How to make Ubuntu 24.10 faster?

The moment Ubuntu starts to feel sluggish, it’s time to roll up your sleeves. Here’s how to speed it up without breaking anything or switching to a lighter distro.

Disable Unnecessary Startup Applications

Ubuntu tends to auto-load tools you may never use. Kill the clutter:

gnome-session-properties

Uncheck anything you don’t need. If you’re not sure what something is, Google it or disable temporarily and test.

Or from terminal:

mv ~/.config/autostart ~/.config/autostart.bak

You’ll get a clean boot, and can move stuff back later.

Use Preload

Preload analyzes your behavior and preloads frequently used apps. It’s smart and low-effort.

sudo apt install preload

It works in the background. Once it’s installed, forget about it.

Turn Off Animations

Animations slow down the system, especially on older hardware. Kill them:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations false

You’ll feel the snappiness immediately.

Clean Your System Regularly

Junk piles up. Autoremove and autoclean help clear dependencies and cached packages.

sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt autoclean

Want a more aggressive cleanup?

sudo apt-get clean

If you’ve installed Flatpak apps too:

flatpak uninstall --unused

Switch to a Lighter Desktop Environment

GNOME is beautiful, but heavy. Try XFCE or LXQt for a serious performance boost:

sudo apt install xubuntu-desktop

Reboot, choose XFCE at login.

Use zRAM Instead of Swap (for Low RAM Systems)

zRAM compresses memory in RAM itself. Better than slow disk swap.

Install:

sudo apt install zram-config

Ubuntu handles the rest. Check it with:

swapon --show

You should see /dev/zram0.

Reduce Swappiness

Swappiness defines how often Ubuntu uses swap. Default is 60. Lower it to 10:

sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=10

Make it permanent:

echo 'vm.swappiness=10' | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf

Replace Tracker (File Indexing) with Something Lighter

GNOME’s Tracker eats resources. Disable it:

tracker3 daemon -t

Prevent it from restarting:

gsettings set org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files enable-monitors false

If you don’t need file indexing at all:

sudo apt remove tracker3 tracker3-miner-fs

Use a Lighter Web Browser

Firefox and Chrome are memory-hungry. Try:

sudo apt install midori

Or install Brave:

sudo apt install curl
curl -fsSLo /usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg https://brave.com/static-assets/keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install brave-browser

Disable Unused Services

Use systemd-analyze to inspect boot performance:

systemd-analyze blame

To disable a slow-loading service:

sudo systemctl disable servicename