This page is inteded to be a collection of tips howto make Ubuntu faster for the end user and what can be done to speed up Ubuntu on the development level.

Prelink

Ubuntu has prelink support integrated, but currently it's not enabled by default, a small howto can be found here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1971

Init

Bootcharts

Can be found here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BootCharting

Initng

Adopt Initng: http://initng.thinktux.net/ A total replacement of init, the services system. In heavy development but usable. Often requires some knowledge about services from the user, to fix eventual small issues. Has *potential* to reduce boot time by 50% or more.

Readahead

Some way of reading files before they are used, at boot. Knoppix benchmarks showed that for their system, boot times were reduced significantly for clients with 512M RAM or more.

Start gdm/kdm sooner

Start gdm/kdm before all services are started so it looks as if Ubuntu boots faster.

Compilation

GCC Flags

What are the default flags? Investigate CFLAGS="-fvisibility=hidden -fvisibility-inlines=hidden".

Binutils Flags

Ubuntu is already compile with LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1". Investigate LDFLAGS="-Wl,--as-needed".

Kernel

Investigate Con Kolivas kernel patches: http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/

Filesystems

Investigate Reiser4. Enable noatime,notail for reiserfs3.

Packages

Binutils

Include -Bdirect patch: http://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2005-10/msg00436.html

Fontconfig

Fontconfig cvs has a lot of performance improvements, I don't know if they are stable though.