Benutzer:Rdiez/Linux Ramblings

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Things to Do after Installing Kubuntu 14.04

• 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.
• Get some disk performance back.
  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.
  • Akonadi. Go to System Settings, Personal Information, stop the service.
  • updatedb / locate database. See mlocate conflicting package.
• Add pavucontrol (PulseAudio Volume Control) to your favourites.

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
• Prevent unexpected system updates.
  Unexpected package manager activity in the background can render your PC unresponsive for a long time. Configure the system updates to check less often (weekly or every fortnight) and disable automatic installation.
• 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.
• 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.
  • If the computer has a memory card reader, you could use a fast memory card as the main swap drive.
  • If your video card has a lot of memory, some people have managed to use some of it as a swap device.
  • 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.