Too many processes question.

[Les]

On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 13:36 +0000, James Wilkinson wrote:
> Les wrote:
> >    I have 104 processes listed when I run the monitor.  My system is
> > slowing to a crawl, dropping internet connections and jerking like it
> > has epilepsy.  Would someone please tell me how many process should be
> > running in a simple workstation setup (not a server).
> 
> Steve Siegfried replied:
> > It's actually more complicated than that.  Response times & zippyness
> > pretty much rely on:
> > 	- how much spare capacity the cpu has,
> > 	- how much memory is available,
> > 	- amount of I/O (including networks) taking place
> > 
> > A quick place to start looking for what's using all your horsepower
> > is top(1) (it's in the procps package).  Pids that clock lots of time
> > are your first suspects.
> 
> My experience is that these days, computers have plenty of *processor*
> power for most of what they're asked to do. The exceptions tend to be
> the programs which the user is most interested in (compiling, encoding,
> etc. -- stuff which the user explicitly kicks off and watches).
> 
> So a "slow" computer is actually rarely to do with raw processor power.
> It's much more likely to be some combination of the hard disk not using
> DMA, or there being a memory hog on the system that is causing it to
> swap a lot, or there being something running in the background that is
> really accessing the hard drive a lot.
> 
> You may have noticed that I like blaming the hard drive for speed
> problems. Les, is the hard drive light on much?
> 
> James.
> 
> -- 
All the time (I'm pretty sure that is broken on this system, because I
can usually hear the drive spin up or the arm movement anyway).  The
problem seems to be though, with all that stuff in memory, that my main
memory (only 256M on this machine) is pretty filled up.  And I think
that 256M of OS and X is just way the heck too much.  

I really don't want too much going on, just X and its requriements, The
Kernal, the print stuff, the USB stuff and the CD and DVD.  So what is
with 104 processes.  Even Windows only shows 54 on my XP box, and I
thought Windows was a HOG.

Regards,
Les H