Full start-up disk error with 8GBs left

I have an iBook G4 with 10.5.2 and I get the startup disk is full error even though I have around 8 GBs free on the startup disk - over 10% of the total disk space. I have also been experiencing application crashes - many non-Apple applications crash on startup. Page ins/outs seem to be within normal limits, and the VM swap files are only about 250 MBs. Any ideas would be much appreciated.

No matter whether 8GB is enough or not, at this point you need to stop using the drive, update your backup, repair the drive with Disk Utility and clear out temp files, caches, and check for corrupt files and plists.
You may want to look at Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper, Disk Warrior.
8GB may be enough for you, but it depends on how small they are and whether these crashes are compromised the system, files, and directory.
You could have 8GB in one unfragmented chunk and be fine, except for performance which seriously degrades past 70% usage, or you might have a lot of small 512MB spaces, or worse with only 512K blocks of free space to work from.
Clone the system to another drive and boot from there and see how that works and do all your repairs.
If you must, install OS X to an external drive and gradually merge your old files and take a chance.
Leopard DVD will let you restore from TimeMachine, or you can use DU Restore to restore an image, or to/from discreet disk drives like a USB or FW drive.
80GB drive formats to less than 80GB if that and if 8GB is more than 10% it is seriously small size. I have a 750GB drive and the last 60GB is so small as to turn my system to a snail's pace while the first area of the disk gets 85MB/sec.

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