My question comes from a kde desktop currently, but it also happens with the gnome instance. When just sitting there, with only the cpu monitor widget running. no open windows, no background processes other than the desktop, my cpu is at ~20%. I wanna know how to fix this, and possibly get better performance out of it. When running my windows side, the cpu will sit at zero, and i generally load new programs about 400ms faster. With windows 7 being as slow as it is, this is not acceptable. and the widget is only set to check every 500ms, so im almost completely sure its not the widget.

My system is a Gateway nv 53 amd 2.0 ghz turion with 4 gb of installed ram, and 500 gb hd. both linux and windows are 64 bit. average ram use on either system is about 1.4 gb for just the os