How can I have a faster laptop with linux?

[sinergy]

Hi,
I have a somewhat "old" ASUS X555LJ 64-bit laptop, with intel i7 and 8GB ram, and NVIDIA GEFORCE 920M graphic board, that has the latest version of Ubuntu installed, 20.04.2 .
Everything works well except that it is quite slow, especially at start up.
I'd like to change something to have it go faster, but I am not sure what to do because I don't have much experience with the various linux distros and their peculiarities/configuration posibilities, etc.
On the other hand I was also considering installing another distro because I learned that Ubuntu now has relaxed its user privacity levels.
So, what other distribution could be installed that has chances to speed up the functioning.
Thanks

 

[Brickwizard]

old" ASUS X555LJ 64-bit laptop, with intel i7 and 8GB ram,

that is not old... the lighter weight distribution in general the faster it will be, but some of the very lightweight ones can take a lot of work to set up, for a medium weight try MX21-64bit or Debian stable [make sure to download the version to include proprietary/non-free drivers] or for a light weight try Antix or puppy [there are many other choices that do not use ubuntu to choose from]

Bwiz

 

[kc1di]

In Ubuntu which uses system d you can find what is taking so long to boot by going to a terminal and typing this command.

systemd-analyze blame

this will give you a list of what services are being enabled at boot and how long it's taking them to actually load. I've found that It's usually something to do with finding an internet connect or looking for a Database that usually slows the process down. As far as speeding things up once booted best way is to disable un needed eye candy and disabling services that are not needed. This page can be of help also. Good Luck. Post the output of the systemd-analyze command so we can see it and we maybe able to help further.

 

[gvisoc]

I agree with the above recommendations.

In addition, if the laptop has a mechanical hard drive, swap it for an SSD. That’s going to make a huge difference for a relatively small price.

 

[sinergy]

Many thanks for all your inputs!
Does anybody know if any Fedora distro could be of help in sorting this issue out? I ask about Fedora because as I understand it Fedora has been designed for running more technical applications, like professional drawing programs etc. and I may be interested in Fedora if it really does help with running this kind of software

 

[Brickwizard]

almost any distribution of linux will run almost any application, if you are looking to run primaraly CAD applications then in among the 500 or so available distributions is CAE Linux

CAELinux - Download

CAELinux: an open source LiveDVD Linux distribution dedicated to computer aided engineering, scientific simulation, finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics (CAE / FEA / CFD)

www.caelinux.com

I have never run it my self , it is leaning to engineering cad design [not architectural] but may be worth your trying

Bwiz

 

[sinergy]

almost any distribution of linux will run almost any application, if you are looking to run primaraly CAD applications then in among the 500 or so available distributions is CAE Linux

CAELinux - Download

CAELinux: an open source LiveDVD Linux distribution dedicated to computer aided engineering, scientific simulation, finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics (CAE / FEA / CFD)

www.caelinux.com

I have never run it my self , it is leaning to engineering cad design [not architectural] but may be worth your trying

Bwiz

Thank you @brickwizard I was not aware of the existence of CAE Linux which is actually what I might need. Is there also one more oriented to architectureal CAD design though? (that you know of)

 

[Alexzee]

Linux Lite is pretty fast maybe give that a try and swap out the HDD for a SSD like gvisoc suggested.

I used to run CAD on Slackware and it's performance was great.

 

[kc1di]

I don't think you gain a lot by going to Fedora. Though it's a good Distro. The one draw back with it I see is it's short life cycle.
Ubuntu has just as many technical apps as most of the others. Depending upon what you mean by technical apps. Fedoras may be a bit newer. But on most machines Fedora will not run any faster. Tell us a bit more of what your looking to do and we maybe able to give better advise. Again an SSD is a good investment.

 

[Brickwizard]

Is there also one more

well there is Poseidon Linux but It is ubuntu based, or you could use ine of the scientific linux builds, as i said before you can run almost any linux application on almost any build of linux

​

 

[Vrai]

I agree with the above recommendations.

In addition, if the laptop has a mechanical hard drive, swap it for an SSD. That’s going to make a huge difference for a relatively small price.

Exactly what I was going to suggest.
Installing a 500GB SSD in my Acer laptop with decent specs made a pronounced improvement in startup and shutdown times.

One other thing that may improve startup time somewhat would be to turn off automatic startup of applications which are not needed at startup. I've read that disabling IP6 can help (for example).
You may be surprised by just how many there are.
Be careful though.

 

[Condobloke]

Be careful though.

Take a snapshot with Timeshift before you start clicking and changing things !

