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View Full Version : Favourite ubuntu hacks and tweaks!


karimruan
October 29th, 2009, 12:24 PM
Alright, so I am getting pretty into messing with ubuntu, the options for customization are amazing compared to windows! I once had an old install of Jaunty that looked just like OSX. Couldn't figure out how to change it back, so I reinstalled. What are some of your favourite tweaks, in ANY category?
ssam
October 29th, 2009, 12:37 PM
install preload. it makes programs load faster. just install an it autoamtically figures out with files to preload to ram.
install flashblock (firefox extension), only load the flash files you click on.
karimruan
October 29th, 2009, 12:52 PM
Nice! I will look into preload now!

I downloaded UbuntuTweak, and it is pretty cool! It makes it really easy to do a bunch of appearance and system tweaks, but offers it all in one place! Installs to Applications>System Tools>Ubuntu Tweak.
Pasdar
October 29th, 2009, 12:56 PM
Pre-load never did anything for my system when I installed it. All it did was ask for password each time I booted up my pc, so annoying...
ssam
October 29th, 2009, 01:04 PM
Pre-load never did anything for my system when I installed it. All it did was ask for password each time I booted up my pc, so annoying...

thats very strange. it should never need to ask for anything. you should not even notice it is there, apart from the speed up. are you sure you got the right package. its just called 'preload'
Pasdar
October 29th, 2009, 04:02 PM
thats very strange. it should never need to ask for anything. you should not even notice it is there, apart from the speed up. are you sure you got the right package. its just called 'preload'

Yeah, installed it and added it to services to run upon startup. However, it required admin permission each time I booted up. Other than that I never noticed any speed difference (on a high end laptop with 4GB Memory).
Earl_Maroon
October 29th, 2009, 04:07 PM
Using Gnome-do's "Docky" form instead of the window list toolbar is the biggest change I made, and the most important to my user experience. It looks better than the toolbar and it makes opening applications much faster.
realzippy
October 29th, 2009, 04:11 PM
I always used to install preload,it should indeed run without password.
But to be honest:Never noticed any advantage of it.
Can you give an exact example what speeds up by preload?

BTW,whats really fast:
To compile a program in /dev/shm ....
Used to to that with Q3A,but now quakelive is out...
karimruan
October 29th, 2009, 04:21 PM
So whats the verdict on preload? good/bad?
realzippy
October 29th, 2009, 04:26 PM
So whats the verdict on preload? good/bad?

...it does no harm ;-)

Check it out and report...

BTW,if you have enough RAM,you can set your swappiness to zero,what really
speeds up your machine when handling big files.... :

http://distilledb.com/blog/archives/date/2009/02/22/swap-files-in-linux.page