Puppy reconfigures the kernel (via 'swappiness') so it uses RAM as long as it can, and starts using swap only when truly running out of RAM. However, this 'safe bet' is not ideal in many cases, including old computers with slow disks (= slow swap). This is good for servers, because this means they don't freeze or slow down in that moment when RAM becomes full and the kernel has to page out to swap before they're allowed to continue running. Normally, the kernel starts moving things from RAM to swap long before all RAM is used, to leave some free RAM and prepare for out-of-memory conditions (even if they don't ever happen). Extra free RAM won't make applications run faster. If applications use memory, let them use the fastest kind of memory you have available (= RAM, not swap). You don't get any speed advantage by leaving more RAM free, if you use swap instead: it's a zero sum game. Using available swap space when you still have free RAM is a waste of CPU cycles (and energy). Swap is slower than RAM, and applications become much slower when RAM is full and all memory they use comes from swap. Lots of memory have been used on this old machine with 2GB of RAM almost none of the swap file has been used, surely this can't be correct. Puppy's poor and inadequate handling of a swap file may be a contributing factor too. It's just getting too heavy for old machines. There is no question however that the new browser versions are killing off old machines rapidly.

I've also disabled automatic browser cache handling. There are a zillion things which Firefox wants to update every time you access the web and this can take a toll on your old machine. The other thing you need to consider is to disable ALL updates of any kind in about:config. I stream a lot now and streaming at 720P mostly works fine. For 32-bit, Firefox is definitely the best way to go. The latest Seamonkey is based on Firefox 91 but I'm pretty sure it does not have all the necessary stuff to access all sites as well as Firefox does. There's a massive difference between using the very latest Firefox (version 114) compared to version 89 for example which I'm using on my old machine. On hardware challenged machines, the better option is to use a slightly older Firefox which will still access all the sites you want but with much less strain on your computer.

Free instal Mozilla SeaMonkey 2.53.17