In article <1118479457.548534.170560@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups .com>,
serwerr <serwerr@gmail.com> wrote:
:from X.org with Gnome and Firefox running
:
:root#free
: total used free shared buffers cached
:Mem: 775652 188124 587528 0 8028 92740
:-/+ buffers/cache: 87356 688296
:Swap: 0 0 0

Presumably that was taken while the system was slow.

OK, I'm perplexed. The amount of unused memory (587528) is unusually
large. A system that's been active for a while would normally show much
more memory in the "cached" category. The only time I see numbers
similar to what you show is when a very large process has just
terminated, freeing its memory.

Does "top" show anything unusual going on? Is there a lot of disk
activity? It could be that all you're seeing is anacron running all the
stuff in /etc/cron.daily because the system wasn't up during the wee
hours of the morning when those jobs would normally be scheduled.
If the problem begins 1 hour after booting, that's the most likely
cause.

A final thought: Have you checked your system for a possible rootkit?

--
Bob Nichols AT comcast.net I am "rnichols42"