> Back when I first installed Gentoo and was using just as many programs as I am > now I was very impressed with the fact that the swap file was NEVER used.
Using swap isn't a bad thing as stated by a previous post, however swapping out because you are using all of your RAM is not so good especially for system responsiveness ;-)! > > All in all my Gentoo system seems to be getting slower and slower. Can anyone > suggest things I can do to 1) speed it up again and 2) reduce or eliminate > the use of the swap file (I know it's possible because for a long time I ran > without the swap file EVER being used at all - and I paid attention to it > quite a bit). You most definitely have a problem if you are using all 512MB of RAM with only a couple of apps running! How often since initial install have you updated? Also do you use any masked packages... usually there is a good reason why they are masked! I have actually noticed since I updated to XFree 4.3 that my memory usage has gone up a noticeable amount however nowhere near close to what you are describing and not affecting system performance. I don't use KDE so I can't help you out too much but I would start up all the programs that you use regularly and then let the machine sit idle and watch memory usage in a system monitor (top, or whatever KDE app you like) .. if nothing happens go play around a bit and come back and look (jot down usage at each time). If something is causing problems it will continue to suck up RAM. Also, after you perform this experiment you might want to reboot the machine and try it again. Good luck. Cheers, Jason -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
