System is extremely slow

> 9.0 on a dell system with 80GB hard drive. The resulting file system occupies 79 GB

If Ubuntu is the only OS on the system, impossible.
Ubuntu takes, very conservative (comfortable) guess, 30 GB.
Only 1 GB left makes any OS slow or lower than 5% of disk space.

You may post the output of:
sudo fdisk -l
in order to get some facts about used disk space.
In doubt you may take a look at manpage:
man fdisk

Swap is usually double size of RAM.

Reference:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DrivesAndPartitions
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-terminal/stable/gnome-terminal-get-started.html.en
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsingTheTerminal
https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/basic-commands/C/

In terminal type "free space" without the quotes and paste results here.
  David
  in TN

I tried the following:
For Adding a 512 MB swap

    *

      Creating a file for 512 MB size you want:

We will create a /mnt/512Mb.swap swap file.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/512Mb.swap bs=1M count=512

Here count=512, means we want our file to contain 512 blocks of bs=1M, which
means block

size = 1 MegaBytes. Be careful *not* to do this dd of=/mnt/512Mb.swap bs=1M
seek=512

count=0 Though the file grows to 512Mb immediately, it will have holes that
makes it

unusable.

    *

      Formatting that file to create a swapping device:

sudo mkswap /mnt/512Mb.swap

    *

      Adding the swap to the running system:

sudo swapon /mnt/512Mb.swap

The additional swap is now available and can be seen by "cat /proc/meminfo"

At this point I rebooted and the swap space did not seem to change.
Result of sudo fdisk -l

disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors / track, 9729 cylinders
Units - cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
disk identifier : 0xf84ef84e

 device Boot start end blocks id system
/dev/sda1 * 1 9641 77441301 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 9642 9729 706860 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 9642 9729 706828+ 82 Linux swap/ Solaris
Dick Turner
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam" <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 4:19 PM
Subject: Re: [Question #106191]: System is extremely slow

Your question #106191 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/106191

    Status: Open => Needs information

Sam requested for more information:
> 9.0 on a dell system with 80GB hard drive. The resulting file system
occupies 79 GB

If Ubuntu is the only OS on the system, impossible.
Ubuntu takes, very conservative (comfortable) guess, 30 GB.
Only 1 GB left makes any OS slow or lower than 5% of disk space.

You may post the output of:
sudo fdisk -l
in order to get some facts about used disk space.
In doubt you may take a look at manpage:
man fdisk

Swap is usually double size of RAM.

Reference:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DrivesAndPartitions
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

http://library.gnome.org/users/gnome-terminal/stable/gnome-terminal-get-started.html.en
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsingTheTerminal
https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/basic-commands/C/

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To answer this request for more information, you can either reply to
this email or enter your reply at the following page:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/106191

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subscriber of the question.

result of command free space:

                                total used free
shared buffers cached
Mem 242608 234776 7832 0
15136 95956
-/+ buffers / cache 123684 118924
Swap 706820 856 705964
Dick Turner
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Jones" <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 9:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Question #106191]: System is extremely slow

Your question #106191 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/106191

David Jones requested for more information:
In terminal type "free space" without the quotes and paste results here.
  David
  in TN

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this email or enter your reply at the following page:
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> Mem 242608

Quote:
Recommended minimum requirements
384 MB of system memory (RAM)
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements

Option:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation#Minimal%20installations
http://www.xubuntu.org/get

When typing Mem 242608, the system responds:
No command 'Mem'

Dick Turner
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam" <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 5:03 AM
Subject: Re: [Question #106191]: System is extremely slow

Your question #106191 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/106191

    Status: Open => Answered

Sam proposed the following answer:
> Mem 242608

Quote:
Recommended minimum requirements
384 MB of system memory (RAM)
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements

Option:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation#Minimal%20installations
http://www.xubuntu.org/get

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If this answers your question, please go to the following page to let us
know that it is solved:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/106191/+confirm?answer_id=4

If you still need help, you can reply to this email or go to the
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Thanks Sam, that solved my question.