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Stanley Thomas' blog: GNU/Linux Performance Tweaks
by Frederick Noronha [फ्र ेडरिक नोरो न्या] 15 Jun '07

15 Jun '07

http://perfector.wordpress.com/ Linux Performance Tweaks Not too long ago my boss and myself came up with a wise idea to make a list of all the linux tweaks usually done to improve the performance of a linux system. The idea has been taken to a higher level and each and every silly possible change that could improve the performance of the system has been added. Of course the actual list would be never ending, but these are a few that I could think of. Do mail me if you think of more that can be added. The first thing to look at a brand new machine is its BIOS. There is a lot of junk in there that you may never require. For example, if the machine is going to be used as a file server the on-board sound card is never going to be used, or if the machine is never to be connected to a lan why leave the on-board lan card enabled. If the system is going to be run in text mode only the shared graphics memory required should not be more than 2MB. All these changes should be done according to requirement. During installation do try your best to avoid software raid and lvm unless absolutely required. These are two lovely features but both of 'em degrade performance considerably. The next most important thing is to use a kernel that's suitable to your processor architecture. For example, if you have a 686 processor use a i686 kernel, if you have a 586 processor use a i586 kernel and if you have multiple processors/cores use the smp kernel. These are the 3 most common kernels provided with any modern distribution. Most of us know that ext2/ext3 is the filesystem that has to be used during installation. No doubt that the ext2/ext3 file system is very reliable but if you are seriously looking forward towards a faster and much more responsive system ext2/ext3 is a bad option. Xfs is by far the fastest filesystem, and if you are dealing with many small files reiserfs is the best. If you have a directory with many different types of files, try to break it up. it definitely will improve performance. Oh, and do use a lighter file manager. Something like Thunar is great. The next thing of course is to disable the services you never use frequently. Services like 'timidity' and 'apache' may very rarely be used by you. Well you can always start them when required. Running services when not required is such a waste of resources. Imagine running a service such as 'postgresql' when all that you are doing with you system is browsing the Internet. 'Prelink" drastically speeds up application start-up times. There are a lot of benchmarks done with and without prelink just to prove its superiority. In most modern distributions prelink is very stable and reliable. Avoid using stuff like Kat, Beagle, Evolution etc. etc. At times these apps make the system so unusable. There are much more lighter apps to get your work done. Take for instance, to do a quick word processing job why use 'OpenOffice Writer' when Abiword (which is much more lighter) can do the job just fine. Use a light window manager. My best suggestion WindowMaker. Fluxbox also does a fine job. Well it will take you some time to get used to it. Hey but life is all about changes. I mean, when i started using computers i never knew what linux was. You just adapt to whatever suits you. Well, i know that the above suggestion is not a easy one, but if you are using something like Gnome or KDE avoid using many taskbar applets. Those are real resource hungry. Also wallpapers, icons and files/folders on the desktop consume resources. In linux you have a central storage for each user, so use it for all your files. It keeps your system a lot cleaner, your desktop clear, and you can keep things more organized (atleast i can). My greatest suggestion in this entire article would be to stay abreast with the latest distro. The only way to achieve this is to have a separate /home partition. So the next time you install a new distro, do not format your /home partition but only all the others for the installer to install the required packages and their related files. Packages change over time, Xorg is better than Xfree, Alsa is better than Oss, Udev is better than devfs. Most of all the kernel undergoes major changes, many of which are performance related. Most of the latest distros have packages that are compiled using GCC 3.4 and upwards. GCC 3.4 compiles programs so they run at least 7% faster. Do you really want to miss out on such good performance gains? For ext3 filesystems "noatime" and "data=writeback" are good options to have in the '/etc/fstab' file. /dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro,noatime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid,nouser,data=writeback 0 1 And for reiserfs add the option "notail" but remove "data=writeback" /dev/hda7 /boot reiserfs noauto,noatime,notail Six text-mode virtual consoles are absolutely unwanted for a user like me, and considering that each of these virtual consoles consume memory turns me off. Comment out the lines for the unwanted virtual consoles in '/etc/inittab' and issue the command "init q" as root to make changes done without rebooting. In most of the modern machines with 512MB and more ram a lot of swapping is not required. The more the swapping done when there is enough ram to do the job is a waste of performance. The default value is vm.swappiness=60. To change it issue "echo 'vm.swappiness=<value>' >> /etc/sysctl.conf" as root. Then issue #swapoff -a and #swapon -a. Generally a value from 20-30 is great for most modern machines. Find the right value that suits your needs. The swap partition has to be created roughly in the middle of the harddisk for it to be easily accessed. Since the swap partition is accessed in very short bursts occasionally its the best option. Yeah, this is not one of those easily experimentable suggestions. Coming to the harddisk.. Oh no, this is my most hated piece of hardware in a computer. It has moving parts, its unreliable and its a pain to maintain. Sometimes i wish i had an external usb hub with max capacity thumb drives built into it to use as a storage medium. I guess it would be enough for my day to day work. I dont know if it would be faster than a 10000 rpm hdd, but im sure its much more reliable because it can withstand more shocks, it does not heat up as much and it has no moving parts. To increase hdd performance there's nothing better than 'hdparm'. It tests speeds of the drive and give you a quite a bit of control over the hdd's parameters. With 'hdparm' you can set the readahead, configure power management, enable/disable dma, display drive geometry, speed up/down the head movement, set spindown time and a whole lot of other neat stuff. Once you have got all options to your liking, add it to the end of '/etc/rc.sysinit' so that it gets executed towards the end of the system's booting process. For example a line like this could be added: hdparm -a1024 -c3 -d1 -m16 /dev/hda Like i said earlier there are a lot of ways to improve the system's performance. These are only a few i can think of. Try out 'powertweak' its good. Readahead, preload, upstart, teardown are good for boot-up, shutdown, and faster application loading times. Do not forget to inform me of something that i could add to this list. June 15th, 2007 Categories: Linux = Desktop . Author: stan . Comments: No Comments -- FN: Frederick Noronha Phone 0091-832-2409490 http://wikiwikiweb.de/MyContacts

