When running ubuntu some time running slow these are tips to tweak ubuntu to speedup and run fast:
Manage startup applications:
Open startup applications and stop unwanted applications.
Install preload to speedup applications load time:
sudo aptitude install preload
After installing it, restart your computer and forget about it. It will be working in the background.
Use apt-fast instead of apt-get for speedy update:
Add this repository and install the apt-fast:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:apt-fast/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo aptitude install apt-fast
Remove language related ign from apt-get update:
Have you ever noticed the output of sudo apt-get update? There are three kinds of lines in it, hit, ign and get.
If you look at IGN lines, you will find that most of them are related to language translation.
If you use all the applications, packages in English, there is absolutely no need for a translation of package database from
English to English. If you suppress this language related updates from apt-get, it will slightly increase the apt-get update speed.
To do that, open the file
"/etc/apt/atp.conf.d/00aptitude" and this line:
Acquire::Languages "none";
Reduce overheating:
To reduce overheating and get a good system performance install TLP, To install and use TLP, use the following commands in a terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linrunner/tlp
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tlp tlp-rdw
sudo tlp start
Or install indicator-cpufreq with aptitude from ubuntu official repository and select the powersave mode.
Clean Out Junk:
It may also help to remove some unneeded files from your computer so that your hard drive doesn’t have to take as long to
find files you need or to find free space for new files you want to save.
The utility I like to use the most to clean junk from Ubuntu is Ubuntu Tweak, as their janitor tool is quite good and won’t
accidentally delete something you might actually need after all. Install the ubuntu tweak tool from
here.
If you want a few more options, there’s also BleachBit which looks in a lot more places for junk removal. But you should only
choose the options that you need in BleachBit, otherwise it may remove something you’ll need later.
Tweak LibreOffice to make it faster:
If you are a frequent user of office product, then you may want to tweak the default LibreOffice a bit to make it faster.
You will be tweaking memory option here. Open LibreOffice and go to Tools->Options. In there, choose Memory from the left
sidebar and enable Systray Quickstarter along with increasing memory allocation.
Monitor startup apps:
Linux aims to use your system memory as sparingly as possible. However over time as you install more apps, your machine can
slow down due to the number of applications trying to launch on login.
In Ubuntu you can list any services launched at startup by opening Terminal and running the command:
service --status-all
To stop a running service, enter the command:
sudo service <name> stop
Examine CPU Load:
Apart from checking for services started at boot time, you can also check whether your processor/CPU is overloaded with processes.
You can use the command top or htop or atop to check CPU load.
The top command sorts processes with the highest usage on top. As you can see from the screenshot below, you can clearly identify
which process/application is abusing your CPU and kill it if necessary using the kill command.
If you are running too many applications (both in the foreground and background), and your CPU is not up to par, it is best to close
the applications that you are not using. Also, disable any applications that you are not using from running in the background.
Check If Your Hard Drive Is Overworking:
Is your hard drive light constantly chugging along, yet you have no idea what it’s doing? Mysterious input/output can sure be a
problem, so there is a top-like tool called iotop, specifically meant to help diagnose this kind of problem.
Open a terminal and enter the command:
sudo apt install iotop
A normal, idle system should be mostly zeros across the board, sometimes with a few small bursts while data is being written.
If however, you run a disk-intensive utility like find, you’ll see its name and throughput listed clearly in iotop.
Now you can easily find out what program is using your I/O, who ran it, the speed the data is being read, and more.
Conclusion
While there are many things that can potentially cause system slowness, CPU, RAM, and disk I/O are behind the vast majority of
performance problems. Using the methods described here will help you determine the cause of your performance problems, and how you
can fix them.