How To: Free Up System RAM To Increase Performance

[tcrroadie]

This guide will explain how to easily free up some system ram by disabling unneeded services and the graphical login manager GDM. This guide focuses on the Gnome desktop and Fluxbox window manager. As we already know, the PS3 has a rather limited amount of system ram that can at times cause system slow downs. By disabling unneeded background services such as the print server CUPS and the system task scheduler CRON, we can free up some needed ram. We will also be disabling Gnome's graphical login manager GDM, which alone will free up about 30megs of RAM. The use of the Fluxbox window manager over Gnome will free up an additional 80 megs of RAM. So lets begin.

Step 1

Log into Gnome and disable any services that you may not need by going to System > Administration > Services. Simply uncheck the check box next to any service that you do not want started when you boot Linux. You will also need to uncheck the check box next to GDM since we will be setting up the system to launch your Gnome desktop from a text log in screen. Just ignore the message you receive about data loss.

Step 2

Disable any Gnome specific utilities such as Network Manager and Update Notifier that run in the background by removing them from your session startup list. System > Preferences > Sessions. Again uncheck the check box next to each service that you do not want to start when you log into Gnome.

Step 3

Now we will create a simple text file which will enable us to start our preferred desktop environment from the command line after we log into our system. The name of the file we need to create is called .xinitrc. Working in your users home directory, open a terminal and launch the terminals text editor nano.

[fusionisthefuture]

in feisty i had the option to uncheck gdm in the sessions manager. but in gutsy i dont. am i the only one? how do i change this with a terminal?

thanks,
-arne
_________________
mythtv + PS3 + hdhomerun = so much unused potential

dell 2407wfp-hc

[tcrroadie]

Hi fusionisthefuture,

That is odd. The option was in my Gutsy install. Regardless, this is how to disable GDM from your terminal.

You need to disable GDM in your current runlevel. Ubuntu's default runlevel is 2. You can find out what runlevel you are currently in, using the runlevel command.

[EdgarS]

men can you expand the tutorial please, i´m a newbie in linux i followed all the tutorial step by step but when i log in in fluxbox i dont know waht to do plz help

[Nergar]

This should be in a wiki or something, and if you could explain how a little more about linux desktops,

maybe having IceWM or FVWM would be lighter than gnome/kde/xfce and not as confusing as *box window managers

[Radical Dreamer]

I did everything you said and it worked great, speed is way up.... now if only I had sound. I've tried various things on i found from google, but none of them worked.

So frankly I have no sound at all, not when watching a video and not when playing an SNES game. Any sugestions?

[drwells]

I'd like to start off saying great guide. It worked very well, you could give a warning that unchecking GDM will kill your current gnome session. This was unexpected, but fortunately I have a laptop I could pull your guide up on.

I followed the guide and booted up to a terminal did the startx. However, running Gnome I still use basically all of my system ram. What is the point of disabling GDM if Gnome uses up all of my system RAM anyways? I might as well leave GDM running, eh?

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but you could just leave GDM installed and install alternate desktop managers XFCE/fluxbox/KDE4 and boot those via GDM or XDM. This would skip dumping the user to a terminal (oh noez!) and apparently costs no more ram than remove the desktop manager.

[jms]

[WeeBaldFella]

Hi,

I have a fresh install of Gutsy (just set up the resolution and internet connection) on my PS3 and have followed your tutorial up to the part where i go get fluxbox (sudo apt-get install fluxbox).

Unfortunately i can't give the exact message (posting from work .. shhh ) but i basically get told that fluxbox is not found.

I can browse the internet so i know my connection is ok. What can i do from here?

Also when I tried to compile from the source tarball for some reason gcc failed. I think i am missing something important but not sure what.

Hope you can help,

<=S=>

[jordan]

You need to disable GDM in your current runlevel. Ubuntu's default runlevel is 2. You can find out what runlevel you are currently in, using the runlevel command.