On Sat, Nov 11, 2000 at 02:18:27PM -0800, kmself@ix.netcom.com wrote: > > This isn't a crash, it's a system slowdown.
The 'VM' messages seem to hint to Virtual Memory problems, however. I've read that the latest 2.2.x kernels have some VM problems. > Almost certainly resulting > from insufficient free memory. Netscape is a memory pig, and 32 MB RAM > is almost certainly insufficient given the clients you're running -- > GNOME is also fairly intensive. > > Get more memory, get a better box, or ditch GNOME and/or Netscape. 96 - > 128 MB is recommended for a typical current-generation workstation. > When I had only 16 MB on my laptop, I was able to run gnome and Netscape. Gnome (or KDE) took 2 minutes to start and Netscape took 1 minute, but I could (barely) use them. I found out that the combo WindowMaker+Netscape produced a workable setup. (I did upgraded it to 80 MB, though). The real memory pig is X itself (on my laptop, it took about 8 MB of RSS). I found out that using only 16 bits per pixel (that is 65535 colors) helped a bit. I also proceeded to reduce the number of running daemons, including the number of getty, removing any unneeded services ( and on a Laptop this means almost all ). Anyway my desktop with 'only' 64 MB has no problems (I run Gnome, netscape/mozilla, postgreSQL, apache, ... ). Ciao. -- FB