LinuxQuestions.org - my system is super slow

i really thought with this hardware i will get a super machine, but i is actually very slow !!

hardware :

NEC TM1400 server, Xeon 1.8 Mhz, SCSI drives, 2 Gbyte Ram

ps. I first installed RH8 on this machine with only 256 Mb RAM inside, then I upgraded to 2 gbyte and installed RH9, in my memory configuration i can well see 2 Gbyte of RAM.

here's what i need to do, i have a 4 Mbyte .sql file (text file), now finally i can open it ( takes 15 seconds to load properly on Kwrite, while on windows 2K server on the same machine, it takes 8 seconds, and on XP on another machine of Athlon 2.8 Mhz that have 512 Mbyte of ram , it takes 12 seconds)

i had to split my original file of 8 mbyte into two, there is no way my machine can open an 8 Mbyte text file, crashed immediately (btw, i opened it with Windows normally).

and then i need to replace a certain word (find/replace), the files of 4mbyte takes 2.5 minutes to find/replace this word in the file (so so many of it), while it takes only 1 minute on windows (same machine) and 1.7 minutes on XP (512 Mbyte/Athlon 2.8 Mhz).

then after finding /replacing all words, on RedHat i cannot possibly save the file again, when i click on save the Kwrite goes banana, and hang, only rebooting solve the problem.

I noticed a slight change in speed between RH8 and RH9, RH8 was a little faster actually.

ps. I tried using other text editing programs other than Kwrite, same results.

now is this normal ? I cannot believe it because i know Linux need less resources to work, anything might be wrong in my setting ? virtual memory ? cash ?

any ideas please ?