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Optimize Ubuntu 8.04 for Speed

news.softpedia.com — So what if Ubuntu is a fast operating system?... There is always room for some more tweaking...

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  • trogdoor, on 07/04/2008, -1/+61"Please follow the following instructions very carefully, in the order in which they are listed below, and reboot your machine after each one. If not, your operating system will NOT work anymore and you will have to reinstall it."

    BS, this just shows that the person writing this probably has no idea what the steps do and is just trying to cover his ass, while you should follow the instructions carefully your computer will not be bricked if you don't reboot after each step and in fact you should not follow the instructions in the order given because profiling *before* changing your configuration drastically ( especially enabling concurrency ) will just mean that it is that much less optimized ( so do the first step last ) . Also you should really know what these changes do before you make them, for instance while most people don't need access time information some might, and relatime is already a very nice compromise. Remember, there is a reason the defaults are set this way in the first place!

    /rant
    • HCviolence, on 07/05/2008, -1/+12When dealing with Linux it's always a good idea to not just copy and paste commands but to check what each command does. It's not like Windows where the goal is to make it "not terrible". Linux can be configured to be whatever you choose it to be and that varies from person to person. So a understanding of the operating system and all of it's options can be very rewarding.
  • n0odles, on 07/04/2008, -4/+51How can I make it slower? I think mine is too fast.
    • moocow1452, on 07/05/2008, -0/+3*My head asplode.*
    • TheWindBlows, on 07/05/2008, -0/+9Remove your RAM, and turn on compiz.
    • known, on 07/05/2008, -0/+6gedit /etc/sysctl.conf
      vm.swappiness = 100
    • pickture, on 07/08/2008, -0/+1apt-get install windows
    • Commodore13, on 07/10/2008, -0/+1I would try underclocking, possibly try Vista. Both will basically have the same effect. (I kid, I kid.)
  • SouljaBoyGoDie, on 07/05/2008, -1/+11Mine is too slow because i need certain images before I go to sleep.


    =(
    • stoanhart, on 07/05/2008, -0/+5How are you managing to catch porn spyware in Ubuntu?
    • kwilliam, on 07/06/2008, -0/+1You must be confused sir. There is no known Linux viruses in the wild yet, with the exception of the worm that infested Apache servers. If you're really worried about spyware, just boot a Live CD and run that - if you somehow manage to install a virus, there's no lasting effect.
  • DjArcadian, on 07/05/2008, -13/+12Anyone else notice that Firefox 3 runs slower on Ubuntu than Windows?
    • bratterscain, on 07/05/2008, -0/+8Same here. Q6600 Quad, 8800GT, 4 gigs memory, and it seems less snappier than on Vista. Though I'm wanting to blame it on flash, not sure. I am also running a beta OS (Kubuntu w/ KDE 4 b2 which I must say is shaping up rather nicely) so who knows.
    • namochan, on 07/05/2008, -1/+7Anyone notice that you fall faster without a parachute?
      • DjArcadian, on 07/05/2008, -4/+2Actually, the rate of fall is constant.

