256 MB not enough RAM for Desktop-FreeBSD, a strange experience

[Benjamin Thelen]

Hi list,


I started using FreeBSD as a Desktop in December 04 with the hardware 
configuration below

FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE-p2
Asus TUSL-C with PIII-1133
256 MB RAM
WDC WD800JB
KDE 3.3.2
OOo-1.1.4


Very often OpenOffice-1.4 died on starting, just showing the splash 
screen. I couldn't kill the process, even not with "-9". So I had to 
reboot. Because of KDEs behavior to start applications, which have 
been used before, OpenOffice was started automatically on KDEs 
startup. Mostly successful. OpenOffice started a bit more	reliable 
using XFCE4...

In combination with this FreeBSD was hanging on the end of a shutdown:
No buffers busy after final sync


I didn't find very helpful information on the net, but since I added 
256 MB of RAM I have never seen one of these errors.


Does someone have any idea what that could have been caused? Adding 
more RAM, gaining stability, gaining speed, ok...


Ben