Additional Thoughts on OS Tweaks

I made a post yesterday that has received an insane amount of traffic involving my processes and procedures for installing, setting up and tweaking Ubuntu Linux on my personal computer.

With the number of folks that have read, and commented on this article, I thought it was appropriate to follow up here with some additional thoughts.

First - please remember, first and foremost, this is how I set up my system. These settings/tweaks/application-set, etc. may not, and very possibly will not work for your specific case. My main purpose behind posting that was two-fold. First (like many of my posts) the information is for me - it’s my way of documenting things that I do, so I can go back and reference them later. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked up my articles on setting up alpine to work with gmail. I’ve also used some of these posts, such as my posts on VMware as a quick way to send someone some down ‘n dirty documentation. I use my own blog too

Secondly - please understand that no single tweak will ever be a magic bullet, and that no amount of tweaking will take slow hardware and magically make it as fast as a state of the art system. Applying tweaks are simply a way of getting the most out of your hardware. You are not going to make a Celeron with 256MB of RAM run Ubuntu as fast as a Core2Duo with 8GB of RAM no matter how many tweaks you apply.

Also, please do not take anything I post as hard fact. I’m learning new things everyday, just like you are. I am an IT Professional, but I also work mostly with Windows Servers with just a little Linux sprinkled on top (or in the case of our Xen Host Servers, Linux holding the Windows servers up ). I’m not a Linux pro, I’m a hobbyist, just as many of you are. I use Linux at home for many reasons - I like it, It’s fun, I like learning new things, and I like sharing what I learn with others.

I’m on a ton of mailing lists, I idle in IRC, I read forums, blogs and news sites all over the net - every day. I’m constantly looking for new and exciting things in technology, across the board, be it Linux, Windows, SQL, IIS, Apache, AD, whatever. I love information. Please, if you are reading my blog - research the information I put out there. Add too it, grow with it, and apply it in an intelligent way in your own environment. I then ask you to complete the circle of knowledge and share what you have learned with someone. It is a very rewarding experience.

Every year since I first started using Linux way back in 1999, people have been talking about “The Year of Linux on the Desktop”. While I don’t think we are quite there yet, it is getting very close, I think. Dell is supporting several Linux systems, not to mention the “Netbook” craze that’s going on. Linux is popping up everywhere, and I personally feel that to survive in the IT field long-term, Linux Systems Administration is a required skill to acquire. The awesome thing about Linux in general is the openness of everything surrounding it - from being able to look at the source code, to the freely available documentation all of the Internet. Please take all of this info you find, and use it responsibly!

Most of us are doing this for fun, so please keep it fun for all.