In article <Pine.NEB.4.21.0004120902110.6566-100000@ehorvath>,
Eduardo Horvath <eeh@turbolinux.com> wrote:
>There's another issue with the way Linux seems to handle the buffer
>cache.  It seems to like to delay writes until the last possible moment,
>which makes the machine seem to run really fast until it needs to flush
>everything to disk at which point the machine siezes up.

Although it kills interactive performance, it does make a weird sort
of sense; it allows you to write back data at sustained rates with
less seeking.  It only really gets annoying when you're running X or
something with pseudo-realtime characteristics.

--Mirian