I 've installed recently mandrake linux 10. I'm pleased with my new os (I use windows xp too) but I think it is a little slow. a friend of mine said I need to create a swap file. how do I do that?

Which is the best size? I have 256 megs of RAM and a p-3 1 ghz.
 

Adding a swap file probably isn't going to make your machine faster (although I'm guessing you created a swap partition during your Linux installation and are using it now - run "free" from a command prompt and look under "Swap:").

To speed things up, remove a bunch of those services (daemons) you are loading at startup. Load the Mandrake Control Center ("mcc" at command prompt) and choose Services, then uncheck all unnecessary daemons to load at boot time. This will speed up the boot process and give you more free memory to work with, thus making the swap file less necessary (swapping effectively slows the machine down, not speed it up).

If you don't have a swap partition, create one by loading "fdisk /dev/hda", create your partition (I'd go with 256 Meg in your case, but then again, I don't know what you plan to run, either), change it to type "swap", "w"rite it out, then reboot. Next, enter "mkswap /dev/hda4" (changing "4" to whatever partition number the swap partition is on). Finally, add this line to your /etc/fstab file:

/dev/hda4 swap swap defaults 0 0

(or to turn the swap file on dynamically, enter "swapon /dev/hda4")

You might also look into an updated driver for your video card, if you're thinking your video is slow.

I run Mandrake 8.2 on an Athlon 950 with 640 Meg of RAM (16 Meg TNT2 AGP and 40 Gig Disk) and it's fast, so I'm not sure why (with the exceptions that I've mentioned) your system seems slow.
 

Odds are you have a swap partition and do not need to add one. The Mandrake installer will complain if you choose to install with no swap partition.

Use caution removing services in MCC's system > services. some are needed for secure operation.

If you use KDE, you should check to see what is running in the dock (down by the clock). If there are applets you do not
need or use, these can be removed.

You may want to run Mandrake Update to check for updates. Sometimes updated packages are released to correct bugs as
well as security issues. Even if you recently installed Mandrake, there may well be updates available. If you are using
Mandrakelinux 10.0, there are many updated packages available, so the updates may take some time.
 

I've installed mandrake without a swap partition, and I remember that the installer complain about it (but at, that time, I didn't know to create a swap and then I installed without it). But now I've created a swap partition with 256 megs and the system is ok.

I didn't need to remove services and I think its better this way because I'm a newbie at mandrake (for now).

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