grazie ancora per le risposte...al momento i procesi sembrano essere abbastanza stabili, non riesco ad isolarne uno in particolare responsabile della cosa...sta di fatto che seppur lentamente rispetto a prima il consumo della ram continua a crescere

codice:
top - 10:23:52 up  1:17,  3 users,  load average: 0.33, 0.46, 0.35
Tasks:  84 total,   1 running,  82 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
Cpu(s):  6.0% us,  2.0% sy,  0.0% ni, 92.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:   1036632k total,   617528k used,   419104k free,    86728k buffers
Swap:  1558264k total,        0k used,  1558264k free,   344592k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 3975 alx       15   0  144m  75m  24m S  0.7  7.4   3:23.76 firefox-bin
 2999 root      15   0  186m  52m 4900 S  2.0  5.2   2:28.64 X
 3896 alx       16   0 40336  24m  19m S  0.0  2.4   0:01.32 konqueror
 3903 alx       16   0 47860  22m  16m S  0.0  2.2   0:01.55 zen-updater
 3828 alx       15   0 34388  17m  14m S  0.0  1.7   0:13.82 kicker
 5068 alx       16   0 31960  17m  13m S  3.0  1.7   0:19.32 ksysguard
 5032 alx       15   0 33348  16m  13m S  1.3  1.6   0:01.23 konsole
 3826 alx       16   0 31904  15m  13m S  0.0  1.6   0:01.12 kdesktop
 3814 alx       16   0 33488  15m  12m S  0.0  1.5   0:01.23 kded
 3893 alx       16   0 31156  15m  12m S  0.0  1.5   0:00.27 kmix
 3822 alx       16   0 29876  13m  11m S  0.0  1.4   0:05.36 kwin
 3891 alx       16   0 31464  13m  11m S  0.0  1.4   0:00.21 kerry
 3909 alx       16   0 30344  13m  10m S  0.0  1.3   0:00.19 kpowersave
 3895 alx       16   0 24164  11m 9.8m S  0.0  1.2   0:01.08 ksensors
 3913 alx       16   0 28488  11m 9888 S  0.0  1.1   0:00.21 klipper
 3824 alx       16   0 28768  11m 9588 S  0.0  1.1   0:01.46 knotify
 3821 alx       16   0 27052  10m 8428 S  0.0  1.0   0:00.11 ksmserver
 3812 alx       16   0 26280 8276 7000 S  0.0  0.8   0:00.06 klauncher
 3807 alx       16   0 24216 7024 5832 S  0.0  0.7   0:00.07 kdeinit
 4687 alx       16   0 26428 6988 5692 S  0.0  0.7   0:00.01 kio_file
 3232 lp        16   0  7204 3372 1304 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.44 cupsd
 2519 root      16   0  4408 3032 1468 S  0.0  0.3   0:01.89 hald
 3810 alx       16   0 23392 2668 1524 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.15 dcopserver
 3992 alx       15   0  5720 2560 2020 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.04 gconfd-2
 5033 alx       15   0  4392 1888 1400 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.03 bash
 3445 root      16   0  4260 1732 1392 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 powersaved
 3491 root      16   0  5412 1732 1408 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.01 master
 3493 postfix   16   0  5412 1672 1364 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.01 qmgr
 3492 postfix   16   0  5380 1648 1344 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 pickup
 5069 alx       16   0  3760 1448 1004 S  1.3  0.1   0:06.94 ksysguardd
 3680 alx       16   0  3920 1400 1144 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.16 kde
 3969 alx       18   0  3656 1364 1132 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.01 firefox
 3000 root      17   0  3648 1252  980 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 kdm
 3399 root      25   0  4956 1200  864 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.05 sshd
 3325 root      16   0  103m 1048  776 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.06 nscd
 5241 alx       16   0  2188 1004  764 R  0.0  0.1   0:00.05 top
 2341 messageb  17   0  3420  996  732 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.17 dbus-daemon
 3170 mdnsd     16   0  1972  952  716 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 mdnsd
codice:
alx@linux:~> free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1036632     620396     416236          0      86796     344596
-/+ buffers/cache:     189004     847628
Swap:      1558264          0    1558264
saluti