Performance Enhancement in Ubuntu 10.04

 

Reference : http://shaanob.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=19

Performance Enhancement in Ubuntu 10.04

I am using ubuntu for an while now and over the last few months and I find that the performance of my system has been drastically reduced. I know its more because of improper system management than hardware ineffectiveness (mine is a 2gb ram with 160gb hard disk). If it were windows it would have been simple..:) Run disk defragment, %prefetch%, %temp%, temp in cmd and delete all temporary files. But ubuntu is more fun, because you don't employ some tool to do the job that you should bend yourself and do..:) So here is the list of things that i did in order to increase the performance of my Ubuntu System.

1.Prelink:

              Go to Synaptic Package Manager and search for 'prelink' and you will find  a single app. install that and then come over to terminal and edit the following file, /etc/default/prelink
i.e give
gksu gedit /etc/default/prelink
and in the file that opens up, change the PRELINKING=unknown to PRELINKING=yes.
This will help in prelinking applications, enabling it to start quickly.

2.Swiftfox

Swiftfox is an optimized build of Mozilla Firefox. Swiftfox has builds for both AMD and Intel processors and is based on the most cutting edge Firefox source code available. Add the repository to /etc/apt/sources.list
Deb http://getswiftfox.com/builds/debian unstable non-free

         Install from a terminal window as root using the correct package name:

apt-get update && apt-get install swiftfox-prescott

Most firefox plugins are compatible here and even your existing firefox bookmarks and plugins are imported automatically..:)

3.Swappines:

Go to terminal and give,

sudo cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

you will get a value of 60. if your RAM is greater than 1Gb you can change this value to 10. To do that, set,

sudo sysctl -w vm.swappiness=10.

But this is a temporary setting, to make it permanent, edit /etc/sysctl.conf

sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf and edit/add the following parameter

vm.swappiness=10.

4. Openoffice tweaks:

We all know open office takes little time in loading. And in most likelihood we will be looking for better word processors. But we can optimize it. Open the word processor and go to tools->options and then change the following options based upon the screenshot attached below. (change the setting little according to your system specs).