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
Motho ke motho ka botho 
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Mm, I wish that the HowTo was actually published here, I don’t really want to download it, unpack it, and browse it…
Hi Lefty. I’ll see what I can do. The problem is that it’s huge, and the post ends up unmanageable for both me and the reader.
I’ll try it again, but the first time I started cutting and pasting into WordPress I realized it was going to take as long to make it work as it did to put it all together. …
If someone wants to put it in a wiki or Web site, I could link to there. It’s just that a blog post doesn’t lend itself to the format or the size.
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It would be nice if the html version could be loaded into one page to allow searching in firefox.
You might want to tell people how to how to unzip the .tar.bz2 files for newbies.
Oh no! A howto for the howto!
Actually, you make a good point. I’ll see if I can concisely describe how to decompress the packages. Cheers!
I stumbled into this guide via a google search for rtorrent, and I just wanted to say what a REALLY good guide this is (the rtorrent tips were also good). I kinda liked to have it in a html archive instead of a long blog text – this is a keeper.
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If / when someone does one of these for gutsy in the future i think it would be usefull to link it here as i think many ppl will have this one bookmarked.
At present I’m anticipating a Gutsy guide, but it’s still a little early in the development for me. I jumped the gun with the Feisty guide, back in February and I regretted it. So don’t look for one until around … late September or early October. 😉
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