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Cirkus
October 8th, 2005, 09:59 PM
I'm going to wait a day or two before making a final decision; but I'm getting pretty disgruntled with Linux.

I have a newer computer with 256 megs of ram, and while doing normal tasks (web surfing, file browsing, the occasional edit in GIMP) in GNOME it's consistently hitting ~450 megs of swap. That's far too much, particularly compared to XP (which, at most, only hits 300 megs and even then only when I run memory intensive games or 3d apps).

The performance is crap because of this. It's not acceptable. Particularly to someone who remembers the days of Linux 2.0/2.2 when linux was something that "might not support new hardware, but runs great on older machines!" (No WAY would I put 2.6 on anything less than a p3.)

If I this keeps up, I'll try GNOME under FreeBSD 5.4 (it's been my experience that BSD handles swap pretty good, so it may be better than Linux at this point); and if that doesn't work, I'll just stick to XP.

Browsing files and the web shouldn't eat 450 megs of swap; if that's GNOME, then I can tell you right there why Unix will stay in the server room.

BWF89
October 8th, 2005, 10:08 PM
Why don't you try Xfce or Fluxbox? I'm pretty sure they are less resource intensive than KDE or Gnome.

GeneralZod
October 8th, 2005, 10:14 PM
This is interesting; I'm often complaining about the memory usage, but I've never gone about 250MB swap (on my 256MB laptop). I use KDE, by the way, with Kontact (a full-blown PIM suite), Firefox with at least 20 tabs open, Konversation, Konsole with 5 tabs, Kompose, Kopete, Kate with the FreeCiv source being edited, and random other stuff running.

And yes, I'd imagine it's the DE's that are causing the bloat; the kernel itself is tiny. You'll see the same result under the *BSDs.

As BWF89 said, lighter DE's/ WM's make a huge difference. Using Opera instead of Firefox, the same.

I'm also confused as to why you think OS X should stay in the server room (it has just as much claim to the title of "Unix" as Linux does, and is comparably memory-hungry). I guess there's no accounting for taste! :)

PS

You can actually tune the swappiness at run-time; see e.g. here (http://kerneltrap.org/node/3000).

bugi
October 8th, 2005, 10:15 PM
Browsing files and the web shouldn't eat 450 megs of swap

It doesn't. Linux with KDE, Gnome on 256mb machine should not use swap at all (ok, maybe sometimes but not more than few mb). It has to be some problem with hardware, wrong configuration or something like that.

Cirkus
October 8th, 2005, 10:16 PM
Why don't you try Xfce or Fluxbox? I'm pretty sure they are less resource intensive than KDE or Gnome.

XFCE is quite nice (I've used it under BSD), but it's not what I want. If I were to downgrade from a DE, I'd probably go for Windowmaker, but it's starting to show its' age (stylistically speaking).

Cirkus
October 8th, 2005, 10:18 PM
It doesn't. Linux with KDE, Gnome on 256mb machine should not use swap at all (ok, maybe sometimes but not more than few mb). It has to be some problem with hardware, wrong configuration or something like that.

That is what I was thinking; but other than some surface changes (installing a mac like theme for GTK and tweeking around with the panels) I really haven't done that much to misconfigure. I thought it was odd too, which is why I'm not throwing it out right away (I'm going to try to figure out WTF, then throw it out if I can't fix it).

Stormy Eyes
October 8th, 2005, 10:19 PM
XFCE is quite nice (I've used it under BSD), but it's not what I want. If I were to downgrade from a DE, I'd probably go for Windowmaker, but it's starting to show its' age (stylistically speaking).

If you've got the cojones, try E17. You could also try blackbox or openbox. Don't even think of using fluxbox; it's a mishmash.

Cirkus
October 8th, 2005, 10:21 PM
If you've got the cojones, try E17.

I don't have them; enlightenment has always given me a screaming headache :p

poofyhairguy
October 8th, 2005, 10:24 PM
Install XFCE. Run these programs one after the other in the run dialog:


gnome-panel

gnome-volume-manager

nautilus

move the XFCE panel off to the side an make it autohide (or killall xfce4-panel).

There. XFCE will now act like Gnome in almost every way except it will use less RAM.

What you describe in a problem with Gnome. Yes Gnome ahs RAM problems- Breezy goes a long way to fix that. But its Gnome's fault, not Linux's.

