Works with Cinnamon/ MATE/ XFCE Desktop Environments (DE’s)
Been experimenting with a couple of interlinked tweaks on my test device
(C2D w/ 4Gb Ram and SSD) since last weekend and I’m happy to inform of a stable noticable latency reduction in my Linux Mint DE.
(read performance boost)
If you also want an overall feeling of a faster DE, read on…
1. IMPORTANT:
Set a timeshift restore point prior to starting!
2. WARNING: I wouldn’t attempt deviating from the settings published. (I’ve tried a few conotations and encountered hangs and application freezes)
IOW the advice of turning on zswap only in combination with a swappiness that has been reduced to 25 rings absolutely true in my testing that provides both stability with a reduced system latency.
The tweaks are clearly written over on:
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/speed-mint.html
The two interlinked tweaks in question are:
Decrease Swap Use
What this tweak achieves:
With the swappiness reduced, the linux kernel no longer attempts to enlarge the cache by paging applications out, which speeds up the reaction time of applications and GUI.
Setting a swapiness to 25 IS also stable here 🙂
Turn on zswap
Description within article..This tweak made an overall boost to responsiveness everywhere in the Operating System that I’d highly recommend in conjuction with decreasing the swap use above. Uses the CPU a bit more but bearly noticable.
NOTE: there are different settings dependant on how much memory your system has within the linked page above.
NOTE: Use the appropriate setting for the memory in your system.
These tweaks also work with HDD storage!
Many, many thanks to Pjotr for the updated article,
you’ve made me, my PC and my Linux Mint happy.
