Ubuntu is slow

What is exactly the partitionning of disk ?
What is percentage of usage of each partition ?

Unix is known to dislike partitiion over 90% of usage.
Perhaps there are two many disk arm movement.

About memory, I run frequently Karmic on 252MB RAM virtual machine, with any problem.

Good Morning,

The Desktop has two NTFS partitions, with XP on one of them.
Three partiotions for ubuntu. One is swap partition, one is root and last is home partition. root and home are close to 5 gb each. Computer often gives message that root is full. It is around 96% full. I ran computer janitor, now root is 76% full.

With a "/" partition with 1GB free, I expect Ubuntu running at normal speed.
Ubuntu is allways slow ?
Is it slow just after the boot or after launching many software ?

Hi,
Ubuntu wasn't slow after installation. It was running smoothly. As the time passed and files were saved on the disk. It became slow. It is slow just after booting. If I move the mouse, then the mouse pointer lags mouse movement. If I click on the main menu, it doesn't open immediately.

It seems you have to increase size of Linux partition, and reducing size of Windows partition.

Before this:

1-be sure to be able to restore W/XP if there is later a problem (if you use a CD-ROM, be sure is it still readable, CD-ROM can be unreadble after some years even they allways be stored in the box)
2-do a BACKUP (including windows data)
3-boot on a Ubuntu installation CD with option "trying whithout modifying disk"
4-run System->Administrator->GParted.
     Reduce the WIndows partition, e.g. of 10MB.
     Choose 1GB for the swap.
     Move first linux partition after Windows and increase it of 5MB.
     Move second linux partition after first one and increase it of 5MB.
5-Restart the computer and check if both W/XP and Ubuntu works (I did it on my computer without problem).
Check if it is allways slow with Ubuntu.

If ever you reinstall Ubuntu with a so small disk amount, it is better to have a single partition, so you will not have to move data from one to another (but it's true having two partitions allows easy and more secure reinstallation of Linux distro).

Windows becomes slow because it gets more and more softwares which start at boot (and after disk fragmentation).
Usualy, Ubuntu get very few new softwares at boot, and keeps it performances.

Good Morning,
The above discussion was about the desktop.
I faced the same problem with the laptop with the following configuration:

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 (64 bit)
RAM: 4 GB (though System Monitor shows around 3.5 GB)
Hard Disk: 500 GB
NVidia Chipset

Laptop has Vista in around 250 GB and Ubuntu (Karmic) in rest of the 250 GB.
Both run fine.
In normal functioning System Monitor-> Resources shows around 10-15 % of RAM is used and swap and other memory also around 10%. So there is ample RAM and HDD available.

But when system got slow then I checked the usage of resources (RAM and Swap area). It showed that more than 90% resources were busy.
So I restarted and every thing was normal.

The time it was slow, no heave applications were running.
But the question is that why ubuntu become so slow.

It is very strange you have same problem on both computers.
I presume you have installed on both computer a software which occurs these problems.
Do you use Azureus, which consumes a lot of memory ?
Before and after launching softwares, have a look at used RAM.
Some software (including software based on Java and also some P2P software based on other interprated languages) are badly written, and don't release all memory.
I think you have to identify which software it is.

It is very strange you have same problem on both computers.
I presume you have installed on both computer a software which occurs these problems.
Do you use Azureus, which consumes a lot of memory ?
Before and after launching softwares, have a look at used RAM.
Some software (including software based on Java and also some P2P software based on other interprated languages) are badly written, and don't release all memory.
I think you have to identify which software it is.