Przemysław Pawełczyk wrote:
 > On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 21:55:19 +0100
 > Mark Cullen <mark.r.cullen@gmail.com> wrote:
 >
 >> Michael Parson wrote:
 >> PS: I apologize to the original poster for sort of hi-jacking the 
thread.
 >
 > Hi,
 > You don't have to do it. I intently read the thread and eagerly learn 
on the subject. Go on, please...
 >
 > BTW. I improved my system responsevness a little changing in Deer 
Park (Firefox Gtk1) cache settings from 50MB to 5 MB. But the numbers 
describe _disk_ memory not system memory. They shouldn't influence each 
other. Decidedly there's a need for some neatly script optimizing system 
memory for several preset options like desktop and others, or with a 
selection list of several main apps. I have no experience with such 
detailed adjusting tools like those presented on the thread. And when I 
think of all the permutations of setting items I run away from PC to 
calm down.. ;-)
 >
 > Cheers,
 > warpman
 >

:)

Perhaps changing from 50MB to 5MB helped as it was filling up the file 
system buffer cache or something, as Johnny suggested. If the buffer 
cache code pushes things out to swap I guess it could cause things like 
this to happen?

I am guessing if this was the case it would become obvious looking at 
the output of vmstat while running FireFox when it gets slow. Something 
like `vmstat -c 20 -w 1` maybe?

-- 
Mark Cullen <mark.r.cullen@gmail.com>