Ubuntu 7.10 - runs slow - help

[MCC]

Go to system>administration>system monitor and check your RAM usage under the resources tab. If you're running low, adding some RAM might help but in my experience Ubuntu should run just fine on 256MB, let alone 512. While you're there, check the processes tab and sort by CPU usage to see if anything's unnecessarily hogging your resources.

[Bizzel]

To be sure that compiz is off and not slowing down your graphics card, run "metacity --replace" from the run dialog (alt+f2).

[GAD]

Top will show you stats re: memory on the top:

top - 20:41:24 up 22:34,  2 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00
Tasks:  71 total,   1 running,  70 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  2.3% us,  0.2% sy,  0.0% ni, 97.4% id,  0.1% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:   1295700k total,  1211884k used,    83816k free,    41340k buffers
Swap:   524280k total,        0k used,   524280k free,   945716k cached

If the Swap line shows a lot used, then you're swapping. vmstat 5 5 will show you how your swapping, but it's kinda hard to read if you're not used to it.

GAD

[GAD]

Ideally you want swap to be unused. If you're swapping (possible running X apps), then yes, more RAM would probably help a great deal.

GAD

[Tarkovsky]

Hi there. Such a slowdown is surprising, but RAM is no doubt your issue. For all unix based OSs ram is very important (max os x included), much more so than winblows because it puts everything it can into your ram. My advice is to buy good quality ram thats as fast as your system bus can allow and have at least a gig and probably get rid of your old stick/put it into a wintel box.

I was recently installing ubuntu on an old PC that ran windows fine to no avail because of buggy ram. This RAM thrashing is perhaps a design flaw in linux... But as you say RAM is cheap these days, and I'd rather spend my money on RAM than give it to the robot devil in exchange for an operating system built on untested code as a response to the media industries as opposed to open source tried and tested code.
Rant over.