Mandriva 2006 : slow
 

Hi,
I've installed mandriva 2006 on my laptop having 256mb ram and 1.73GHz processor (centrino).. Response time of the OS while opening applications like OpenOffice.org is very slow.. Can it be due to my low physical memory??
Plz tell me the optimum system requirements for installing mandriva 2006 and any other compatible distros with my configuration.

Thanks
Saurabh

Slow loading of applications usually has more to do with the speed of the hard drive more than the amount of memory, unless the system is heavily swapping when you are opening them. Laptop drives are slow by nature, not much you can do about this.

For a system running heavy applications like OO.org, I would want to have at least 512mb of RAM.

Re:
 

So, isn't there any substitute.. like will the increase in swap size help in this case??? Another query.. how do i configure my cable net connection for mandriva??

OOo can be slow to load even on systems with good specs. If its an option add more ram to your system and this could give it a performance boost.

Using the swap space is what slows a computer down, RAM is very fast, hard drives are very slow. If you have the ability, more RAM couldn't hurt, I find running on 256MB to be limiting. I actually noticed a difference between 256MB and 384MB on one of my laptops, and the install I have on there is much, much lighter than any standard Mandriva install.

I've learnt from somewhere that linux uses the physical memory to it full extent i.e most of the time it will be using full physical memory. Is it true??

Thanks
Saurabh