How can I speed up ubuntu 8.04 in terms of bootup speed and while I work on my computer? I got this website on tips for speeding up 8.04. But, many users complained that it has messed up their computers, so it's risky. Here's the site: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Optim...ed-86405.shtml

I feel a little uneasy about using this guide based on user complaints. Can any of you find something better for me to use? I'd appreciate it.

Well to reduce boot-up time you can compile your own kernel and leave out stuff you simply don't need or will never use. It really isn't that difficult, but it is a daunting task at first. Kinda takes some poking around to figure out what you're doing.

I managed to reduce my boot-up from about 36 sec to roughly 20 sec on my debian install. Although that wasn't my reason for doing it I was interested to see how much of a difference it made.

As far as speeding up the operating system I could only suggest reducing/removing the processes that you don't need or won't use.

I checked out that page... I think it would likely make some minor improvements, but I would steer clear from changing the drive write-back and swap stuff unless you know what you are doing.

Can you recommend what processes can be removed?

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I would have to have intimate knowledge of your system before I could recommend things. I would first look to see what hardware you had and try to determine what programs or processes were running that were useless because your hardware didn't support it, or you would never use it.
For example: if you don't have infrared capabilities why have a program running to control the infrared devices on your system.
If you aren't going to network your system with a windows system why have a samba system running.

It kinda takes a little experience to make these decisions, but whatever decisions you make, make sure you know how to undo them if you later change your mind or if you make a mistake.

Sometimes you will decide that you have absolutely no use of some program or facility on your system and months or years later you will have a use for it and can't remember how to get it working again.

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Cjeckmate, thanks for the reply. Can you please tell me if the following website on improving Ubuntu 8.04's performance is safe and worth is? At least, for an intermediate newbie such as myself. The site is: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Optim...ed-86405.shtml. Thanks!

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I think everything up to altering your fstab is good and fine to do with you system.

When he alters the fstab he is basically telling the system to ignore some fail-safes that are there to protect you if something bad happens and the system doesn't have a chance to get all the data to the disk in time. I would skip this step.

Teak 2 - swapiness could be beneficial, but it could also give you poor results. It shouldn't do anything hazardous to your system, however, and can easily be changed later to suit your needs. It just changes how your system handles RAM and the storing of temp data to a swap file if you RAM becomes full or it needs more memory. Some computers may never even use the swap file (for some reason my system hasn't touched the swap partition yet).

Tweak 3 - I really don't know anything about this. If it actually does what he says it does, then I see no problem doing it. I just don't know what it actually does. Of course this will only help if you have a multi-core processor.

Please note that Ubuntu (in my opinion) is a little bloated. Before anyone jumps on me, hear me out. I like ubuntu! I just have noticed that with older or slower systems it tends to bog it down a bit. I think this is primarily a side-effect of how well ubuntu plays nice with most systems. It is ready to handle almost any hardware and system setup, so in some cases it just has too much stuff going on and can (in low ram situations) be really slow.

If it was me, I would add another 512mb of ram or perhaps even a gig. Ram is fairly cheap now. Unless you are like me and bought into the whole RAMBUS b.s. Rambus ram is stupidly expensive. I'll never get a rambus system again... I digress.

If you have a really slow processor (less than 1GHz) I wouldn't expect to see anything amazing happen. To be honest I don't think these changes will make an incredible difference... but you will notice the boot sequence will be faster.

Some things I did to make Ubuntu boot and run faster:
- compile a custom kernel and leave out every single bit that isn't needed
- disable unneeded services
- use the grub profile thingy described in the link you posted
- disable IPv6 (first as a module, than I removed it from the kernel altogether)
- disable usplash
- avoid compiz
- give it enough RAM
- avoid ext3, use xfs instead (or JFS on a low-end system)
- tweak xfs for optimum performance (noatime, nodiratime,logbufs=8 and, since I am keeping backups anyway, nobarrier).
My boot time has now dropped below 10 seconds. I cannot say that the system runs any faster than it did but then I have a system that is rather high-end. Plus, once a program has been loaded into RAM, it will run every bit as fast on a bloated system as on another one. In the end, the only thing that has really given the system a boost (and then only the booting part) was compiling a custom kernel. All the rest will help but it won't do any miracles.

Hi, Jay... Can you please go over the steps you've outlined in greater detial to achieve faster performance? I'm talking about the following:

- compile a custom kernel and leave out every single bit that isn't needed
- disable unneeded services
- disable IPv6 (first as a module, than I removed it from the kernel altogether)
- disable usplash
- avoid ext3, use xfs instead (or JFS on a low-end system)
- tweak xfs for optimum performance (noatime, nodiratime,logbufs=8

I'd greatly appreciate it!

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This is the most important factor in reducing boot time but also the most daunting one if you have never compiled a kernel before. Just recompiling your current kernel won't make any difference - you need to strip it off everything that your computer doesn't need and that you don't want( unneeded device drivers, debugging options, network protocols, etc. ). But stripping too much - things that you do need - will result in a kernel that fails to boot your system, does not handle part of your hardware or makes the system run slower. It is safe to experiment as long as you don't install it. And if you half know what you are doing, installing an imperfectly compiled kernel will no do any harm but you'll need to try again (and again) until you get it right. Expect to invest several hours if this is your first time. And ask yourself whether it is worth the effort. Yes, your system will boot faster but it will definitely NOT make your system run (much) faster or reduce memory usage by much, unless you are really tight on memory. Here is a short guide: http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_ubuntu
Ext 3 is an extremy stable all-round system that is good at everything but that does not excel in any area either. To make it faster, you'll need to check out the various options provided by tune2fs. Personally, I don't bother because I find that XFS is as fast without all the tweaking. However, XFS is heavier on the CPU so if you have an older CPU, it may be better to use JFS. But nothing is perfect: JFS is not really being maintained anymore so it is not clear where to turn if you run into a bug. Not that I have had any issues with JFS so far. Avoid ext2 and reiser if you like faster boot time. Never use XFS or JFS for your boot partition! If you want to use either for /, make sure to create a separate boot partition on ext2 or ext3.
Those options should be specified in your /etc/fstab. The atime options do not update access time, which makes the filesystem more responsive. Logbufs=8 is needed to work around one of the weak spots of XFS: its handling of metadata, which is rather slow. If you like to live on the edge, you can also use the nobarrier option - but this is suicidal unless you have a backup, a UPS or a battery-powered RAID controller.For it to be of any real use, you need to pre-format your partitions from the command line rather than let the Ubuntu installer do it. You can create the partitions with something like gparted but the formating should be done from the command line with mkfs.xfs -l size=64m (-L filesystem_label) /dev/???.
Usplash tends to slow down the boot process, especially if you are running a custom kernel. Better to uninstall it if you can do with less eye-candy.
Most people still use IPv4 but, out-of-the-box, Linux has support for the newer IPv6. If not needed, the latter makes your network somewhat less responsive. One way of solving this is disabling it in firefox, or blacklisting IPv6 in /etc/modprobe.d. The radical solution is recompiling your kernel without any support for it at all.
Services are started at boot time so they have an impact on boot speed. If you haven't got a printer, you don't need CUPS. If you haven't got a laptop, you can disable keyboard related services. Installing BUM (Boot-up Manager) makes it quite easy to turn services on or off.