LowEndSystemSupport

Revision 5 as of 2005-09-29 20:38:32

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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 (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-volme-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.

Speeding up Firefox

  • The 'adblock' extension can make browsing particularly slow. You might have better results using a seperate proxy server like Privoxy instead (available in the repositories)
  • Try downloading the mozilla.org build of firefox instead of using the ubuntu version. It is a little more responsive. Tips:
    • Back up bookmarks and settings first - you'll probably need to erase ~/.mozilla once the new version is installed
    • Install it in /usr/local/firefox or /opt/firefox to keep track of it
    • Uninstall 'mozilla-firefox' in Synaptic. This will remove 'ubuntu-desktop' which is safe to do.

For an even more bare-bones install, see http://www.binonabiso.com/en/Ubuntu-miniRAM-HOWTO.html

More information: ["Installation/LowMemorySystems"]