Every little bit of speed helps every little single seconds to improve your Linux speed and tweaking the boot speed. You can add the following to your GRUB menu (usually on the second line). The way that you can edit the boot parameters in the GRUB boot menu varies by distribution. The GRUB menu will usually tell you what to press to edit the boot parameter when you boot. Don’t worry about messing up on the GRUB menu when you booting, it is not permanent.

  • If you do not use any USB devices add “no usb” in the GRUB menu
  • If you are running a server and don’t need a GUI add “3″. After that you can install Webmin to manage from a web browser
  • Rather than webmin, I prefer using ssh :-) Just need to install ssh server, and you can access it remotely

Some BIOS hacks are important to speed up the boot process. Enter your BIOS and do the following:

  • Disable booting from CD-ROM and floppy (if you still have one). You can always use the hotkey like “del” or “F12″ or “Esc” depends on your motherboard to access the boot menu when you turn the PC on
  • Look for a setting called Quick Boot, or Quick Power On Self Test. Enable this if you have this option.

Inside the Linux system. Disable unneeded services. This depends on a lot of things. Are you running a server? Are you running a laptop? Look through your services with the chkconfig –list command to see what is enabled. Note that different distributions might not using this, this chkconfig command is a common way any Red Hat based Distributions. See here on how to use chkconfig to disable services. Here are some suggestions:

  • If you don’t print disable CUPS
  • Bluetooth, you know if you need it
  • If you don’t know what NFS stands for, disable it. :-)
  • SSH, do you SSH into your box? If not disable it. (Hey I used it always for the server, but what it needs for on a laptop?) You know when you want it.
  • iptables, it’s a common Linux Firewall. Most broadband modems or routers have firewalls built in. Disable it unless you didn’t secure your wireless. But I don’t know if you need double firewall, one in the router, one in your system
  • I remember I have to do “sudo apt-get remove tracker” in Ubuntu 7.10 because it always slowing my machine at around 5:00 PM !!  Even now in Jaunty 9.04 Ubuntu!!
  • In ubuntu, you can go to System -> Preferences –> Sessions.  Disable shitty services there
  • Check using top command or htop command to see what programs and services make you slow
  • Well, you know the idea, remove useless softwares, useless server stuff like NFS, SSHD, CUPS, etc !!

Did you know that on most distributions you can use the Alt+F1 to F7 to switch to virtual consoles? You can disable this by editing /etc/inittab. Be careful editing this file back it up if you are unsure. Look for lines like this:
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

Erase them all!! Hehe, JUST JOKING, lol. Comment 3-6 with a # sign at the beginning of each line. For example

#3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
#4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
#5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
#6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6

Again, on another distribution it might be not in /etc/inittab

Recompile your kernel it’s the best way to tweak up your system. This is a whole other topic, that I have to talk about it next time !!

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