Omnios
October 8th, 2005, 10:24 PM
Ram in Linux may be slightly decieving. I learn't quite a bit about how Linux handles ram or rather shows it playing around with Kuramba dock apps. Counting on what sensor you are using it may show Used memory in megabytes + cache and "buffers" giving a very high total. Apperently this also holds true for buffer as to why it would buffer and cach in swap that I would like explained. Aslo if you are running a dock app that could take up a lot of resources counting on whay particular app you are using. I think aa more usefull measurment would be over all perfomance Gnome and even KDE totaly smokes WinXP.

Cirkus
October 8th, 2005, 10:37 PM
Install XFCE. Run these programs one after the other in the run dialog:



move the XFCE panel off to the side an make it autohide (or killall xfce4-panel).

There. XFCE will now act like Gnome in almost every way except it will use less RAM.

What you describe in a problem with Gnome. Yes Gnome ahs RAM problems- Breezy goes a long way to fix that. But its Gnome's fault, not Linux's.

Ok, I'll fire that up into a shell script ( I'm assming I can do 'killall xfce4-panel' as a literal command) and see how it goes.

Thanks! :)

Ram in Linux may be slightly decieving. I learn't quite a bit about how Linux handles ram or rather shows it playing around with Kuramba dock apps. Counting on what sensor you are using it may show Used memory in megabytes + cache and "buffers" giving a very high total. Apperently this also holds true for buffer as to why it would buffer and cach in swap that I would like explained. Aslo if you are running a dock app that could take up a lot of resources counting on whay particular app you are using. I think aa more usefull measurment would be over all perfomance Gnome and even KDE totaly smokes WinXP.
So far, Linux has been digging deep into my swap space and performance has turned to crud while I have to wait for redraws and swap read/writes. XP performance degrades over time but that's expected with XP; not with Linux.

I will try poofyhairguy's suggestion, though; and see how that works. :cool:

Kvark
October 8th, 2005, 10:58 PM
There must be something wrong with your configuration. I got gnome with a nice theme and a couple programs running, 157MB ram and 2.8MB swap is used in total atm. That must be bad for all the people with 128MB ram but it should run like lightning on 256MB and at least an average CPU.

But there really is something funky about how memory usage is reported on a linux system. If I add up how much memory all my proccesses are using then they use 540MB memory. I wish it would report only the amount of memory that would be freed if the process in question was killed instead of all memory it shares with other processes.

cowlip
October 8th, 2005, 11:02 PM
Does gimp store a lot of things in the swap?

-Rick-
October 8th, 2005, 11:07 PM
I'm going to wait a day or two before making a final decision; but I'm getting pretty disgruntled with Linux.

I have a newer computer with 256 megs of ram, and while doing normal tasks (web surfing, file browsing, the occasional edit in GIMP) in GNOME it's consistently hitting ~450 megs of swap. That's far too much, particularly compared to XP (which, at most, only hits 300 megs and even then only when I run memory intensive games or 3d apps).

The performance is crap because of this. It's not acceptable. Particularly to someone who remembers the days of Linux 2.0/2.2 when linux was something that "might not support new hardware, but runs great on older machines!" (No WAY would I put 2.6 on anything less than a p3.)

If I this keeps up, I'll try GNOME under FreeBSD 5.4 (it's been my experience that BSD handles swap pretty good, so it may be better than Linux at this point); and if that doesn't work, I'll just stick to XP.

Browsing files and the web shouldn't eat 450 megs of swap; if that's GNOME, then I can tell you right there why Unix will stay in the server room.
In my experience Gnome doesn't play nice with ram...the same with Firefox.
For me KDE+Opera works better(I have 256 mb ram too). And yes FreeBSD will make things better too :)

drizek
October 8th, 2005, 11:26 PM
XFCE is quite nice (I've used it under BSD), but it's not what I want. If I were to downgrade from a DE, I'd probably go for Windowmaker, but it's starting to show its' age (stylistically speaking).

why not upgrade to KDE then?

it uses less memory than gnome and it runs great on my old desktop with 192mb ram and integrated gfx.

right now, im using my new desktop with kde,opera and amarok running and it is using about 180mb of actual memory(total of 400mb of cache, which wouldnt transfer over to swap if you run out of ram AFAIK). no swap is being used at all.

Edit:btw, on this same machine which has a gig of ram, windows xp uses 200mb of swap with just a web browser open.

