WYNTK: UNIX System Admininistrator

X users commonly have many programs running at once.

If you use the X window system, then you may have several shell windows open at the same time. You may have a graphical mailer running. You may have a calculator window open, a calendar application, and maybe something cute like a cat running across your screen. You don’t need all of these programs running all the time, but X is set up so that you can have them running all the time for your convenience.

What do you do when the system is slow?

	I close up any graphical applications, like my mailer, Mosaic, xrn, and use command-line programs instead. I also make sure I don’t have any memory-eating programs running, like xearth.
	--Stephanie Davis

Computers were meant to be used. There’s no point to having X if you’re not going to run multiple windows. But when things get slow, be aware that you’re part of the problem. So when the system gets slow, quit out of the calculator, exit some of those extra xterm windows, and consider whether some of the programs you’re running continuously (like mailers) could be exited and just restarted as needed.