Minimizing my system?

[spacefreak]

Ok, I like to tinker with things, and I've just decided to ditch Windows for good, which means I have a ton of questions, so you'll probably get real tired of me here soon.

I know it's pretty easy to continuously build upon your system, you think of something you might need, you download it. If you replace it or don't use it anymore, usually you'll forget to remove it, and it will just build and build and build.

My real question is, besides your average spring cleaning, what steps can I take to minimize the things running so my Kubuntu set up will run faster? How do I change the servies running? How I know which ones are important and which ones it would really really be unfortunate to turn off? I'm a pretty quick learner, but I'm not always quite sure where to find the info I'm looking for. Sorry if I'm a bit long winded.

[dabayman]

Re: Minimizing my system?

Most things running in your system tray are for the most part, necessary. Ctrl + esc gives you assess to your system activity equivalent to your "ctrl + alt + delete" in windows. Also, if you want to aptimize your spped i would go into K > System Settings > Desktop > and "Un-check enable desktop effects" or even browse through them and decide which ones you don't want.

[kevinc]

Re: Minimizing my system?

You may want to install various programs to try them out, see if they suit you.
After some time you will probably accumulate several programs that basically do the same thing.
Example are web browsers, mail clients, media players, and the list goes on.

When you install several programs of one type and find one that you prefer, linux gives you a great choice, then you can uninstall using adept or synaptic or apt-get the programs that you don't want. This will prevent you from building up too much.

[dibl]

Re: Minimizing my system?

what steps can I take to minimize the things running so my Kubuntu set up will run faster? How do I change the servies running? How I know which ones are important and which ones it would really really be unfortunate to turn off?

These are "windows questions" -- first thing you need to understand is that Linux is not like Windows in many, many ways. Going after performance improvement by doing the things you did for Windows will more likely break it than improve it.

The Linux kernel developers have already thought through how to make the typical system perform optimally -- don't assume that your performance is way less than it should be, or that your system is necessarily loaded up with a lot of unneeded services, or that the processes that show up when your run "top" are using any resources just because they are on the list. The worst assumption that comes from Windows is about memory utilization. Here are some links that might help:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Optim...ed-53836.shtml

http://rudd-o.com/en/linux-and-free-...ow-to-fix-that

http://ubuntusoftware.info/Howto_twe..._ultimate.html