Rick,
I know you will be receiving expert advice, but thought I'd pass along
my own experiences that will suggest what you experience is normal.
I've got 128 Mb RAM and run RH 7.0. If I start and continue to run too
many piggish apps, I begin to use swap. The Linux memory model is not
like that of OS/2, and so the use of swap not necessarily
harmful. However, if I don't periodically close apps, or even exit the
X Windows System, the amount of swap claimed begins to rise rather
quickly. If a fair amount of swap gets used, I find I can no longer
exit the X system, and if all of swap is used, my whole machine
hangs. In either case, it requires a dirty shutdown.
I normally run several terminals, Emacs, an obscure file manager
(which tends to hang onto memory and slow until I restart it), and
Opera. I usually also run Netscape as I work on local files (not for
Internet). There are several personal applications that will be opened
and closed fairly regularly. Netscape seems the biggest offender,
although if I close it before too much swap is used, I can recover all
or nearly all hung memory, even if I immediately reopen it. Word
Perfect is also hoggish. The applications that I normally leave open
tend to be used simultaneously and more or less continuously.
--
Haines Brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.hartford-hwp.com
KB1GRM
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