Speed Up Linux

Overall, Linux is not known as a resource hog. The free operating system is a fairly lean
machine out of the box -- some distributions moreso than others. Still, there are some
tweaks you can make to any Linux installation to speed things up.
Most of the tips covered in this article involve using the command line and editing system
files. Therefore, it goes without saying that you should be fairly comfortable with your
command line skills before attempting any of these tweaks. However, if you're new to Linux,
these system tweaks can serve as excellent feet-wetting exercises.
Tip:​ Remember to always make a backup when you're editing a system file. The quickest
approach is to use the Terminal command cp. For example, to back up /etc/sysctl.conf you'd
type:
sudo cp /etc/sysctl.conf /etc/sysctl.backup
Here are some ways to speed up Linux.

Contents

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● 1 Get Rid of Unnecessary Processes
● 2 Swap Less Often
● 3 Speed Up Your Applications
● 4 Things That Probably Won't Help
● 5 Optimized distros, AKA "The Last Resort"
 Get Rid of Unnecessary Processes

If you flip through our other OS optimization guides, you'll find a common element -- every
operating system ships with some processes you probably don't need. Most Linux distros
have some sort of startup items tool in their "System" or "Administration" menus that let
you control what runs in the background. In Ubuntu, the main one is System >>
Preferences >> Sessions.
Open your distro's equivalent of the Sessions panel and have a look around. Unless you
sync your phone with your computer, there's no need for the sync process to be running.
Same withe the Bluetooth process if there is one. If you're using Gnome, but not Evolution
(the Gnome desktop's default mail client), get rid of the Evolution Alarm.
While the Sessions panel lists most of the common processes, it doesn't show everything.
For the full list, you'll need the command line app sysv-rc-conf. To install the package, type:
sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf
You've entered into advanced user territory at this point, so be very careful about what you
change since you can permanently hose your system using this editor. Remember to backup
files and make small changes to single items rather than deleting in batches. After making a
change, log out and then log back in to make sure everything still works as you would
expect.

 Swap Less Often

Swap files are what the Linux system uses to temporarily write things to disk. If you have
enough RAM available, Linux uses that instead of the hard drive. But sometimes it's still
over aggressive in writing to the swap drive.
Naturally, you can configure how often the OS falls back on the swap disk. How much this
will speed things up is debatable -- the out-of-the-box setting will strike a nice balance most
of the time -- but if you're really suffering, it's worth a try.
Before you change anything, run this command and look at the output number. The higher
the number, the more often the kernel will use the swap disk.
$ sudo cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
Most distros set this number around 50 or 60. If you'd like to lower that, open up
/etc/sysctl.conf:
$ sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf
Naturally, if you're on KDE, swap kate for gedit (or use emacs, vi or any other text editor
you're comfortable with).
Add this line to the sysctl.conf file:
vm.swappiness=10

Speed
  Up Your Applications

Here are a few common apps you can speed up with various tweaks:
OpenOffice.​ It's full featured, and it acts like it when it starts up. Suffer through that long
wait one last time, then open the app's Preferences window. Look for the Memory option
under OpenOffice.org and increase the memory allotted to the Graphics cache, under both
the "Use for OpenOffice.org" and "Memory per Object." If you're a heavy Office user and
you have RAM to spare, don't be afraid to set these high. Say 100+ for the Graphics Cache
and around 10MB per Object. Play around and see what works on your system.
Firefox.​ If the Fox has you down, try ​Konqueror​ if you're on KDE or, otherwise, ​Opera​. Both
use less RAM than Firefox and may be faster on older hardware. Of course, Firefox 3
addresses hundreds of Firefox 2's memory leaks, so this may be less of an issue when
version 3 of the browser is released.
Get Rid of Compiz.​ It used to be that very few distros shipped with the whiz-bang graphics
stuff enabled, but that's changing. If you're on an older system, it's worth disabling Compiz
to cut down on the processor overhead.
Use a "Lighter" Desktop Environment.​ KDE and Gnome both look very nice and offer
some great advanced features, but both can be pretty tough on the processor. Give ​fvwm​,
fluxbox​ ​IceWM​ or even ​Xfce​ (which is still quite nice to look at) a try. They'll be much
snappier, especially on older systems. Even better, master the command line -- it's fast,
lightweight and simple once you adjust to its way of thinking.

 Things That Probably Won't Help

Among the common suggestions for speeding up Linux, there's one technique that almost
always comes up and yet does almost nothing for you. Linux typically uses up to six virtual
terminals, which run in the background and eat up very miniscule amounts of RAM. The
virtual terminals could, maybe, in some ever-so-slight way slow down your system. But
RAM is cheap, and throwing in an extra stick of memory is going to do way more than
disabling virtual terminals could ever hope to. Don't bother with this one.

Optimized
  distros, AKA "The Last Resort"

If you're really looking for a lean and mean Linux machine -- especially if you're using older
hardware -- consider one of the many ultra-lightweight distros.
Damn Small Linux​, ​Puppy Linux​, ​Feather Linux​ and others are specifically designed to run
on older computers using very little in the way of resources.
They may lack some of the nicer graphical features of the larger distributions, but they have
all the basic apps you'll need to get your work done.