Linux Mint 7 XFCE Rather sluggish on my old Sony VAIO ;aptop

[lagagnon]

256MB SDRAM (Upgraded from the original 128MB)

There's your problem. You can use an xfce distro with 256MB but as you've noticed once you open FF and/or OO your computer will probably have to use swap memory on the hard drive and you will definitely then notice a slow down. Your only options are to live with it, install more RAM (very cheap nowadays) or use fluxbox,lxde,jwm, IceWM or another low RAM window manager.

[deleted]

I think the slowness you're seeing is part of OO and FF, and no so much XFCE. XFCE is lighter than Gnome and KDE, but if OO and FF is a memory hog in KDE and Gnome (not saying that they necessarily are), then they'll be a memory hog in XFCE, LXDE, Fluxbox, etc.

You may want to try "lighter" word processors and internet browsers. (until you upgrade your ram)

-Hinto

[lagagnon]

Alrihgt, I understand that these proprietry Microsoft OS's were designed a decade ago to run on the machines of the time, and so you'd expect them to be faster, but surely XFCE isn't thatdemanding considering it's GUI isn't too disimilar from the above one's, and it doesn't have alot of eye candy either, heck Fluxbox had drop shadows and transparency thrown in and it was quicker.

It is not "just" xfce. Modern operating systems like Mint have a number of continually running processes that automate a lot of stuff, that modern computer users want automated, hence there are a lot of background processes also consuming RAM - not just xfce. You can look at these with "ps aux" run from a terminal or with the "System Monitor" GUI - t also shows you how much RAM and CPU each is consuming.

To compare WinXP with Linux you would have to go back to Linux distros from 5-8 years ago.

[deleted]

I won't have acess to the same apps as I did in XFCE

Yes you will.... Just install them.