What should i do to improve my ubuntu os performance? Inspiring by this question i realized that some default settings may be a little conservative on ubuntu and that it's possible to tweak it with little or no risk if you want to make it faster

This is not meant to be application specific (e.g. make firefox load pages faster), but system wide.

Preferably 1 tip per answer, with enough detail for people to implement it.

A couple of mine would be.

Install Preload (via Software Center or sudo apt-get install preload );
Change Swappiness value - "which controls the degree to which the kernel prefers to swap when it tries to free memory";

What's your thoughts?

Since this is not meant to have a unique answer but rather several useful tips i have made this community wiki out of the box

Best Answer

If you are "the average Joe" , then just don't do anything. Don't use programs or settings which you don't understand Don't follow tips posted on the internet how to improve the performance of your system by compiling some software yourself or installing a self-made kernel

Some of those tips may give you minor performance improvements indeed, but some of them will also give you a real headache, if you changed the wrong setting, disabled the wrong service, installed the wrong driver etc.

Therefore be happy with your well-run system Why would a company need such 5 percent performance improvements? It will not lead to typing your office documents faster or editing your holiday photos in half the time.

And just to be clear: If you are not the average Joe, but a developer/hardcore gamer/... needing any cycle you can get, you are not the target of this comment...