Hi all,
I have just installed a Kernel 2.6 distribution (in particular CentOS 4.2). My hardware is:

- Pentium III 866Mhz
- 768MB RAM
- 80GB HDD
- ATI RAGE 128 PRO VGA card

Unfortunately, there is a serious problem with the installation. The system is EXTREMELY SLOW. For example when I click to open a terminal window, it opens after 30-40 seconds or more (not to mention what happens when I try to open programs like Firefox or Openoffice - it takes more than a minute). The same slow performance occurs everywhere (a simple '/sbin/init 6' could last 30 seconds before the shutdown sequence actually start).

Although I am not so familiar with linux, in my experience I suspect this might be a real-time clock issue (and therefore a kernel issue). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If you are concerned abuot it being a kernel issue, the only way to be sure, is get a new kernel from www.kernel.org, and configure it yourself(be sure to disable real time clock if that is what you think the issue is), and try it. If it was a kernel issue, replacing the kernel would make it go away and you could be assured that is what it is.