[nylug-talk] Speed, Quickness, Stability, Etc

[Selso DaSilva]

On 6/25/07, Zachary Stern <rollerskatejamms at gmail.com> wrote:
> So,
> I just booted up Windows XP for the first time in a few weeks (I dual boot),
> and I have to say, everything was just so simple. Videos play. Software runs
> quickly. Etc. Etc.
>
> Despite what people say, Ubuntu (another other Linuxs) just seem to be
> sluggish compared to XP for me.
>
> Anybody have any tips, tweaks, etc to get linux to be a bit more responive?
> I love my precious Ubuntu/Linux and want to stick with it.
>
> -Zach

Hi Zach,
I do a lot of Ubuntu/Edubuntu installation for CFSG (see links below)
on PII 350Mhz to PIII 600Mhz, with 128MB - 256MB of RAM. These
Free Software computer are used to train children age 3 - 12. They
work faster then the M$ OS they had on them. I have a routine that I
do to the machines that helps to speed it up.

Ok depending on the version of Ubuntu (6.06LTS edgy or 7.04 feisty)
the few tweaks I would recommend can be done on both versions. Because
of your system specs I would recommend 7.04. It's very stable and the first
tweak shown a huge performance increase after reboot.

CFSG system tweaks for Ubuntu/Edubuntu :
Thing to do after you install Edubuntu/Ubuntu GNU/Linux as a children
workstation.

This is made to work for Edubuntu/Ubuntu 6.06 LTS versions.  I will rewrite one
for 7.04 later.

1st Run the update manager.

2nd Change the Kernel from i386 to i686 or Low latency( Fiesty).
      You would need to run synaptic package manager to do this.
      System password would be needed. Then search for linux-image
      and click to install the default "linux-image-i686" kernel, for Fiesty
      select the linux-image-Low-Latency option. Then click apply .
      You should notice a small increase in speed after you reboot, I
      do all the time.

3rd Tweak it for more Speed
      Yes we know GNU/Linux is fast, but remember we have the
      freedom and ability to make it run faster on our PII/III 450 Mhz
      hardware. We will perform 2 tweaks

++++++++FIRST++++++++
    - IDE Hard Drive Tweak with hdparm
hdparm is mainly for IDE drive so the following would not work with SATA.
If you need SATA/SCSI support you could Google sdparm or blktool

  1st Step : Check the ability of your Hard Drive.
Start the terminal type
      sudo hdparm /dev/hda

This would give you a list of setting you could change

Example: you should see something like this
/dev/hda:
 multcount    =  0 (off)
 IO_support   =  0 (off)
 unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
 using_dma    = 1 (on)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    = 256 (on)
 geometry     = 65535/16/63, sectors = 156301488, start = 0

We are only going to pay attention to the first four for now

then type
      sudo hdparm -i /dev/hda
(you need to know the hard drive location you tweaking hda, hdb, hdc, or hdd)

Locate the "UDMA modes" area note what mode it can go up to. Also note what mode
has an asterix next to it.

Example :
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5

as you can see in the example above that this drive can go up to udma5 but
it is set to udma2. If your drive is set to the highest udma mode, you
can skip the
section on changing udma modes.

2nd Step : Changing modes

to enable multcount, IO_support, unmaskirq, and using_dma
type
  sudo hdparm -d1 -c3 -u1 -m16 /dev/hda
Hit enter and you should see
dev/hda:
 setting 32-bit IO_support flag to 3
 setting multcount to 16
 setting unmaskirq to 1 (on)
 setting using_dma to 1 (on)
 multcount    = 16 (on)
 IO_support   =  3 (32-bit w/sync)
 unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
 using_dma    =  1 (on)

Next Changing the udma mode
First remember what the max udma mode your hard drive could goto
then use the chart below to find the two digit number that corresponds to
that mode, then type

sudo hdparm -X## /dev/hda

                0	 1	  2	   3	    4	     5	      6

UDMA	64	65	66	67 	68	69	70

Example sudo hdparm -X69 /dev/hda would set the drive to udma5

For this to keep after reboot edit your hdparm.conf file
type
sudo gedit /etc/hdparm.conf

uncomment this line and add -d1 -c3 -u1 -m16 -X69 /dev/hda
in place of what's there.

#command_line {
#       hdparm -q -m16 -q -W0 -q -d1 /dev/hda
#}

++++++++SECOND++++++++
File System Tweak ( for ext3 )