Speed up Ubuntu (II)

In my previous post, I shared some basic tips to speed up Ubuntu and all Ubuntu based Linux distros. Yet another tip to make your Ubuntu more stable and faster.

Reducing "Swappines" ;

The swappiness parameter controls the tendency of the kernel to move processes out of physical memory and onto the swap disk. Because disks are much slower than RAM, this can lead to slower response times for system and applications if processes are too aggressively moved out of memory.

• swappiness can have a value of between 0 and 100
• swappiness=0 tells the kernel to avoid swapping processes out of physical memory for as long as possible
• swappiness=100 tells the kernel to aggressively swap processes out of physical memory and move them to swap cache

The default setting in Ubuntu is swappiness=60. Reducing the default value of swappiness will probably improve overall performance for a typical Ubuntu desktop installation. A value of swappiness=10 is recommended, but feel free to experiment. Note: Ubuntu server installations have different performance requirements to desktop systems, and the default value of 60 is likely more suitable. 

Open terminal.

To check the swappiness value

 

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

To change the swappiness value A temporary change (lost on reboot) with a swappiness value of 10 can be made with 

sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=10

To make a change permanent, edit the configuration file with your favorite editor: 

gksudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

Search for vm.swappiness and change its value as desired. If vm.swappiness does not exist, add it to the end of the file like so: 

vm.swappiness=10

Save the file and reboot.

References

Ubuntu Community Documentation
Speed Up Ubuntu (I)