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I am running Ubuntu 9.04 on an older computer. What can I do to make it run as fast as possible?

(One tip per answer, please, to make voting easier.)

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Should be a community wiki – Diago Aug 6 '09 at 12:17
How old is old? Hardware specs please – basszero Aug 6 '09 at 12:21
Why community wiki? I think good answers here should add rep. I'm not asking for opinions. – Nathan Long Aug 6 '09 at 12:32
@basszero - I'm trying to keep the question generic so it will benefit more people. – Nathan Long Aug 6 '09 at 12:33
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7 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

Consider using Xubuntu, a much lighter version of Ubuntu with a similar featureset.

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or install xfce on top of regular ubuntu – hasen j Aug 6 '09 at 15:31
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up vote 4 down vote

Disable all gui-animations, like windows fading in and out.

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Turn off all the fancy GUI effects for the most perceivable speedup – basszero Aug 6 '09 at 12:20
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up vote 3 down vote

Max out RAM on the motherboard.

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up vote 3 down vote

This help doc from the Ubuntu Community site is targeted directly at such an issue.

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up vote 2 down vote

Remove as much software as possible, any extra process means more memory usage and possible CPU time.

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You don't need to remove the software to control the process. Ubuntu provides an application sysv-rc-conf that allows you to easily choose what applications start at different runlevels. In a nutshell, you can keep the program, but only run it when you explicitly ask for it. – Telemachus Aug 6 '09 at 15:37
I'm well aware of that. However, if you're lacking hard disk space anyway (old computer) it makes sense to remove as much as possible. Ubuntu starts way too many daemons by default. – Mike McQuaid Aug 6 '09 at 16:07
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up vote 2 down vote

Change to a lightweight window manager.

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What would you recommend? – Nathan Long Aug 6 '09 at 12:31
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XFCE or if even that is too much try Fluxbox. – Mike McQuaid Aug 6 '09 at 12:43
See here for other choices of lightweight window managers : superuser.com/questions/12145/… – Gnoupi Aug 6 '09 at 15:02
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up vote 0 down vote

This link has got some popular tweaks:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Optimize-Ubuntu-8-04-for-Speed-86405.shtml

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Some of those tweaks have tradeoffs that aren't properly explained. – nagul Aug 9 '09 at 23:18
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