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Things to Do after Installing Kubuntu 14.04

• System configuration:
  • Make the Grub bootloader accessible.
    Otherwise, if you ever to need access to the bootloader, it will be too late.
    Install package kde-config-grub2 and you can configure it with the mouse under System Settings, Startup and Shutdown, GRUB2 Bootloader. Choose "Automatically boot..." after 1 second, so that you have 1 second to press the arrow down key (for example) and stop the boot process.
    Or manually: edit /etc/default/grub, add GRUB_TIMEOUT=1, comment out GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT, run sudo update-grub2.
    You may also want to remove kernel options quiet and splash in order to see the boot messages.
  • Enable Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to kill the current graphical session.
    If you make a mistake and/or your system becomes unresponsive, this key combination may be the safest and quickest way out. Edit "/etc/default/keyboard", find variable XKBOPTIONS and set it to "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp".
  • Reduce the amount of reserved disk space.
    On ext4 filesystems, Linux reserves some disk space for privileged processes and to help prevent fragmentation. The default amount of 5 % comes from the times where hard disks were much smaller. You can reduce it to 1 % with command "sudo tune2fs -m 1.0 /dev/sdXY".
• Performance optimisation:
  • Optimise filesystem performance with noatime.
    Edit /etc/fstab and add options "noatime,commit=30" to your filesystems.
  • Disable unnecessary indexers:
    • KDE Baloo (formerly Nepomuk). Go to System Settings, Desktop Search, and add your home folder, which acts as an indication to turn the indexer off.
    • KDE Akonadi. Go to System Settings, Personal Information, stop the service.
    • updatedb / locate database. See mlocate conflicting package.
  • Prevent unexpected system updates.
    Unexpected package manager activity in the background can render your PC slow or even unresponsive when you are in a hurry. Configure the system updates to check less often (weekly or every fortnight) and disable automatic installation.
• KDE preferences:
  • Choose "Start with an empty session" in "System Settings", "Startup and Shutdown", "Session Management".
    You will probably want to untick option "Confirm logout" too.
  • Configure Keyboard shortcuts like under Windows: Go to "System Settings", "Shortcuts and Gestures", and then:
    • Ctrl+Esc should bring up the start menu: "Global Keyboard Shortcuts", "Plasma Desktop Shell", "Activate Application Launcher Widget".
    • Ctrl+Shift+Esc should bring up the Task Manager: "Custom Shortcuts", "Edit", "New", "Global Shortcut", "Command/URL", "Trigger", set Ctrl+Shift+Esc, "Action", enter "ksysguard".
    • Alt+Space should bring up the window menu: "Global Keyboard Shortcuts", "Kwin", "Window Operations Menu" ("Fensteraktionen-Menü in German).
    • Toggle Touchpad (on laptops): "Global Keyboard Shortcuts", "Touchpad KCM".
  • Useful shortcuts are, by the way:
    • Ctrl+Alt+Esc: Kill window on click, similar to starting xkill.
    • Ctrl+Alt+L: Lock desktop.
  • If the window resize borders are too thin and therefore hard to hit: Go to "System Settings", "Workspace Appearance", "Window Decorations", "Configure Decoration...", "General", "Border size".
  • Add pavucontrol ("PulseAudio Volume Control") to your favourites.
    You may need to install package pavucontrol first. The standard volume control applet does not let you choose where an application like Skype should be recording the audio from.

For PCs with only 512 MiB RAM

512 MiB of RAM is too little nowadays for Ubuntu-based system. Starting the package manager is already a heavy load for such a computer. Here is some suggestions:

• Get rid of apt-xapian-index, see Fake Replacement for Debian Package apt-xapian-index
• Switch to a lightweight Web browser like Midori.
  You will lose some comfort, and some pages will not display properly, but Firefox and Chromium are just too heavy.
• Optimise your swap:
  • Move your swap partition to another drive.
    • If you have more than one drive, move the swap partition or file to the least-busy disk.
    • Try swapping to a USB stick. Here is a how-to guide.
    • If the computer has a memory card reader, you could use a fast memory card as the main swap drive.
      I have seen great swap performance improvements even with a standard 512 MB SD card (8.5 MB/s read speed, 2.5 MB/s write speed, 1 ms seek time) from an old digital camera connected over a cheap USB 2.0 card reader. The reason behind the improvements are probably the card's fast seek time and the lower pressure on the main hard disk.
    • If your video card has a lot of memory, some people have managed to use some of it as a swap device.
  • Reduce the swappiness from the default 60 to 10.
    Whether this will improve swapping is debatable. It is probably a good idea only if you cannot move your swap partition to another drive. Add "vm.swappiness = 10" to file "/etc/sysctl.conf".
  • Try swapping to zram. It made things worse for me, but your mileage may vary.
• Switch to a lightweight Linux distribution.
  Xubuntu or Lubuntu will not bring much. You could try Puppy Linux.