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How To Speed Up Linux Desktop by 30%

I am using Linux (Fedora Core 6) on a pretty high end hardware (at least when I bought it) - Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz (4M shared L2 Cache) with 2 GB DDR2RAM, nVidia dual-head graphics card for over a year now. And yet a simple change made it at least 20-40% faster. Even my firefox (with 100+ tabs always open) feels much faster. So what is this magic change?

I switched to Xfce desktop from Gnome desktop (default). That’s it folks!

Contrary to popular belief Xfce doesn’t only make low end hardware faster, it makes pretty high end hardware faster too and by a significant margin. I also didn’t notice any UI issues after migration. Yes, the desktop looks a little different but you can easily get used to it.

Try it, you won’t regret it, especially if you are a power user.

Notes:
1. You can always switch your desktop environment to a different one while logging in by changing your session.
2. You get same applications in both environment.

3 comments:

  Anonymous

June 12, 2008 at 12:39 PM

30%? What was 30% faster? What tests did you run to know it was 30%, or even 40% sometimes as you've claimed. This seems exaggerated quite a bit, so I feel the need to ask as you didn't bother to give any info about it for some odd reason.

  Suresh Kumar A

June 13, 2008 at 10:00 AM

i mean 30% and above. You can able to realize the system performance by your usage above and after. its approximate value only. but i am sure it is above 30%.

  Suresh Kumar A

June 13, 2008 at 10:01 AM

I haven't tested Fluxbox. let me try out.