High CPU & RAM usage in Slackware 12
 

i find the ram usage is around 500MB even when the system is idle and goes to 1000MB & above when any application is started. i feel this is very strange as the CPU utilisation also shoots to 80-90% even for firefox.

my system config is as follows

Intel P-4 2.8GHZ HT
Intel D915GAV MB
1280MB DDR Ram
Samsung SATA 40GB HDD
Seagate SATA 160GB HDD
XFX- Nvidia 7600GT 256 MB DDR3
Pinnacle PCTV Stereo PCI Tuner card

even for firefox?!

firefox is known to hog!

what does "cat /proc/meminfo" say?

also, what kernel are you using? Is this a fresh install?

You may try giving us more information, like how are you getting RAM data, the list of running processes. Maybe you can easily find out the problem by using htop ( http://slackbuilds.org/repository/12.0/system/htop/ )

When this happens again, run 'top' and sort by CPU or RAM usage (if it isn't already sorted as such, which it usually is). Then see which processes use the most RAM and CPU time.

astonished to see firefox consuming 85 - 96% cpu usage. this happens when flash contents are displayed in the web page. is there any way to reduce this. i don't feel konqerer as good as firefox, is there any other good web browser for linux with good fonts and performance.
i'll post the output of top and meminfo tomorrow.

My Slack's RAM usage dropped down a lot after giving up using KDE (Gnome wouldn't make a difference) and moving to other solutions. Firefox itself isn't a real pain, but Flash-content web sites are; they're generally slow(er than sites without them) even if you don't look at CPU/RAM usage.

There are a lot of browsers out there, major ones being Firefox and Opera (Konqueror is sort of "KDE-only" option; there's also Epiphany, but it's a Mozilla-something-on-Gnome). I guess you can affect the performance a little bit if you change to a lighter browser, but in the end I don't think Firefox is all that bad.

I think you might have a leaky/crappy plug-in or extension. Try removing/disabling them one by one and see if you can pinpoint the problem.

starting firefox with a new profile is usually the best way to test that out.

You should install the script blocker and flash blocker extensions for firefox. Then you can choose whether or not to download the flash stuff. If you do play a flash video, then you can close the window afterward.

Brian

i tried with a new profile the cpu usage has come down a bit but not fully. i guess the same happens in windows too when running firefox, so used ie on those pages. but i linux i don't have any other choice as i donn't like konqueror, will netscape help me??

You can try Opera which is freeware and Seamonkey (Mozilla suit), the latest is included in Slackware.

Netscape wouldn't help
 

Netscape will give you the same blues as Firefox. Your best bet at this point will be either to lean down the shit outta Firefox, or go to Opera. Mind that it, like Konqueror, is QT based, but it's worth a look ever so often anyway. I've used it as a stop-gap measure when the Mozilla hackers had a dud release in the past or something...