Looking for ways to improve performance on an existing desktop machine, which is being unresponsive and laggy in basic use. One thing I notice is heavy use of swap.
Kubuntu 24.04 LTS w/ low latency kernel
- i5 CPU
- 12gb ram
- 512gb SSD
- GB ethernet.
Commonly running
- Firefox
- Thunderbird
- Element Desktop
- Nextcloud Desktop
Changes made
- Update all packages from PPA
- Lowered swappiness to 10 to reduce disk writing
- fstrim for improving SSD performance.
- Disabling all KDE animations
Settings / General Behavior and change "Animation speed" all the way to "Instant"- Manually disabling individual animation behaviors
Workspace Behavior / Desktop Effects
System Monitoring
I really like Glances, but it is system intensive enough that I've stopped using it as a client/server on my machines.
iotop is simple and works well.top works fine
Checking Journal Log Usage
journalctl --disk-usage
# journalctl --vacuum-time=7d
Quietly runs in the background, monitoring which applications you use most often. Over time, it builds a profile of these frequently used applications. When your system is idle, Preload automatically loads these resources into RAM.