        you FAIL
      • CCmachined, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2no, parachute does slow you down.
        its designed to. think about it, if it didnt, you'd hit the ground at the same speed, so both occasions you'd get killed...
    • rimbaud, on 07/05/2008, -3/+3"less snappier"?
    • yahoofrom, on 07/05/2008, -0/+3it crashes more often and slower (even without flash) on my Ubuntu Hardy Heron than on Windows XP.
      • DjArcadian, on 07/05/2008, -1/+2Yeah, I've noticed that it crashes more, too.
  • Rowan187, on 07/05/2008, -2/+4Most of this stuff is complete common sense, at least for a moderate linux user, but some of it is pretty interesting. I'm testing out the last one about using dual-core to bootup.
  • IAmCuteKitty, on 07/05/2008, -13/+6http://i25.tinypic.com/35c3ms1.jpg
  • Dylson, on 07/05/2008, -17/+2Lol, Linux.
  • truspect0r, on 07/05/2008, -11/+6Ubuntu looks like a piece of *****, not literally. Go with Linux Mint or SUSE.
    • pip182, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2Linux can look however you want it to. I can make SUSE look like ubuntu pretty easily.
  • DonSlice, on 07/05/2008, -4/+7Linux Mint is my favourite distro at the moment. It's quick, sleek, and easy to use. Yay Linux!
  • fatas, on 07/05/2008, -8/+3Mint looks a like cheap whore like Vista
  • elvenseven, on 07/05/2008, -2/+2When are they going to support the 8 series nvidia? Not snappy enough.
    • pip182, on 07/05/2008, -1/+0My 8500 GT works great...
    • alexforcefive, on 07/05/2008, -1/+2"they" meaning nvidia? I dunno, when they get off their fat arses and work with the community like ati has been doing...
    • CCmachined, on 07/06/2008, -0/+1thats what you get for using CLOSED SOURCE "BLOB" drivers.
      nvidia need to support the card, and there's nothing Ubuntu nor the Linux community can do about it.
    • nikgare, on 07/07/2008, -0/+1It is supported.
    • warringgael, on 07/09/2008, -0/+1the driver sucks balls. Nvidia are bitches and wont give up the sauce. so yes, it is "supported", but functionallity is limited: ie, architecture could be better, runs too hot, hdmi doesnt work that well on some cards. ***** nvidia.
  • ajocksch, on 07/05/2008, -0/+29The fact that he doesn't explain *what* the tweaks do, just that you should do them, makes this an automatic bury. The number of comments on the site saying "This bricked my install" confirms it.
  • TdotFUNK, on 07/05/2008, -5/+1It's not delivery, its Digiorno!
  • securitymonkey, on 07/05/2008, -0/+4Not only are these tweaks not researched too well, but they aren't explained at all. Too many assumptions by the author that everyone is using similar equipment (the hard drive "speedup" perfect example).

    Proceed with caution.
    • RubberBinder, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1I saw that and thought it was too user specific, but I was bored so I tried it. It ended up making everything all "wonky" I undid the changes and now it's back to normal so, no permanent damage, but definitely not something I would know how to fix were I your "typical computer user"
    • c130commnav, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1Speaking of the hard drive speedup tweak, wasn't there an issue with writeback killing laptop HDDs?
  • pip182, on 07/05/2008, -0/+5sudo apt-get install preload

    Preloads commonly used libraries into memory automatically. Really speeds up loading of KDE apps and such. Since I prefer k3b, digikam and amarok to any of the GTK "equivalents", but still love the gnome environment.
    I don't know why one comment said not to use preload "it will screw up your system"... I've been using it for a while and have had no problems.
    • yahoofrom, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1Does preload speed up gnome apps too?
      • known, on 07/05/2008, -1/+1Please visit http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/
      • kwilliam, on 07/06/2008, -0/+2Preload should work for all apps. I think what pip182 is implying is he normally uses Gnome apps, and without preload, KDE apps took a longer time to load (because kdelibs needs to be loaded first). Preload had a more noticeable effect for KDE apps, because there was more to be preloaded.
  • johnkelly84, on 07/05/2008, -0/+5This seems like a comprehensive collection of all the bad "tweak" advice you can get trolling on forums. The concept of reducing your swap file has been thoroughly debunked; operating systems are not stupid and won't swap to disk unless it is necessary to keep the system from running out of physical memory.

    Automatic login is simply not secure, and all of those boot options seem sketchy. I can't see any of these "optimizations" doing anything other than making your OS less reliable.

    The advice given is way too close to the advice to disable your page file (dangerous, could run out of memory space sooner) and to add /prefetch:1 to every shortcut (doesn't do anything noteworthy) in Windows to take seriously.
    • beermad, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1Agree that some of the advice isn't very good, and things like messing about with journalling aren't to be risked unless you're competent enough to be sure of recovering from a screw-up.