Kyral
October 8th, 2005, 11:44 PM
Yah, RAM info on Linux is very sketchy. I mean if I'm on IRC and I fire my sysinfo script it says I'm using 400 out of 512 MB. Yet at the same time I have GNOME System Monitor up and it says I'm using 184 MB RAM and maybe 2 MB swap...

drizek
October 9th, 2005, 12:42 AM
thats because you are using 184mb of application data and the rest is just cache. once your ram starts running out, all that cache will be removed and replaced with application data. it will not be moved to swap.

the "real" amount of ram you are using is still just 184mb.

-Rick-
October 9th, 2005, 01:09 AM
Good info about linux memory managment: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-175419-highlight-ram+usage.html

blastus
October 9th, 2005, 01:54 AM
Good info about linux memory management: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-175419-highlight-ram+usage.html

Thanks for this link. A while ago I was trying to explain (in my own extremely limited amount of knowledge about this) to some morons on a Windows forum that Linux uses memory differently than Windows. They claimed that unless you have 512Mb of RAM, you can't run KDE, GNOME, and even Enlightment with acceptable performance. One guy even said he was an "administrator" who was responsible for overseeing all kinds of Linux machines running all kinds of desktop environments and based on his profound experience ALL the machines with less than 512Mb running Linux performed so slowly that they were basically unusable.

Cirkus
October 9th, 2005, 02:02 AM
there's a difference between what utilities such as top report as being free, and what is actually available (and where it is coming from).

Personally speaking, this is not my problem. My problem is that GNOME causes Linux to hit the swap like mad, and my system slows down to the point of being unusable.

I'm trying out KDE, but I'm not liking it (most of the apps I use are gtk apps, and kde gives them a tiny, tiny font by default. :().

drizek
October 9th, 2005, 02:10 AM
learn to use kde apps then. they are equal to or better than gnome ones. you will just have to get used to it.

that said, gnome shouldnt be performing so badly. ive had it on 512mb systems before and it ran just fine.

Cirkus
October 9th, 2005, 02:18 AM
learn to use kde apps then. they are equal to or better than gnome ones. you will just have to get used to it.

that said, gnome shouldnt be performing so badly. ive had it on 512mb systems before and it ran just fine.
I don't have to get used to kde as long as their are alternatives (gnome under BSD, or windows xp)

I have half that amount of ram; it makes a huge difference (apparently).

Efwis
October 9th, 2005, 02:33 AM
actually makes me wonder if you have a different program running somewhere with a memory leak. I know memory leaks can make it seem like you are running more ram hence looks like you are using more swap then you actually are.

Are you running any other programs at the same time that you are seeing this problem?

Omnios
October 9th, 2005, 02:36 AM
KDE is a bit strange at first you realy have to play with it for a week or so to apreciate it.
I realy wasn't all that impressed at first but with a few changes to desktop settings I found it rather pleasant to use and not a single crash as advertised lol. Basicly it does alot as a wm and is still fast on 1.6ghz P4 R with 256megs ram. Id still be using Gnome if it wasn't for the ram aand vidcard problems though :(my vid card bites)

Other than click a icon to install I can say I prefer it over win xp, all the functionality but runs a hell of a lot faster.

aysiu
October 9th, 2005, 02:43 AM
Can you post what pops up when you type
top in a terminal? For example, mine says
top - 18:43:17 up 36 min, 1 user, load average: 0.56, 0.82, 1.19
Tasks: 82 total, 1 running, 81 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 3.7% us, 0.7% sy, 0.0% ni, 92.7% id, 2.7% wa, 0.3% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 451852k total, 428116k used, 23736k free, 117412k buffers
Swap: 1060248k total, 12476k used, 1047772k free, 104020k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
8403 root 15 0 104m 22m 3536 S 2.3 5.1 0:50.42 Xorg
8894 user 15 0 29708 16m 12m S 2.0 3.7 0:00.37 konsole
1 root 16 0 1560 532 460 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.92 init
2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04 ksoftirqd/0
3 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.11 events/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 khelper
5 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthread
7 root 20 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
110 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:03.70 kblockd/0
138 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 pdflush
139 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush
141 root 13 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
140 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.53 kswapd0
726 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 kseriod
965 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ata/0
2414 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd
2477 root 25 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
2478 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.18 usb-storage
That's with Thunderbird, Firefox, and the terminal running.

Cirkus
October 9th, 2005, 03:01 AM
Are you running any other programs at the same time that you are seeing this problem?
The only culprits I can think of are:
tdfsb (a 3d file browser, I don't use it that much; but I know it's a hog)
nautilus (I think it may not free up memory after looking at a directory with tons of images in it)
firefox (a known memory problem :/)
firestarter (I don't know what kind of memory it uses or not, but I've noticed it seems to turn off by itself and I have no idea why).

gimp really isn't (or shouldn't be) a factor since I just load it, do a quick edit on an image and then close it.

