I am having a very big problem with linux. I've been using it for about 2 months
now, and its been slow...very slow. its like trying to run windows xp on a 100
MHz computer with 12 MB of ram. I am using Mandrake 9.0, and it takes forever to
boot. i power on, and LILO boots up, and it auto-boots linux. it takes about 1.5
minutes from the lilo boot to the KDE desktop for linux to boot. i am using a
1.1 GHz laptop with 256 MB RAM and a 400 MB swap file. I though it was just
linux that was slow, but i did a cat /proc/meminfo and the reports were very
very ugly. Now, out of 256 MB of ram, i only have 53 MB free. The reports were
as follows:

MemTotal: 240748 kb
*MemFree: 52436 kb*
MemShared: 0 kb
Buffers: 12236 kb
Cached: 96600 kb
SwapCached: 0 kb
Active: 55584 kb
Inactive: 112620 kb
Hightotal: 0 kb
HighFree: 0 kb
LowTotal: 240748 kb
LowFree: 52436 kb
SwapTotal: 401584 kb
SwapFree: 401584 kb

uptime says: load average: 0.48, 0.28, 0.19

now, by now, im pretty mad. i love linux, open source, and it all, but when linux takes up like 80% of my ram, i begin to think its not worth it. what can i do to free up my ram without buying more ? how cani make mandrake 9.0 faster ? right now, its slow. its a fresh clean install, so it should be fast. Why Does linux take so much ram, and how can i get at LEAST 150 MB free ???

Also, im using a Trident CyberBlade XP v6.0, its a 16 MB 3d accelerator. XFree86 does have video card drivers for it, but when i play a game like TuxRacer, or the 3D tron game, or Chromium, it is so slow and laggy, i can hardly even move
the mouse the exit the game. Is this part of the Ram issue or something different ? What can i do to fix this ?

Bare with me, im only 15 years old and a newbie, so please make things as simple as possible. this is all the information i can provide, its about all i know about my system, so i can get any more spacific. you'll have to tell me what to do if you
want to know something. i dont have a network, i cant connect to the internet in linux (i have a wind xp/mandrake 9.0 dual boot), and i dont have a printer. i use
KDE 3.0.3, kernel 2.4.19, and if you tell me that its KDE hoggin' my rm, its not true, because i also tried window maker, and it also runs very slow, even slower
than kde.

Thanks in advance, and thank you OpenSource community, you've made the world a
better place.

your only using 55 meg of that ram, the rest is cached and buffered, you don't really have a problem with ram

what part of the bootup is stalling?

those games are probably slow due to a video driver problem

About the Ram: most of it is cached.It's not like with window when your box crashes because the Ram fills up.I got 384 and that's full most of the time - like I care.What do you want with free Ram anyway - you paid for it might as well use it.
About the speed: I got a 900 hmz processor and booting takes around a minute with debian.How long it takes to boot depends largely on the processes that get started at that time.
It takes sometimes already 10 seconds to bring up my netconnection.Nothing that Linux can do about that.Gentoo boots in about 30 seconds on my box.But I start almost nothing at bootup there.
About games:If the card is not supported you don't have any hardware 3d acceleration - only software acceleration.That is basically unuseable for gaming.Your grapics card is pretty much sitting there doing nothing.More Ram won't help there.I don't know about your card but according to xfree.org it is supported in xfree4.2.1

i knowmy 3d card has software support, but what about hardware support ? how do i get it working ? i want to actually see 3d hardware support.

As I said - I don't know that card plus I ain't going to buy one to find out.Go to http://www.xfree.org/current/Status33.html#33 Thats the site where they claim that 3d acceleration is supported.Further info can be found at http://www.xfree.org/current or http://www.xfree.org
They also got mailing lists where you can ask specific questions.
Sorry that I can't help you out better that this but I just don't have any idea how your trident works.