How to improve booting speed of your Ubuntu?

1. Reducing the boot menu delay -

If you dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows on your computer the boot menu appears for 10 seconds, during which you can select either Windows or Ubuntu. If you only have Ubuntu installed, a prompt appears for three seconds telling you that you can hit a key to see the boot menu. You obviously don't need to wait for the 3 seconds since you have no other OS to boot from. You can eliminate this delay by editing the boot menu configuration file.

$ gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Then search for the line that reads timeout 10 and change the 10 to 0, to disable the boot menu completely.

2. Run boot-time scripts in parallel -

Whenever Ubuntu boots, it runs several scripts that start necessary background services. By default these are set to run one-by-one but if you have a processor with more than one core, such as Intel's Core Duo series or AMD's Athlon X2, you can configure Ubuntu to run the scripts in parallel. This way all the cores are utilized and quite a bit of time can be saved at each boot.

To make the change, type the following to open the necessary configuration file in Gedit:

$ gksu gedit /etc/init.d/rc Look for the line that reads CONCURRENCY = none and change it so it reads CONCURRENCY = shell. Then save the file and reboot your computer.

3. Build a read ahead profile customized to your machine -

Ubuntu ships with a program named readahead which allows it cache frequently accessed files to avoid searching around for them at the startup. A default readahead profile is included in Ubuntu but you can create your own, tailored to your system. Here's how to do it: Boot your machine and at the boot loader menu, highlight the Ubuntu entry and press key file. This will let you temporarily edit the boot menu entry.

- Use the cursor keys to move the highlight down to the second line that beings kernel and hit file again.

- Use the right arrow key to move to the end of the line and, after the words quiet and splash, add the word profile.

- Hit Enter and then b to boot your computer.

Note that the first boot will be slow because the readahead cache will have to be rebuilt. In subsequent boots, however, you should see speed improvements.

4. Trimming the GNOME startup programs -

Once you've logged into the GNOME desktop, you'll face yet another delay as all the GNOME background software starts. A few seconds can be saved by trimming this list and that can be done using the GNOME Sessions program (System file Preferences Sessions). Under the Startup Programs tab, look through the list for items you might want to prune. For example, if you're never going to use Evolution's alarm function then Evolution Alarm Notifier can be disabled by removing the check alongside it. Be careful. Don't turn any program off unless you are not sure what it does. For example Volume Manager isn't related to audio, instead it enables the automatic detection of external storage devices attached to your machine.

5. Manage Startup Applications -

Overtime you tend to start installing applications. If you are a regular It's FOSS reader, you might have installed many apps from App of the week series. Some of these apps are started at each start up and of course resources will be busy in running these applications. Result: a slow computer for a significant time duration at each boot. Go in Unity Dash and look for Startup Applications.In here, look at what applications are loaded at start up. Now think if you there are any applications which you don't require to be started up every time you boot in to Ubuntu. Feel free to remove them.But what if you don't want to remove the applications from start up? For example if you installed one of the best indicator applets for Ubuntu 16.04, you will want them to be started automatically at each boot. What you can do here is to delay some the start of some of the programs. This way you will free up the resource at boot time and your applications will be started automatically, after sometime. In the previous picture click on Edit and change the run command with a sleep option. For example if you want to delay the running of Dropbox indicator for lets say 20 seconds, you just need to add a command like this in the existing command.

6. Remove Language Related IGN From APT-GET Update -

Have you ever noticed the output of sudo apt-get update? There are three kind of lines in it, hit, ign and get. You can read their meaning here. If you look at IGN lines, you will find that most of them are related to language translation. If you use all the applications, packages in English, there is absolutely no need of a translation of package database from English to English.

If you suppress this language related updates from apt-get, it will slightly increase the apt-get update speed. To do that, open the following file: sudo gedit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00aptitude And add the following line at the end of this file: Acquire::Languages "none";

7. Reduce Overheating -

Overheating is a common problem in computers these days. An overheated computer runs quite slow. It takes ages to open a program when your CPU fan is running like Usain Bolt. There are two tools which you can use to reduce overheating and thus get a better system performance in Ubuntu 16.04, TLP and CPUFREQ. To install and use TLP, use the following commands in a terminal: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linrunner/tlp sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install tlp tlp-rdw sudo tlp start You don't need to do anything after installing TLP. It works in background. To install CPUFREQ indicator use the following command: sudo apt-get install indicator-cpufreq

Restart your computer and use the Powersave mode in it.