 

[dos2unix]

Does anybody know if any Fedora distro could be of help in sorting this issue out? I ask about Fedora because as I understand it Fedora has been designed for running more technical applications, like professional drawing programs etc. and I may be interested in Fedora if it really does help with running this kind of software

The kernels are basically all the same, in all the distro's. So that in itself won't make anything faster or slower.
Typically it's how many processes, and how heavy they are.

The one draw back with it I see is it's short life cycle.

Some of us, see that as a plus , still 18 months is generally long enough.
And you can update the distro release in place. Without losing anything you on your hard drive. ( backup recommended of course )

 

[sinergy]

I don't think you gain a lot by going to Fedora. Though it's a good Distro. The one draw back with it I see is it's short life cycle.
Ubuntu has just as many technical apps as most of the others. Depending upon what you mean by technical apps. Fedoras may be a bit newer. But on most machines Fedora will not run any faster. Tell us a bit more of what your looking to do and we maybe able to give better advise. Again an SSD is a good investment.

Well the tech apps which I'd need are mainly cad based software, which I haven't seen many good ones running in linux OS so far (but haven't looked very much around as of lately, so there may be innovative CAD software running on linux now, that is comparable to Autocad)

 

[sinergy]

In Ubuntu which uses system d you can find what is taking so long to boot by going to a terminal and typing this command.

systemd-analyze blame

this will give you a list of what services are being enabled at boot and how long it's taking them to actually load. I've found that It's usually something to do with finding an internet connect or looking for a Database that usually slows the process down. As far as speeding things up once booted best way is to disable un needed eye candy and disabling services that are not needed. This page can be of help also. Good Luck. Post the output of the systemd-analyze command so we can see it and we maybe able to help further.

Hi,
I run the suggested command and this is what I get:

40.787s man-db.service
29.354s plymouth-quit-wait.service
26.683s mysql.service
26.044s snapd.service
21.402s logrotate.service
21.222s udisks2.service
20.197s networkd-dispatcher.service
19.553s dev-sda1.device
18.803s [email protected]
17.122s systemd-journal-flush.service
16.460s [email protected]
16.386s accounts-daemon.service
15.546s [email protected]
14.106s avahi-daemon.service
14.103s bluetooth.service
14.054s NetworkManager.service
13.618s polkit.service
12.994s switcheroo-control.service
12.983s thermald.service
12.971s systemd-logind.service
12.903s wpa_supplicant.service
12.614s dev-loop16.device
12.422s dev-loop15.device
12.221s NetworkManager-wait-online.service
11.860s dev-loop11.device
11.663s dev-loop23.device
11.638s dev-loop10.device
11.636s dev-loop24.device
11.633s dev-loop13.device
11.551s dev-loop25.device
11.286s dev-loop19.device
11.151s dev-loop17.device
10.788s dev-loop26.device
10.738s dev-loop8.device
10.478s dev-loop18.device
10.343s dev-loop20.device
10.233s dev-loop9.device
10.055s dev-loop6.device
10.039s dev-loop22.device
10.006s dev-loop21.device
9.917s dev-loop12.device
9.805s dev-loop14.device
9.799s dev-loop2.device
9.624s dev-loop7.device
9.284s dev-loop1.device
9.283s dev-loop3.device
9.281s dev-loop4.device
9.271s dev-loop5.device
7.370s dev-loop0.device
5.984s systemd-udevd.service
3.540s systemd-resolved.service
2.688s grub-common.service
2.537s rsyslog.service
2.235s ModemManager.service
2.227s gpu-manager.service
2.103s systemd-rfkill.service
1.882s apport.service
1.629s apparmor.service
1.556s snapd.apparmor.service
1.502s gdm.service
1.271s sysstat.service
1.193s systemd-sysusers.service
1.156s systemd-sysctl.service
1.149s e2scrub_reap.service
1.093s networking.service
1.072s keyboard-setup.service
1.066s snap-gnome\x2dlogs-106.mount
1.064s snap-gnome\x2dcharacters-726.mount
1.047s snap-gtk\x2dcommon\x2dthemes-1519.mount
1.046s snap-gnome\x2d3\x2d34\x2d1804-77.mount
1.006s snap-snap\x2dstore-558.mount
996ms snap-gnome\x2d3\x2d38\x2d2004-76.mount
975ms systemd-random-seed.service
957ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
949ms systemd-modules-load.service
932ms fwupd.service
890ms snap-snap\x2dstore-547.mount
868ms snap-gnome\x2dsystem\x2dmonitor-174.mount
863ms plymouth-start.service
857ms snap-gtk\x2dcommon\x2dthemes-1515.mount
803ms snap-gnome\x2dcalculator-826.mount
796ms snap-gnome\x2d3\x2d34\x2d1804-72.mount
791ms systemd-backlight@backlight:intel_backlight.service
784ms snap-gnome\x2dsystem\x2dmonitor-169.mount
772ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
690ms snap-bare-5.mount
654ms grub-initrd-fallback.service
641ms snap-chromium-1845.mount
619ms snap-core18-2246.mount
604ms snap-chromium-1854.mount
584ms snap-core-11606.mount
568ms snap-core-11993.mount
553ms snap-core20-1270.mount
536ms systemd-udev-trigger.service
536ms snap-gnome\x2dlogs-103.mount
525ms snap-core18-2253.mount
523ms snap-gnome\x2dcalculator-884.mount
510ms snap-core20-1169.mount
506ms snap-gnome\x2dcharacters-761.mount
492ms snap-gnome\x2d3\x2d28\x2d1804-161.mount
487ms snap-gnome\x2d3\x2d28\x2d1804-145.mount
482ms snap-gnome\x2d3\x2d38\x2d2004-87.mount
462ms [email protected]
440ms ua-messaging.service
418ms systemd-timesyncd.service
350ms systemd-fsck@dev-disk-by\x2duuid-ec06e287\x2d8032\x2d4b8f\x2d95cc\x2d3409ee26ee3f.service
319ms pppd-dns.service
308ms ufw.service
268ms upower.service
265ms dev-disk-by\x2duuid-de6d1acb\x2d0e1a\x2d4f7d\x2dbb2b\x2d38e319b16d67.swap
236ms ifupdown-pre.service
235ms systemd-journald.service
223ms dns-clean.service
197ms systemd-remount-fs.service
166ms dev-hugepages.mount
165ms dev-mqueue.mount
164ms sys-kernel-debug.mount
163ms sys-kernel-tracing.mount
160ms kmod-static-nodes.service
143ms [email protected]
142ms systemd-update-utmp.service
136ms colord.service
134ms home.mount
107ms console-setup.service
45ms snapd.seeded.service
41ms motd-news.service
34ms alsa-restore.service
27ms systemd-update-utmp-runlevel.service
27ms [email protected]
25ms openvpn.service
23ms setvtrgb.service
17ms ureadahead-stop.service
15ms systemd-user-sessions.service
15ms kerneloops.service
12ms plymouth-read-write.service
7ms rtkit-daemon.service
4ms sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount
3ms sys-kernel-config.mount
1ms postgresql.service
1ms snapd.socket