Cirkus
October 9th, 2005, 03:20 AM
Can you post what pops up when you type
top in a terminal?
I logged out of KDE and I'm browsing here and browsed with the nautilus file browser (but not with tdfsb, obviously). At the moment I'm only 100 megs into my swap, I expect that to go up in a few hours of normal use, though. Here's what top shows:

top - 19:20:03 up 1:47, 3 users, load average: 0.52, 0.77, 0.73
Tasks: 96 total, 1 running, 94 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
Cpu(s): 2.6% us, 2.8% sy, 0.0% ni, 94.4% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.2% si
Mem: 255976k total, 251520k used, 4456k free, 6336k buffers
Swap: 1534196k total, 103212k used, 1430984k free, 80324k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
6330 root 15 0 111m 22m 9036 S 4.2 9.0 4:21.77 Xorg
8771 cirkus 15 0 38712 14m 9444 S 0.9 5.6 0:01.38 gnome-terminal
7558 cirkus 15 0 13608 7104 5788 S 0.2 2.8 0:04.31 metacity
1 root 16 0 1564 420 396 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.88 init
2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.24 ksoftirqd/0
3 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.21 events/0
4 root 14 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 khelper
5 root 19 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthread
22 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.19 kblockd/0
68 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 pdflush
69 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.11 pdflush
71 root 20 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
70 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.29 kswapd0
657 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
1857 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd
1953 root 25 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
1954 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.08 usb-storage

Efwis
October 9th, 2005, 04:12 AM
from that it looks like you have a config issue. Xorg is taking all your memory.

here is what my sys is looking like with ff open and terminal running. look at my Xorg compared to yours, and I'm running 512mb of Ram, it isn't touching my swap at all.


top - 22:14:39 up 2:21, 2 users, load average: 0.06, 0.11, 0.09
Tasks: 75 total, 2 running, 73 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 21.0% us, 1.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 78.0% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 516500k total, 354496k used, 162004k free, 19060k buffers
Swap: 265032k total, 0k used, 265032k free, 159540k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
8396 edward 15 0 143m 82m 20m S 12.3 16.3 6:45.57 firefox-bin
6877 root 16 0 109m 24m 6960 R 5.3 4.8 2:24.30 Xorg
8812 edward 15 0 30008 12m 8268 S 2.7 2.5 0:00.98 gnome-terminal
8356 edward 15 0 17500 9976 7668 S 0.7 1.9 0:03.11 wnck-applet
8824 edward 16 0 2080 1040 820 R 0.7 0.2 0:00.47 top
8019 edward 16 0 17392 8984 6956 S 0.3 1.7 0:00.98 x-session-manag
8120 edward 15 0 7724 2716 2160 S 0.3 0.5 0:00.73 gnome-smproxy
8122 edward 15 0 12652 7100 5648 S 0.3 1.4 0:03.39 metacity
8126 edward 15 0 28112 12m 8980 S 0.3 2.5 0:03.10 gnome-panel
8347 edward 16 0 16164 8192 6512 S 0.3 1.6 0:17.21 multiload-apple
1 root 16 0 1552 508 444 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.52 init
2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
3 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.07 events/0
4 root 12 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 khelper
22 root 15 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
111 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04 kblockd/0
149 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush




You might want to take a look at your Xorg config and see what it might be.

Wide
October 9th, 2005, 04:33 AM
As earlier stated, Linux uses memory on a reserved basis, memory is released by sleeping processes if need elsewhere.

You need to measure active process memory usage not 'top', 'ps', 'free' etc

There is a real good article on it here (http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1445)


:cool:

Cirkus
October 9th, 2005, 04:38 AM
from that it looks like you have a config issue. Xorg is taking all your memory.

here is what my sys is looking like with ff open and terminal running. look at my Xorg compared to yours, and I'm running 512mb of Ram, it isn't touching my swap at all.


