@cfernandes;
When you notice the system starting to slow down,... {Alt}{Ctrl}{F1} to a terminal and use the
top command to see what is running. Given what Posde is saying, your RAM and swapping is not what is likely causing the slowdown. I suspect something else, like a misbehaving application of some kind. Please,
especially, report if with
top, if you see any of the
following running:
- nepomuk, nepomuk-server, or anything with nepomuk in the name.
- stringi ... or anything including that name
- akonadi, akonadi-server, or, again, anything related to these names
The foregoing programs are KDE desktop related programs that are tied into KDE's "social desktop" schema. They scan the available drives for metadata related to contact information and feed it into Kontact, the KDE PIM software. If any part of the KDE desktop is run, or invoked somehow, these will activate and start eating up CPU cycles and IO bandwidth. On anything short of an i7 quad core with 8GB of RAM, they will grind the system to a functional halt. In Kubuntu 10.04, the versions of these "utilities" are especially poor/buggy, and pretty much need to be deactivated entirely (someone,... Posde or Thom, or someone,... confirmed they are not used in LinuxMCE for anything).
But if don't see any of the programs listed above, please report anything you
do see that is using a large portion of resources.