...problem?

[Vlad]

hi,

i'm writing to you because i seem to have a problem with the priority
between CPU & HDD.
before i go further, i'm a begginer...
my "machine": P166[the unoverclocking series :( ], 32M DRAM, HD
quantum 2G (bios sees PIO4), Matrox MGA Mystique 4M + Voodoo1 (4M).
now, when i run startx (Window Manager installed + Mozilla) it takes
about 1 min to load... not bad for my beast...
but when i run mozilla, i wait and wait, the HDD seems to explode, and
the "top" command shows that the CPU usage is less than 20%; the same
goes for any other program, and not just in graphical mode; 
I tried to "tweak" the process using "renice -20 xxxx", but no
change...
what i am asking is: is there a conf that can be conifgured to use CPU
& RAM first, and only if there is not enough, the swap? (something
like ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 in windows..., which seemed to work
there...);
or is there a source for the kernel to be configured in a different
way?
or... what...?
see my problem?
i first installed KDE, but it took me 20 min just to load... but i
know someone used KDE on a P200 and it was loading faster, a lot
faster...

i ended up here, so if i'm not too much of a pest, please help me with
my problem; i tried to search the net for some problems like mine, or
some "tweaks"...

respectfuly yours,     vlad