Howto: Set up Feisty for speed, v1.3

Edit, Sunday, Oct. 19, 2008: Ubuntu 7.04, Feisty Fawn, has reached its end-of-life. There will be no further updates or corrections to this guide; please consider updating your system to Ubuntu 7.10, and consulting the Gutsy guide.

This is version 1.3 of “Howto: Set up Feisty for speed.” Please check the included version history page for details of changes.

This guide is a collection of tips and tweaks for Ubuntu Linux 7.04, gleaned from the Ubuntu Forums and countless other sites, collated and narrated with links to external resources and supplemental information. The howto includes a step-by-step procedure for setting up a system, tips on increasing system speed and suggestions on how to reduce disk usage and system load on sub-1Ghz machines.

This howto is released under the GNU Free Documentation License, v1.2. Please read the included license page for details.

The howto is available in two forms:

• As a Zim repository — a series of folders and plain text files coded in wiki-style markup, and intended to be used with the Zim desktop application.
• As a self-contained relative-linked HTML document, suitable for both graphical and text-only browsers.

These formats were chosen for several reasons. First and foremost, the size of the guide no longer lends itself to a blog post. Coding for external links and appearance would be difficult and prone to typographical errors.

Second, using Zim makes the document easier to manage, and handles the conversion to HTML in a single step. Furthermore, as a Zim package, the pages are precoded for possible insertion to an existing online or desktop wiki.

Next, an HTML version allows for offline use of the guide, on machines which lack a direct Internet connection or which suffer a slow or unreliable connection. Furthermore, HTML is platform-independent, which makes the guide accessible on other operating systems, even if it primarily applies to Linux. Finally, in HTML format, the guide can be easily inserted into other sites or hosts, with a minimum of effort.

The guide was built and tested in Zim version 0.19. Zim is Copyrighted © 2005 by Jaap G Karssenberg.

Both packages are compressed as .tar.bz2 files, and both are under 40Kb in size. Because of the filename requirements of WordPress.com, they are hosted elsewhere on the Internet and can be downloaded by clicking on these links:

Howto: Set up Feisty for speed, v1.3, Zim
Howto: Set up Feisty for speed, v1.3, HTML

For a command-line accessible hotlink, follow the above links to a download page.

To install the guide for use with Zim, decompress it into a folder, and add the folder as a repository in Zim.

To install the guide for use as an HTML document, decompress it, then open the index.html page in your browser.

For questions, corrections, ideas or suggestions for the howto, please feel free to leave a comment here. Translations and additional hosts are always welcome; I’d be more than happy to link to wikis, translations or revisions of the howto.

Enjoy!
K.Mandla

Version history:
v1.3, 18 October 2007
• Changed license to GFDL

v1.2, 15 August 2007
• Added some suggestions about X
• color depth
• choosing efficient themes
• xsetroot instead of wallpaper
• Added brief descripton of xtoolwait
• Minor touch-ups elsewhere

v1.1, 5 May 2007
• Added a version history page
• Added information on using nvidia-settings for overclocking; without-recommends tags for aptitude commands and revising sources.list files
• Discussed module management
• Clarified references to Mirage and cleaned some typos elsewhere

v1.0, 1 May 2007
• Moved files to box.net to avoid the renaming issue on WordPress.com

v1.0, 22 April 2007
• Initial release

Nvidia GeForce4 440 Go and the 9631 driver

After about a month of rebuilding the patched 8776 driver under my 440 Go, I stumbled across the tweak last night that might make it possible to use the 9631 driver on my card. This thread describes the exact problem, and the fix is a simple one-line option to the Device section of your xorg.conf

Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP"

I reinstalled nvidia-glx over top of my patched 8776 driver, and I got full acceleration from glxgears. I also tried it under a live CD of Xubuntu and it worked fine there too (although frame rates were depressed, no doubt from running the live CD and because of the added strain of the Xubuntu desktop).

According to the README for the 9631 driver. …

When assigning display devices to X screens, the NVIDIA X driver by default assigns display devices in the order they are found (looking first at CRTs, then at DFPs, and finally at TVs). This option can be used to override this assignment. For example, if both a CRT and a DFP are connected, you could specify:

Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP"

to make the X screen use the DFP, even though it would have used a CRT by default.

Note the subtle difference between this option and the “ConnectedMonitor” option: the “ConnectedMonitor” option overrides what display devices are actually detected, while the “UseDisplayDevice” option controls which of the detected display devices will be used on this X screen.

I should have time to try this on a clean installation tonight, which will be the true proof of it working. And hopefully my Feisty speed tweaks will be fully complete tonight too.