Post Numero Uno:

When I use the GUI it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to do anything. Every time I do anything the hard drive works so hard it sounds like it's going to break. It takes about five seconds to get a right-click menu!

The computer is a HP Pavilion with a 300mhz AMD K6 chip. It had no problem running Windows ME.

My guess is there is something wrong with the RAM. The hard drive goes into overdrive for everything. Just a guess.

Also, in addition to telling me what the problem is, it would help if you could tell me how to fix it.

Thanks.

How much RAM do you have? How much swap?

Also, although it will take an hour and half to open up, you might want to open an xterm and run 'top' while trying to do anything. See how much resources are being used for each task, and maybe kill some of the higher ones.

Another option is to use a lighter wm (wm = window manager).

Cool

/proc/meminfo says I've got 64Mb of RAM and 170Mb of swap.

When I run "top" it says I'm using just about all of my RAM (672k free) and about 21Mb of swap. I suppose this means I need more ram, but does it really need ~85MB of ram just to run?

Please tell me if my deductions are correct before I go buy more ram.

Also, I notice that the disk works amost constantly. It sounds like it does when it boots up. It even does this when I'm in terminal mode and not doing anything. Surely this isn't a memory problem. Or is this normal?

Thanks

Is this forever, or is it possibly just running ALOT of cronjobs at startup, and maybe failing some (which would make your system run slow)?

I prefer 'free' to show me info about my memory, it's a little more in depth.

~85MB to run some of the Desktop Environments, like KDE might be scrapin by. Switch to something ALOT lighter, XFCE, Fluxbox, Blackbox, twm Or whatever, just something lighter.
That will help, and you should be seeing some improvement with just this.

If the disc is constantly "Cranking" then you might also wanna check out what's going on. Check your log files, usually located in /var/log or very close by.

/var/log/messages is your startup log file and that might also reveal something. I'd say you might wanna cut down on some services running.

So, summary:
Cut down running services you don't need, switch to a lighter wm (XFCE even claims to be Cholesterol Free ), and read your log files to see if something is REALLY slowing it down (due to long timeouts or whatever).

Cool

I checked the log files. Just a couple of my failed logins.
It said I didn't have any of the wm's except twm. Is that some kind of inside joke wm? I'd rather use the command line!

I guess the answer to my question is ultimately: get more ram.

Thanks for helping me get to the bottom of that.

ha ha ha, Nah it's not really a joke. I believe xfree86 built that. It's as basic as they come.

No frills whatsoever.

BTW, I missed my civic duties:
Welcome to LQ!

Cool