Hi, I'm running kde3 on Debian Sarge kernel 2.6.9 and after having my system running for a few days my 200mb swap is almost full and my processor is at 50% +\- 10% and goes to 100% as soon as I start a new process . Is this normal?
Processor is 2.40ghz pentium M for laptops running whit speedstep full kernel support I think, and 500 something memory.
If this is uncommon can someone please direct me to a guide or something on how to optimise my system? I am fairly sure the kernel is already optimised, but all tips are apriciated.

That's not really normal. Run "top" at the command line and find out which services/application is taking up so much memory. Your swap should never be used if you have that amount of RAM, so something went pretty bad.

Optimizing speed is the usual: Getting rid of KDE and using something as Fluxbox or XFCE4 and disabling services that you don't need to run.

Good luck!

The top command provided some interesting results, seems kdeinit is what is eating everything. I googled for it and found out allmost all programs run in kde show up as kdeinit. Something that seems a little strange is Tasks: 112 total, 1 running, 111 sleeping, and it fluxuates like it is starting and stopping processes constantly. And what could all those processes be?
Seems I might have to remove kde, and I just got it to look pretty....

Don't remove it just yet . Install a new Window Manager as black(flux)box and see if that makes a difference. I think you can install either with apt-get .

Also, another thing that works for me is, the system seems to be relatively more responsive when you boot into the command line and type "startx" ratter then having a cute "Welcome" screen as GDM, KDM, XDM, etc...

Try checking that too