Michael Havens wrote:
> I was told that I should keep my computer running all the time (or at least 
> that linux was designed/could do that; so yesterday I turned it on and went 
> to school for the day.  When I got home the machine was still going (which 
> was a good sign) but when I loaded a program it took three times as long. 
> (for instance: I loaded kspread <which takes 10 seconds normally> and it took 
> like 30)
> 
> Any idea as to what the problem is?

2 thoughts
1. Memory leak from something. restart it.
2. Some program went nuts and went to 100 % cpu. restart it

The linux equivilant of the task manager (my fav is gtop) will tell you 
what is screwing up, or you could got to the command line and type top.