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Need help in Thrissur
by Krishna Pagadala 14 Jun '07

14 Jun '07

Hi All, I need help in Ollur in Thrissur district of Kerala. There is an NGO that wants to convert to OpenOffice and other free software in a windows environment. Can somebody help? Regards Krishna ===================================== Misinterpreting Copyright by Richard Stallman http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html "Die Gedanken Sind Frei": Free Software and the Struggle for Free Thought by Eben Moglen http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/berlin-keynote.html . ____________________________________________________________________________________ Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel and lay it on us. http://surveylink.yahoo.com/gmrs/yahoo_panel_invite.asp?a=7

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Re: Need help in Thrissur
by Krishna Pagadala 14 Jun '07

14 Jun '07

> Did you mean that you want to use free software > tools in windows, or replace windows with > GNU/Linux also? While I would love the full replacement. Given the circumstances I dont think it is an option. I am asking for free software running in Windows. Regards, Krishna --- Krishna Pagadala <krishnaact(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > Hi All, > I need help in Ollur in Thrissur district of > Kerala. > There is an NGO that wants to convert to OpenOffice > and other free software in a windows environment. > Can somebody help? > > Regards > Krishna > ===================================== Misinterpreting Copyright by Richard Stallman http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html "Die Gedanken Sind Frei": Free Software and the Struggle for Free Thought by Eben Moglen http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/berlin-keynote.html . ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/222

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Audio recording of Eben's first talk "Freeing the mind: Free Software and the end of proprietary culture"
by Praveen A 12 Jun '07

12 Jun '07

Hi, The audio recording of Eben's session on Sunday is available from http://deeproot.in/~kamathln/eben/freeingthemind/ Thanks to Sujith and Laxminarayan for the recording. Cheers Praveen PS: Anyone interested to help out with a transcript please contact me offline Other links (photos and videos) will be posted at http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Eben_Moglen_in_Bangalore once it is available -- പ്രവീണ് അരിമ്പ്രത്തൊടിയില് Join The DRM Elimination Crew Now! http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

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Re: [Fsf-friends] Re: [ilugd] eben moglen on tv + webcasting
by Linux Lingam 12 Jun '07

12 Jun '07

On 6/12/07, Dave Crossland <dave(a)lab6.com> wrote: > On 12/06/07, Sandip Bhattacharya <sandip(a)lug-delhi.org> wrote: > > > > But I would like to ask if broadcasts made by a public broadcaster can be shared > > for non-commercial public sharing. ah there's an interesting twist to this debate. suppose as an end-user publishes a video from a commercial tv broadcaster on say, youtube, for explicitly non-commercial end-use, and to share with others. this is quite similar to the 'fair use' terms often sited by wikipedia. the twist: youtube makes money from google ads and other means. so there is commercialization and monetizing happening. i have no clue how this is legally evaluated, but youtube tends to attract legal eyes rather frequently. i don't know about you, but i quite enjoy internet radio, using amarok. over 4,000 channels to choose from, in every genre...! i get 24x7 of ad-free radio, at near CD quality, from artists & groups, or even from genres not even broadcast in india. alas! a recent ruling says that web-casting music like this would attract broadcasting license to be paid by the net radio stations. suddenly internet radio is no longer free-of-cost to end-users and several stations may have to shut down.... fair is foul... hover through the air... :-) niyam

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Re: [ilugd] eben moglen on tv
by Sandip Bhattacharya 12 Jun '07