top - 22:14:39 up 2:21, 2 users, load average: 0.06, 0.11, 0.09
Tasks: 75 total, 2 running, 73 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 21.0% us, 1.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 78.0% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 516500k total, 354496k used, 162004k free, 19060k buffers
Swap: 265032k total, 0k used, 265032k free, 159540k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
8396 edward 15 0 143m 82m 20m S 12.3 16.3 6:45.57 firefox-bin
6877 root 16 0 109m 24m 6960 R 5.3 4.8 2:24.30 Xorg
8812 edward 15 0 30008 12m 8268 S 2.7 2.5 0:00.98 gnome-terminal
8356 edward 15 0 17500 9976 7668 S 0.7 1.9 0:03.11 wnck-applet
8824 edward 16 0 2080 1040 820 R 0.7 0.2 0:00.47 top
8019 edward 16 0 17392 8984 6956 S 0.3 1.7 0:00.98 x-session-manag
8120 edward 15 0 7724 2716 2160 S 0.3 0.5 0:00.73 gnome-smproxy
8122 edward 15 0 12652 7100 5648 S 0.3 1.4 0:03.39 metacity
8126 edward 15 0 28112 12m 8980 S 0.3 2.5 0:03.10 gnome-panel
8347 edward 16 0 16164 8192 6512 S 0.3 1.6 0:17.21 multiload-apple
1 root 16 0 1552 508 444 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.52 init
2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
3 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.07 events/0
4 root 12 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 khelper
22 root 15 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
111 root 5 -10 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04 kblockd/0
149 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush




You might want to take a look at your Xorg config and see what it might be.
I'm pretty far from being an expert. I'm using the (closed) nvidia drivers so I'll try switching back to the native xorg 'nv' driver. Maybe that will help?

Efwis
October 9th, 2005, 04:44 AM
I too am far from an expert, but its someplace to look. which Nvidia driver are you using? I know they just came out with a new one not too long ago.

Cirkus
October 9th, 2005, 05:16 AM
I too am far from an expert, but its someplace to look. which Nvidia driver are you using? I know they just came out with a new one not too long ago.
I'm not sure; it's the one that I installed after reading the how-to on ubuntuguides.org.

Cirkus
October 9th, 2005, 06:13 AM
Ok, this is how top looks after running gnome for a while (I have the listing sorted by resident memory)
top - 22:06:40 up 2:09, 2 users, load average: 0.45, 0.24, 0.26
Tasks: 109 total, 1 running, 108 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 5.6% us, 1.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 93.4% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi,
0.0% si
Mem: 255976k total, 251732k used, 4244k free, 4368k buffers
Swap: 1534196k total, 161712k used, 1372484k free, 71740k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
8982 root 15 0 204m 65m 7776 S 2.3 26.1 2:18.36 Xorg
9174 cirkus 16 0 123m 49m 16m S 0.0 19.7 2:49.91 firefox-bin
10493 root 15 0 36824 24m 14m S 0.0 9.8 0:16.76 synaptic
9113 cirkus 16 0 26860 14m 8956 S 0.0 5.8 0:06.10 gnome-panel
11468 cirkus 15 0 31052 13m 8544 S 2.7 5.2 0:00.60 gnome-terminal
9115 cirkus 16 0 30156 10m 8400 S 0.0 4.1 0:01.87 nautilus
9317 root 15 0 19792 9960 7788 S 0.0 3.9 0:02.00 firestarter
9160 cirkus 15 0 19376 9508 7712 S 0.0 3.7 0:11.96 wnck-applet
9163 cirkus 15 0 19500 9232 7552 S 0.0 3.6 0:00.68 trashapplet
10737 cirkus 16 0 24288 9112 3444 S 0.0 3.6 0:00.11 gpbs
9123 cirkus 16 0 18320 7684 6820 S 0.0 3.0 0:00.53 update-notifier
9169 cirkus 16 0 22316 7636 6676 S 0.0 3.0 0:00.54 clock-applet
9108 cirkus 15 0 13852 7568 6028 S 1.3 3.0 0:17.65 metacity
9167 cirkus 15 0 19516 7316 6668 S 0.0 2.9 0:00.56 mixer_applet2
9303 cirkus 15 0 26584 7020 6240 S 0.0 2.7 0:01.16 gaim
9009 cirkus 15 0 18500 6540 6136 S 0.0 2.6 0:00.59 gnome-session
9165 cirkus 15 0 17496 6240 5676 S 0.0 2.4 0:00.28 notification-ar



It apparently is a combination of
a)xorg
b)firefox
c)a million and one memory chompin' (gnome-terminal takes 13 megs. wow.) gnome widgets

Since I can't figure out xorg.conf, I'm going to have to drop gnome and switch to another wm (probably window maker or xfce).

Thanks to everyone for your help and advice!