Speed-Up Tips! [Was Re: Top Ten Nautilus Speed-up Tips ?]

[Loban Amaan Rahman <loban earthling net>]

Rather than do a top ten, I'll just make a list of the things I can
think of to speed up Gnome, in no particular order.

In Nautilus:
* Turn off the "smoother (but slower graphics)" option.
* Turn off unneeded sidebar tabs.
* Turn on the "show only folders (no files) in the tree" option.
* In the "speed tradeoffs" section, turn as many options to never as
  you can/want.
* Also in the same section, make the "don't make thumbnails for files
  larger than" value lower.
* Use a light nautilus-theme. There aren't too many choices, though.
* Turn off the "tighter layout" option.

In Gtk:
* Use a light gtk-theme, like the default or Raleigh. Never a pixmap
theme. Some other engines are fast.

In Panel:
* Turn off the "enable animations" option.
* Turn off the "prelight buttons on mouseover" option.
* Turn on the "fast but low quality scaling of button icons" option.
* Turn on the "keep menus in memory" option.
* Turn off the "auto re-check menus for newly installed software"
  option.
* Turn off tooltips.
* The less applets running, the better! ;-)

In Sawfish:
* Use another lighter window manager if the you find sawfish slow (I
  think it's pretty fast though).
* Again, use a light sawfish-theme. Most themes don't differ in speed
  too much, though.
* Set the "default window animation mode" to none.
* Turn off the "display tooltips for window frames" option.
* If you want tooltips, turn off the "show full documentation in
  tooltips" option.
* Set the "how windows being moved are animated" to box.
* Same for "how windows being resized are animated".
* Turn off the "show current position of windows while moving" option.
* Same for "show current dimensions of windows while resizing".
* Turn off the "play sound effects for window events" option.
* Turn off the "enable background image switching" option.
* There might be more, but I haven't researched this one much.

In General:
* Use a plain color desktop background instead of an image.
* Turn off the "enable sound server startup" option.
* Turn off the "sounds for events" option.
* Turn off all notification options in Launch Feedback.

In Hardware:
* What's the easiest and cheapest way to give things a boost? Why more
  RAM of course!

All of this is just what I've come across while using Gnome daily for
the several years, not through "extensive tests". The tips above vary in
how much they speed things up, some more, some less, and others just use
less memory and so makes the system feel faster.

If anyone else wants to add to this list or make a rebuttal on a
particular tip, please do! ;-)

	= Loban yes-it-can-be-pretty-AND-fast

PS. What would be cool is something I saw in Windows XP. There is a
dialog with all the performance vs beauty options in one place. In
addition, there is a slider bar at the bottom - one end is performance,
the other is beauty. As you slide it across, options above it
automatically get turned on or off. This allows a new person to quickly
find a good setup for his system without having to tediously go down a
big list.

> I like Nautilus but is awfully slow on my Pentium 233 so I was
wondering if 
> anyone had any speedup tips ? I'm already using a light window manager 
> (IceWM) which makes things better  but still if anyone has any 
> miscellaneous configuration tips to make it faster ? I am also keping 
> uptodate on the latest releases of Nautilus.


/-------------------------------------------------------------------\
|   Loban Amaan Rahman  <-- anagram of -->  Aha! An Abnormal Man!   |
|  loban earthling net, loban ugcs caltech edu,  http://i.am/loban  |
\-------------------------------------------------------------------/