I don't think you should re-install. You might do what I did. Keep a notebook handy with all of the things you do. Some will work, some won't. If you are like me, you'll end up doing so much to your system that you will totally trash your installation in no time. That's when you do a re-install. That way, when you re-install, you have a notebook full of all the stuff you did that worked, and you can skip the stuff that didn't.
Here's some more tips for you. Installing everything was a great idea. You've got tons of disk space. My slack box is running on a crappy 4 gigs of hard drive space. What I like to do is every week or so, use pkgtool to pick out a couple of packages that I think I don't need. Make sure you write them down. If you don't have any problems that week or so, you probably didn't need those packages. If you do have troubles, just re-install those packages. The notebook makes that easy. Now with your notebook, the next time you install you can just skip those packages that didn't work out for you. I would say that is your first step to optimization, getting rid of the packages you don't want. Just remember to take it slow. Nothing like getting rid of half of your packages, realizing a few days later that you needed some of them, and not knowing which ones you need to re-install.
The next thing I like to do for optimization is to get rid of extra services that are running at startup. Do a
and see what you have running. Best to start in console mode and run that right after you start up. You may find that you have a web server, a mail server, an ftp server, a shh server, a DNS server, and a whole bunch of other stuff running that you don't need. All of those processes are using computer resources. You should shut down the stuff you don't need. I use the same approach here that I use for packages. I shut down a few services that I don't hink I need, and if I am still working well after a week or so, I get rid of some more. If things aren't running so well, I add back the services that I disabled. I highly recommend rebooting a whole bunch in the beginning. That way, I get a chance to see what errors are occuring at start up after I "fix" things.
Now you are probably wondering, "How do I make it so all of those programs don't start when I boot my computer?" There are two places to look. The first is the file /etc/inetd.conf . Open it up in your favorite text editor (I like gedit, myself) and ahve a look at it. Every line that doesn't have a "#" in front of it is getting run at boot time. Watch out for word wrap, though. You want to make sure that line is really a line. If you don't want something run a start up, just add a "#" in front of it. That's called "commenting out." I comment out almost everything in that file. Just take it slow, reboot often, and make sure you don't comment out anything that you need. The next place we are going to look is the /etc/rc.d directory. in there, you'll find a bunch of files that start with "rc.". Go to a terminal and type:
You are gonna see a list with a bunch of information in it. For each file, you'll see something like this:
Code:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1511 2004-02-22 17:34 rc.hotplug*
That first string is the important part. If you see an "x" in it, it means the file is executable. If it's executable, it gets ran when you start your computer. So if you see something that you don't want started, type something like:
Code:
chmod -x name_of_file_you_don't_want_started
if you want to change it back so that it does start, type
Code:
chmod +x name_of_file_you_do_want_started
Once again, take it slow.
The next thing I like to do for optimization is see what isn't working. Type:
to see the text that flew by you when you booted up. Look through there for errors. If you find some, time to start looking for solutions.
Next thing I like to do is the kernel. You'll already find lot's of help on this forum for that. Shouldn't have to look to far. Just read the stuff that's already posted. If you are having an issue. Probably someone else here had the same problem.
As for the thing you like to do:
1. Watch videos/movies.
Try totem. It came with Dropline. I also installed this
http://slackpkg.ath.cx/~xspace/packa...noarch-1xs.tgz . It gives you the codecs you need for wma,realplayer and Quicktime media files.
2. Listen to music.
Try bmp and rhythmbox. They both came wth Dropline.
3. Play games.
Should have a bunch installed. If you have something specific that you are looking to play, just search the forums and google.
4 The net ofcource.
I'm sure that is working for you already
5. Make / Edit Music ( Sampling, Midi...)
Don't know what you use for that, but I'm sure there is something
6. Download from the Gnetulla Network.
I use this gtk-gnutella. Worked right out the box for me. Go to linuxpackages.net to find it and a whole bunch of other stuff. Other people recommend other p2p clients, but I found the gtk-gnutella worked the easiest.
Hope that helps some,
Shilo