Fine-tuning a Linux System

What can someone do to fine-tune and streamline a Linux system in order to make optimal and efficient use of limited resources. Here is my take:

Check service configuration - for each runlevel, remove services and daemons that are not needed. CAUTION: Don't turn off any service whose purpose you are not completely aware of.
Turn off automatic software update or schedule it to run less frequently.
Turn off fancy animations and graphics - the eye candy costs ye.
If you heavily use KDE applications, stick to a KDE environment and ditto for Gnome. Since KDE applications commonly use Qt libraries and Gnome apps use GTK+, sticking to one or the other saves you from expending a lot of resources loading both sets of libraries.
Downgrade to less resource hungry desktop environments like Fluxbox, XFCE, or enlightenment.
Upgrade memory; having a lot of memory makes your computer run faster and conserves battery.
For notebooks, monitor the power management scheme. Sometimes cpuspeed and cpufreqd run your notebook at a lower CPU than necessary.

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