Here is something to do to improve responsiveness of Linux boxes (notice, I didn't say performance). Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add: vm.swappiness=20 Then reload sysctl settings with a /sbin/sysctl -p The swappiness setting tells Linux how to use swap. The lower you set it, the more Linux will prefer to use RAM when memory is low -- as opposed to swapping out stuff from RAM to disk, Linux will go ahead and start shrinking the disk cache. The higher you set it, the more that Linux will swap out unused pages from RAM. Give it a shot, I have mine set to 0 right now.