Speed up Ubuntu 10.10

We often face the problem of having slow machines, with less requirements. For example, I personally have an old laptop, with only 512 MB RAM and 1.06 GHz processor. In such systems, Ubuntu's speed might not be very satisfactory, and people often look for tweaking Ubuntu to meet the needs. Personally for myself, I have experimented with the process for a while now, and am really eager to share my experiences. So? Do you have a low-resource laptop or desktop, and still wish to continue using GNOME rather than switching to LXDE or XFce? You are in the right place. Here are a few tweaks I found, to give Ubuntu (GNOME) blazing speed on any laptop/desktop: 1. First of all, disable all visual effects to make Ubuntu faster. This adds more than 12% boost to Ubuntu, and saves time. To do it, i. Go to System-Preferences-Apprerence, and select Visual Effects tab. ii. Click on "None" checkbox, and click close. This disables most effects, and increases performnce. 2. Use of "preload" speeds up Ubuntu applications. It is a daemon, which runs in the background, and caches important data to speed up opening time for applications. To install it, open terminal, and type: sudo apt-get install preload and press enter. This install preload, and once installed, you don't need to do anything else. This automatically runs and caches memory. 3. Use Ubuntu-Tweaks, a simple but powerful software for tweaking Ubuntu, Download it from http://launchpad.net/ubuntu-tweak/0.5.x/0.5.5/+download/ubuntu-tweak_0.5.5-1~lucid1_all.deb and double-click on the file to install. Now go to Applications-System Tools-Ubuntu Tweaks, and click Package-Cleaner menu. Now, click "unlock" and enter your password. Next, select "clean cache", "clear config" and "clear kernels" respectively, and then select "cleanup" each time. This frees up system space, and is very useful to speedup. 4. Disable extra services which start at startup. To do this, install Bootup-manager or BUM (sudo apt-get install bum) and start it from System-Administration-Bootup Manager. Now, disable all services there, which you don't need to startup at the beginning. The more you disable, the more is the speed. 5. Use OpenBox, a lighter replacement for Metacity. Metacity is the default Window manager for GNOME, and is heavy. OpenBox is a lighter replacement compared to it. To use it: 1. Install OpenBox by typing "sudo apt-get install openbox" (without quotes) in terminal. 2. Make OpenBox the default window manager. To do it, open Ubuntu-Tweaks and go to "Session control" under Startup menu and replace "metacity" with "openbox" in window-manager tab box. 6. Use PcManFm, a faster file-manager for GNOME. The instructions are at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=692238 7. Remove all unneeded applicaions, from software centre. 8. Install localepurge, which frees data after installation of programmes. It does automatically. To install it, type "sudo apt-get install localepurge" in terminal without quotes". All these modifications will give your PC a blazing speed, take it guarenteed. In case of any problem, do consider using the forums to get help.