LowEndSystemSupport
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| == Installing XFCE == Some systems with lower memory configurations will be more responsive without the extra eye candy provided by the Gnome interface. To install '''XFCE''', a lightweight alternative to Gnome: * Make sure the Universe repository is enabled (see AddingRepositoriesHowto) * Install the package ''xfce4'' or ''xubuntu-desktop'' if using Breezy (see SynapticHowto) * Once all the packages are successfully installed you may log out (you don't need to restart your computer for these changes to take effect, isn't that neat?) * Select ''xfce'' from the '''Session''' option on the log in screen. Enjoy your snappy new desktop interface! You can always choose Gnome again later through the '''Session''' option if you get a memory upgrade or decide you don't mind the boggy interface. === Enabling automount === One of the useful features that running Gnome provides is the 'auto-magical' mounting of removable media, like CD's and USB drives. However, you can very easily have this feature whilst you use the superb XFCE4 Desktop Environment. * Open a terminal window and run 'gnome-volume-manager&'. This will start gnome-volume-manager and run it in the background. * Next time you quit XFCE4, select 'Save session for future logins'. This will ensure that gnome-volume-manager starts each time you start xfce. * Now plugin your favourite USB drive or CDRom and find it magically mounted in ''/media/xxxxx''. Note, that this won't bring up an icon onto your desktop as it would in Gnome as XFCE doesn't have support for desktop icons. However nice things, like the automatic importing of photos from memory cards and playing of audio CDs does occur. == Use Gnumeric instead of OpenOffice Calc == [http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/ Gnumeric] is an accomplished spreadsheet package which loads in seconds and uses very little RAM. It can open files in Microsoft Excel (.XLS) and OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ODS) formats, and can also save in Microsoft Excel format (saving in OpenDocument Spreadsheet support is not yet included). To get Gnumeric, install the package named ''gnumeric''. You may also want to install the online help (''gnumeric-doc'') and various other of the complementary packages. == Use Abiword instead of OpenOffice Writer == [http://www.abisource.com/ Abiword] is an fully-featured word processing package which, like Gnumeric, launches in a flash and uses very little RAM. It can both open and save files in Microsoft Word (.DOC) and OpenDocument Text (.ODT) formats, along with dozens of other formats. To get Abiword, install the package named ''abiword''. You may also want to install the online help (''abiword-help'') and various other of the suggested complementary packages. == Use the Epiphany web browser instead of Firefox == If your system has 192 MB of RAM or less, the [http://www.gnome.org/projects/epiphany/ Epiphany web browser] will probably give significantly better performance than the Firefox 1.5 version. To get Epiphany, simply install the Ubuntu package named ''epiphany-browser''. You may also want to install the ''epiphany-extensions'' package, which contains a handful of extensions including an ad-blocker. One thing to be aware of is that there are fewer extensions available for Epiphany than for Firefox, however Epiphany has lots of nice features including tagged bookmarks (a la del.icio.us) and support for [http://avahi.org/ Avahi] to automatically discover certain web pages (such as those offered by modern networked printers). == Speeding up Firefox == * The 'adblock' extension can make browsing particularly slow. You might have better results using a separate proxy server like Privoxy instead (available in the repositories) * You can try using the mozilla.org build of firefox instead of Ubuntu's version. For some reason, it is significantly faster. See FirefoxNewVersion. == Installing Ubuntu on systems with small RAM == For an even more bare-bones install, see http://www.binonabiso.com/en/Ubuntu-miniRAM-HOWTO.html More information: ["Installation/LowMemorySystems"] CategoryDocumentation CategoryCleanup |
#REFRESH 0 http://help.ubuntu.com/community/LowEndSystemSupport |
LowEndSystemSupport (last edited 2008-08-06 16:38:39 by localhost)