Are you feeling that your Linux/Ubuntu installation becoming slow day-by-day? Is your Linux/Ubuntu PC/Laptop/Netbook too slow to work? Well, like any other operating system, Ubuntu also becomes slow after a prolong use and its time to clean it up and give the installation a boost.
Here are list of activities that you may want to perform to speed up your PC/Laptop/Netbook.
Table of Contents
Check 1:
Check whether all latest updates for kernel and other softwares are installed. You should not be keeping schedule updates pending for a long time for security and performance reasons. Always make sure that you are running a latest version of the kernel and installed latest available updates from repo.
Go to DASH and open Software Updater. It will check for latest updates and show it to you as ‘Details of Update’. Click ‘install now’ to start the update.
Once the update is complete, make sure to reboot. Sometimes reboot is not necessary, but I would recommend.
Check 2:
Graphics driver can be a big mess for your Linux/Ubuntu systems due to unsupported driver. Make sure that your display/ graphics card driver is properly installed.
If you are running Ubuntu and nVidia card, run below commands to get the latest nVidia driver. Follow detailed guide to install proper graphics driver here.
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current nvidia-settings
Check 3:
You may have seen so much buzz around Unity desktop environment. From my opinion, Unity is very good, a step forward to the usability. But it has so many graphics, unnecessary shadows, blurring the background, search processing when you open up dash and start typing. It would try to find your keyword in your computer data, in the Internet, amazon store etc.
You can always opt for a less bulky Gnome GUI. Run below code to install Gnome. Follow detailed guide here to install Gnome.
sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallbac
Check 4:
Delete unnecessary files. Scan your home folder by size and try to delete unnecessary files form your home directory, Downloads folder. Empty the Trash.
Check 5:
Install Synaptic and remove unnecessary package files. Open Synaptic as root, go to Option -> Preferences -> Files tab.
To install Synaptic run:
sudo apt-get install synaptic
Check 6: For the Web:
a) Do not install too many themes, add-ons in Firefox.
b) Keep an alternate Browser like Chrome (Detailed guide on how to install Chrome in Ubuntu)
c) Clean cookies, cache periodically in your browser
Check 7: Media
a) Use low memory used applications in Ubuntu
a) Text Editor: Use leafpad instead of GEdit for
b) Media Player: Use VLC Media Player
This list is not exhaustive and entirely my own opinion. Drop a comment using comment box below about what you think.