      Automatic login CAN be worthwhile though and doesn't take much to make it reasonably secure. The great advantage for someone who, like me, switches on their computer then goes away to do other things while it's booting is that with automatic login, KDE is up and running, along with the various things I have it start at login (Firefox, Kmail, knetload, etc.) when I sit down. The security worry can be circumvented by also automatically getting the screensaver to launch and lock the screen on KDE startup. That way, a password's still needed to get to the desktop but the desktop itself's loaded and ready to use.
  • moonboots, on 07/05/2008, -1/+16Encrypted root partition + automatic login = ***** retarded
    • macromorgan, on 07/05/2008, -0/+3Not really... you have to login first for the encryption and then again a second time to log into Linux if I'm not mistaken. With automatic login, you just have to log in once for the encryption.
    • klitzbtc, on 07/05/2008, -1/+0You're not mistaken. Before the system even loads, on mount, you have to enter the LUKS password or whatever it is. But encrypting your root partition is ***** retarded. I'm totally gonna hop in your /root directory and read your .bash_history to see all that gay porn you tried wiping from your PC. If anything L2partition and encrypt your home directory.
  • sonicjosh, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1I can say that if I would of done this, I would of been screwed. I would not of been able to change the kernel I was using when I got a kernel panic, because grub being disabled, thats just stupid to turn it off.
  • Megatog615, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2"vm.swappiness=0"
    You are STUPID to want to do this. If at the very least set it to 5. You never know when you might accidentally run a rather memory intensive application and you'd need a bit more ram to kill the process in time.
  • macromorgan, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1Isn't enabling writeback caching a bad idea, unless of course you're on a UPS (or possibly a laptop since it's got a battery)? Hmm... I might try it on my Eee anyway...
  • calebh, on 07/05/2008, -1/+3Looks like almost all of these tweaks result in an unbootable system if you do them wrong. I am definitely not doing some of those (except maybe the 3 extra grub seconds and bluetooth start up program) I have had 3 bad experiences with these sort of tweaks where 2 resulted in having to totally reinstall ubuntu.
    • TheWindBlows, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1Yes because they are unsafe and that is why they are not done by default.
    • solarwind24, on 07/05/2008, -0/+1It's next to impossible to totally kill your Linux system unless you corrupt your kernel & friends somehow or if you damage your fs. Most other cases you can fix it.
      • calebh, on 07/06/2008, -0/+1Sometimes it is just easier to reinstall rather then spending days and days trying to fix it.
  • TheWindBlows, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2The only hack i would vouch for is where you profile.
    Also installing preload is a safe thing to do.
  • BilliD, on 07/05/2008, -0/+0pffftt. you call this optimization. another cheap article?
    how about download ubuntu tweak and do some tweaking of your own.
    then do the rest in the article+swappiness+preload
    to top it off install gconf-cleaner and run it to clean out your gconf

    then sit back relax and enjoy your super fast ubuntu
  • shinelinus, on 07/05/2008, -1/+1Great tutorial,but I think the author has missed an important point that removing the residual config package,incomplete packages and isolated libaries can also speed up ubuntu.Please see here for details:http://www.linuxine.com/2008/06/speed-up-ubuntu-bo ...
  • known, on 07/05/2008, -1/+1http://www.ubuntu-unleashed.com/2007/09/howto-spee ...
  • enterneo, on 07/05/2008, -0/+2softpedia sucks!
  • known, on 07/05/2008, -1/+1I didn't RTFA.
    Depending on your system resources (RAM,HDD,CPU) you must install relevant packages as described in
    http://wiki.dennyhalim.com/ubuntu-minimal-desktop
  • bincoder, on 07/06/2008, -1/+1I speeded up Ubuntu by tossing the disk in the trash and installing plain jane debian instead.
    And enable write back caching? Eww, no thanks, throwing data away to get more speed is a bit duh. That should be off at all times on all computers. It's like using one of microsofts worst ideas for linux.

  • CCmachined, on 07/06/2008, -0/+1i carried out only three of those, rebooted, and then my wired LAN stopped working.
    yes. wired. "no network devices detected"
    out of desparation i opened FF3 and whoa, it had stored the "optomization" page i was looking at before the reboot and opened them offline, because i clicked "save and quit" when closing last time. Sweet.
    so anyway i used the page and undid everything i did, and now my LAN is working.
  • strangeman, on 07/08/2008, -0/+1This is the best round-up of tweaks I have seen so far. I mean all the tweaks I know are there (except prelinking). But keep in mind some of these can be dangerous. Using the journal-mode data-writeback practically costs you a lot of file-system security and just gives you a very minor speed improvement (as opposed to noatime and nodiraime).
    The second thing (and probably the reason why CCmachineds LAN stopped working) is enabling concurrency for the boot-proccess. This feature is disabled on purpose because it assumes all processes use the new sysv init-replacement Upstart. For some it might work and greatly speed up the boot-process. But especially HAL and dbus still use init and might produce race-conditions.
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