Problem/symptoms:
1. Older laptop(dell Inspiron 700m) very slow with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS installed.
Laptop System Specs(Dell Inspiron 700m):
CPU: Intel Pentium M 725 / 1.6 GHz
RAM: About 1.2 GB of DDR SDRAM
HDD: 40 GB
Video: Intel Extreme Graphics 2
Instructions:
Install genome-session-flashback: This is going to remove the visual effects
1. You will need to install gnome-session-flashback. Use “sudo apt-get install gnome-session-flashback” command in the terminal.
2. Once gnome-session-flashback is installed, you will need to restart the system. When the system asks for a login, click the ubuntu icon on the top right. Click and choose “GENOME Flashback (Metacity).”
Change the swappiness:
1. Install gksu and leafpad applications. the commands are “sudo apt-get install gksu”
2. Change the swappiness by editing a particular text file which you can open with
“sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf”
3. Once the text file is open, add “vm.swappiness=10.” Skip a line and add this line.
4. Restart the system and check if the swappiness has changed. You can check the swappiness value with “cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness.” The default value of swappiness is 60.
Conclusion:
-Installing gnome-session-flashback sped up the system tremendously. This also allowed some programs to run properly on my computer. In addition, the menus did change, and they were removed from the side panel which were integrated in the menus on the top left named “Applications” and “Places”.
This is how Ubuntu 14.04 would look before installing the application.
This is how it would look after installing the application. The sidebar is not present anymore, and a few other changes were made such as a task bar located at the bottom.
