Graargh

My computer. It has free space on its hard disk. There is nothing obviously wrong with it. And yet it is grindingly, drearily slow, spending enormous amounts of time 'waiting for I/O' when I do more than the very bare minimum with it. This situation is new in the past month or so. I am running Debian Linux (etch) with KDE. How do I sort this out? I am sick of waiting minutes to open a KMenu item.

Debianbook

Okay, so, one of the things I should really really do given that my desktop is having some issues is actually install Linux, ideally Debian, on my Macbook (which I am using right now), either using Bootcamp or some other means. I am totally clueless about such things and could easily make the entire thing burst into flames if I try without some guidance. Does anyone here have experience of this sort of procedure?