12 Jun '07

Karanbir Singh wrote: > Linux Lingam wrote: >> dear all, >> >> eben moglen's talk on saturday was moderated by paranjoy guha thakurtha. >> after the talk he mentioned to me that within one hour he was >> interviewing eben for a tv report. here are the details: >> >> 17 june 2007, 6pm, on loksabha tv >> >> yup, that's a bit of an obscure tv channel. >> so anyone here got a tv tuner card or something so perhaps you could >> post a digitized version on youtube for the world-at-large? > > irony at its best.... pre-requests for breaking the law, for Eben's content! True. But I would like to ask if broadcasts made by a public broadcaster can be shared for non-commercial public sharing. How is it done the world over? - Sandip

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Re: [കേ.ശാ.സാ.പ] Red Hat signs MoU with Kerala govt
by sujith h 12 Jun '07

12 Jun '07

On 6/6/07, Santhosh Thottingal <santhosh00(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > The following article was posting at this link > http://www.ciol.com/content/search/showarticle1.asp?artid=98103 > > Red Hat signs MoU with Kerala govt > Red Hat to support Kerala's deployment of open source software Whats wrong with Debian??? What about the IT@School project which is worlds largest debian installation project!!! NEW DELHI, INDIA: Red Hat has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) > with the government of Kerala to support the state's deployment of open > source software for the benefit of e-governance and e-literacy efforts. Lots of people are working for Swathanthra Malayalam Computing in order to help people to use Malayalam in their computers which has Debian!!! We conduct meetings regularly to update the status of Swathanthra Malayalam Computing (SMC)project. As per the MoU, Red Hat will work with the Kerala government to conduct > capacity-building programs around open source software. > > Red Hat will train the technical staff of various government organizations > on open source applications. Red Hat will also train school teachers in > Kerala on Linux desktop skills under a "Train-the-Trainer" program. Lots of teachers are trained to use Debian. Now why this change??? The Kerala Government's IT Policy draft has identified Free and Open Source > Software (FOSS) as a major strategic component in its efforts to build an > inclusive information society. > > "Kerala has always been a leader in literacy and now we want to make > Kerala a leader in e-literacy," said V. S. Achutanandan, chief minister of > Kerala. > > "We believe that Free and Open Source Software is an essential component > in our drive to democratize information technology and bring its benefits to > all sections of society. We are pleased to partner with Red Hat, an open > source leader, in bringing e-literacy and e-governance to the people of > Kerala." > > "The Kerala Government has taken a very progressive step in choosing open > source software. The freedom, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of open > source helps governments maximize their IT budgets," said Nandkumar Pradhan, > president and managing director, Red Hat India. Is there any advantage for a community project over a social contract??? Red Hat and the Kerala government will also work together to promote Kerala > as a global destination for developing open source software. > > This is really a shocking news!!! -- സുജിത് ഹരിദാസന് Bangalore http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-DRM-Campaign

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Movie
by Mani A 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

On the question of integrating Linux and FOSS into the general culture of the masses, maybe we can consider helping the film industry. Now if we are concerned about the size of impact, then we can consider developing the stories at least for the commercial kind of Indian Cinema. .. though the more meaningful version can also be done. There are various ways of writing movie stories. Optimal ones are those that are inductive enough to be seen as specifications of the final product. One way of writing it is by successive refinement of a certain minimal version. Well, what am I suggesting ? Best A. Mani -- A. Mani Member, Cal. Math. Soc

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eben moglen on tv
by Linux Lingam 11 Jun '07

11 Jun '07

dear all, eben moglen's talk on saturday was moderated by paranjoy guha thakurtha. after the talk he mentioned to me that within one hour he was interviewing eben for a tv report. here are the details: 17 june 2007, 6pm, on loksabha tv yup, that's a bit of an obscure tv channel. so anyone here got a tv tuner card or something so perhaps you could post a digitized version on youtube for the world-at-large? :-) niyam bhushan

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(no subject)
by Mishi Choudhary 10 Jun '07

10 Jun '07

Eben Moglen, Professor of Law in Columbia Law School and Founding Director, Software Freedom Law Center is in india foe two weeks starting from 02-06-2007- 15-06-2007 to meet policy makers, Software professionals and all others who are interested/ associated with FOSS. His Schedule is as follows 03-06-2007 A talk at St Joseph's college, bangalore- Software Patents 06-06-2007 A discussion and talk in Trivandrum- Free Software: The Death oF proprietary Culture 09-06-2007 He will be speaking on Software Patents at the IIC Annexe Conference Room 3, New Delhi on 9th June 2007 at 10:30 am. Eben was recently chosen as one of the 100 most influential personalities in the world by eWeek magazine. Eben's talk is organised by the Delhi Science Forum, Software Freedom Law Center, India, Free Software Foundation India, Sarai (CSDS), Indian Linux Users Group, Delhi, and others. 11-06-2007 Eben will be addressing the legal fraternity at the High court of Andhra Pradesh at Hyderabad 12-06-2007 A talk At NALSAR These meetings/Talks are open to all so feel free to forward this invite to yourfriends who may be interested in this subject. More info about Eben is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen Warm Regards Mishi Choudhary

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