and then eventually it starts again.

When they do finally open they are all fine and work properly.

The only program that reliably opens quickly is the Frozen Bubble game.

I only ask this in case it's a regular thing with newly installed Linux.

It used to be caused by a problem with /etc/hosts.
There seems to be some problem with kde3 in Mandrake though, a lot of people have this. I have not seen a problem myself.

Try a different window manager and see if it also this slow.
Personally I have observed the kdeinit process slowing things down sometimes. Since I don't use KDE (a little bit too bloated for my taste) I cannot really say.
Another idea: what system do you use? If you have a relative slow machine KDE usually helps to slow it down a bit more.

Athlon 1.4
768Mb RAM
Geforce2
Western Digital Caviar 80Gb HD

Fast enough I think!?!

I'll try GNOME later.....

I'm in GNOME now, it took more than 5 minutes to load up and gave the message: "Could not look up internet address for winnats.freeserve.co.uk@fs (my broadband address). This will prevent GNOME from operating correctly" + a bit more about adding winnats.freeserve.co.uk@fs to /etc/hosts.

But my internet connection is working anyway.

OOo writer took 60 secs
Terminal took 80 secs
Galeon (first run) took about 2 mins

Nautilus chugs when I drag it around the screen.

Interesting that GNOME also complains about the /etc/hosts file, maybe thats the problem.

@DavidPhillips: have you any idea how to this issue is supposed to be resolved?

post the contents of the file

the default has

127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain

/etc/hosts just has one line that says:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

Should I add the line "winnats.freeserve.co.uk@fs" to it like GNOME told me to?
But why would adding a line about my internet connection (which works fine), have anything to do with making programs start quicker?

Just to clear things up, most programs take around two minutes to start, but when they do eventually start they run fine and quickly.

X has a wierd deal about knowing the ip address

just put the ipaddress followed by the hostname followed by the hostname.domainname under the existing line

OK, is there any way I can find this info out from the command line, because I don't know it?

Also, you say "just put the ipaddress followed by the hostname followed by the hostname.domainname under the existing line". But the existing line in hosts has it the other way round: the ip address, then the hostname.domainname, then the hostname.
Just checking.

No swap partition???

hosts assigns all the names after the address to
the number, so the order doesn't matter.
i also add www.microsoft.com www.msn.com and other
such things after 127.0.0.1

you should add whatever linux thinks your hostname is
after the 127.0.0.1 also

Yeah but what IS my hostname?
Can I find it out from Linux?

hostname(1) usually does the job

as root you can type in "ifconfig" without the quotes and it will show you your ip address and then like it was said above type in "hostname" to see what your hostname is.