What is hammering my memory?

[J]

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 12:20, Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry, I should have been clear. The system is very sluggish.
> Switching windows and typing is very slow. There are no video
> artefacts so I don't suspect the video drivers. The system runs great
> in 9.10.

Usually, sluggishness isn't memory. It's CPU or disk I/O.  If your
system becomes sluggish because of RAM utilization, you'll know it
immediately because your hard disk light will stay lit up solid as the
kernel continuously swaps in and out...

However, thats not to be confused very heavy disk I/O which can also
cause sluggishness.

My guess, and always my first guess, is Firefox.  When your system
starts acting like that, kill off firefox and see if it doesn't get
back to normal.  Most of the time, when I experience this, it's
because of some page with either Flash or Java that just causes FF to
slowly suck the life out of everything around it.  IN some cases, it
gets so bad I have to drop to a shell and pkill firefox...

Also, you said you are running 10.10, which is in alpha. It's a
development version... expect bugs, no?