Mike Bird wrote:
Cheers Mike (& everyone else who has contributed). I downloaded OpenBox and am running it within Gnome after rebooting. I would say that Xfce4 has some very serious memory holes at present - my system was just grinding to a halt. It's a real shame. When I used to run Slackware using Xfce4 I managed uptimes in excess of 40 days or so without any problems and reboots were controlled and deliberate, not to rescue memory. I am really torn - I very much appreciate the way that Debian automates the whole package management thing and (generally) just sits in the background, but I really do miss the memory efficiency of Slackware. It pisses me off that for no good reason I cannot load an additional 1 GB RAM chip into this box without bringing Deb to a standstill (the mobo is capable of 4 GB, so 2 GB total is not an issue from the hardware's perspective), and if I have to reboot every week or so to recover memory then that is a PITA too - despite what apps I am using. One of the aspects of GNU/Linux is its sane handling of memory: close an app and the memory is released. One expects that, unlike the MS world. My experiences with Xfce4 and also - to some extent Gnome - over the last few weeks to months has not lived up to that expectation. I don't know if that is Debian or what, but a happy bunny it does not me make.8< snip, snipkbuildsycoca normally only runs for several seconds after changing something in KDE. If it's running non-stop you have a problem. It's probably safe just to kill kbuildsycoca but a reboot would be kinder. As for iceape-bin, it shouldn't be using that much CPU except in very short bursts. Maybe you have a bad plugin, or maybe it's a bad interaction with the multiple windowing systems. You have two gdm's, and xfce desktop, and a lot of KDE running. You have several heavy applications running. That's way more than will fit comfortably in a gig of RAM. If you can't quickly find a solution to those two xfce memory hogs I would suggest dropping xfce and gdm, and using kdm. You're not saving anything with xfce as you're apps are so heavily KDE. --Mike Bird Right now my needs are to have a system that runs reliably and efficiently and is not high maintenance ... I have far too much work to do without faffing about with a computer just so that I can get the job done. Computers are tools, and if they don't do the job, or become too high maintenance that they interfere with my work, then they are evidently not the right tool. Anyway, thanks for all the help and comments folks. I am appreciative of your input. Best wishes Andy -- "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow" |