Skip to main content

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:
  1. 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.
  2. Turn off automatic software update or schedule it to run less frequently.
  3. Turn off fancy animations and graphics - the eye candy costs ye.
  4. 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.
  5. Downgrade to less resource hungry desktop environments like Fluxbox, XFCE, or enlightenment.
  6. Upgrade memory; having a lot of memory makes your computer run faster and conserves battery.
  7. For notebooks, monitor the power management scheme. Sometimes cpuspeed and cpufreqd run your notebook at a lower CPU than necessary.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Distribution of Wealth in the US

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I heard this statement quite a bit lately particularly in light of the sub-prime mortgage and general housing crisis in the US. The country has enjoyed significant economic prosperity and both Clinton and Bush boasted economic growth under their reign. Unfortunately, the beneficiaries of the economic boom are not people from all economic backgrounds, but rather the top 10%. To make things worse, Bush gave tax cuts mainly targeting the top 10%. Being more of a numbers guy, I always wanted showing the validity of the-rich-get-richer-n-the-poor-get-poorer statement. Thanks to Wikipedia , I have finally found it!! Both the mean and median net worth of families for the bottom 50% of the population has remained absolutely flat while the 75th-90th percentile see a decent growth and the top 10% enjoy the most appreciation on their net worth. So, if you factor in inflation, the-rich-get-richer-n-the-poor-get-poorer probably holds true. The g...
1 comment
Read more

An Exercise in Obstinacy, Deception, and Self-Destruction

There is no other way to describe the policies of the current leadership in Eritrea. Please watch this appalling interview of the Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki with Riz Khan of Aljazeera and come up with your own series of adjectives to describe that incredible exchange. The fact that Eritreans are dying under the oppressive and misguided dictatorship of Isaias Afeworki frightens and saddens me very much. The fact that there is no immediate hope is downright depressing.
2 comments
Read more

IPtables, SVN, and NMAP

I reviewed some material on IPtables, SVN, and NMAP just for the sake of keeping my mind busy. Here are some useful notes: IPtables - best resource found at HERE SVN - best, as in the quickest and simplest intro could be found HERE NMAP - I honestly don't see in using it for more than port-scanning in a few instances. Anyway, here are a few other options that might come in handy at some point. nmap -sT/sS/ sX/sF/...[-P0] IPADDRESS(range) == to check which ports are open nmap -sP IPADDRESS(range) == a simple ping scan for availability nmap -sO IPADDRESS(range) == check what IP protocols are available nmap -sV IPADDRESS(range) == a scan with version detection Other useful flags: -O == detects OS, part of -v (verbosity) flag as well -A == detects OS and versions -v == request high verbosity/detail -F == performs a fast scan of only a few common ports Installing Perl modules Perl modules may be installed using the CPAN module or from source. SOURCE...
Post a Comment
Read more