Question: What are your tips for improving overall system performance on ubuntu? Inspired by this [question](https://askubuntu.com/q/2099) I realized that some default settings may be rather conservative on Ubuntu and that it's possible to tweak it with little or no risk if you wish to make it faster.

This is not meant to be application specific (e.g. make firefox load pages faster), but system wide.

Preferably 1 tip per answer, with enough detail for people to implement it.

A couple of mine would be:

* Install [Preload](http://techthrob.com/2009/03/02/drastically-speed-up-your-linux-system-with-preload/) (via Software Center or `sudo apt-get install preload`);
* Change [Swappiness](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq) value - "which controls the degree to which the kernel prefers to swap when it tries to free memory";

What are yours?

PS: Since this is not intended to have a unique answer but rather, several useful tips, I'm making this community wiki out-of-the-box.

Answer: 
1. Use **JFS** filesystem. It's *rock solid*. It has *lowest CPU usage* and a very good overall performance.
2. Set vm.vfs\_cache\_pressure. This is my /etc/sysctl.d/10-desktop-responsiveness

[prefix the comment lines with a #, this web interface does not like them...]

These settings increase responsiveness for a typical desktop workload.

vm.swappiness instructs the linux kernel to favour application code over
caches when these two compete for RAM.

vm.vfs\_cache\_pressure controls inode/dentry (i.e. filesystem) cache vs.
 other caches, i.e. we want to keep filesystem meta-data in RAM if possible.

From: <http://rudd-o.com/linux-and-free-software/tales-from-responsivenessland-why-linux-feels-slow-and-how-to-fix-that>

```
vm.swappiness=15

vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50

```
The ubuntu-tweak utility has a handy "Janitor" tool that allows you to clear caches and orphan packages very easily. 

```
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

```

Note that as of 2016-04-16 Ubuntu Tweak is abandoned, with last update over year ago - see <https://github.com/tualatrix/ubuntu-tweak> (what makes <http://blog.ubuntu-tweak.com/2012/10/22/thank-you-ubuntu-tweak-will-continue.html> outdated).

![Ubuntu Tweak's Janitor](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y2dAD.png)