I'm interesting in knowing what processes could be altered to improve performance and functionality on my system. And which process may be the best one to alter. Thanks

what

In general, sysctl variables (the settings in /proc/sys can also be manipulated by the sysctl command) are generally well-tuned for desktop and server usage. While I have on occasion needed to tweak them, it is best only done for certain very specific situations, the nature of which is highly dependent on your system's workload. In other words, there's no good answer to your question given the fact that you haven't given any details whatsoever on what you want to accomplish (other than the rather nonspecific "improve performance" -- performance of what, file serving, network I/O, something different?). If you're new to Linux I'd suggest staying away from trying to tune sysctl variables unless you have a particular need to do so; the defaults work just fine in most cases.