[newbie] Linux is so slow... Please help

[Charles Ulwelling]

        I'm having a serious problem with linux mandrake 7.0.  I boot up and with
in a matter of seconds my ram utilization goes to max.  I have 256 megs of
RAM so I don't understand how this could be.  It makes linux completely
unuseable.  I'm booting into KDE.

Thanks,
Charles Ulwelling