Does anyone see processes that could potentially be stopped without harming the correct/efficient OS' behaviour?

 

[kc1di]

You should be able to disable man-db and snapd Unless you intend to use snap packages. That will gain you some boot speed. also bluetooth can be disabled if your not using that.

You can disable them with this command

systemctl disable <service>

replace <service> with name of service you want to disable. If it cause a problem you can always restart the service like this

systemctl start <service>

 

[kc1di]

This is what my analyze readout looks like for compassion to yours.

systemd-analyze blame
1.370s dev-sda1.device                                                         >
 714ms networkd-dispatcher.service                                             >
 462ms tlp.service                                                             >
 446ms udisks2.service                                                         >
 419ms systemd-logind.service                                                  >
 355ms accounts-daemon.service                                                 >
 328ms ubuntu-system-adjustments.service                                       >
 305ms e2scrub_reap.service                                                    >
 303ms lightdm.service                                                         >
 300ms plymouth-quit-wait.service                                              >
 230ms ufw.service                                                             >
 222ms NetworkManager.service                                                  >
 210ms systemd-resolved.service                                                >
 204ms avahi-daemon.service                                                    >
 188ms keyboard-setup.service                                                  >
 182ms polkit.service                                                          >
 181ms networking.service                                                      >
 177ms upower.service                                                          >
 166ms ModemManager.service                                                    >
 155ms gpu-manager.service                                                     >
 152ms systemd-journald.service                                                >
 150ms systemd-udev-trigger.service                                            >
 147ms thermald.service                                                        >
 141ms wpa_supplicant.service                                                  >
 141ms apparmor.service                                                        >
 128ms systemd-udevd.service                                                   >
 125ms systemd-hostnamed.service                                               >
 116ms systemd-timesyncd.service                                               >
 115ms lvm2-monitor.service                                                    >
 113ms hddtemp.service                                                         >
 105ms [email protected]                                                       >
  98ms alsa-restore.service                                                    >
  96ms grub-common.service                                                     >
  73ms lm-sensors.service                                                      >
  57ms systemd-modules-load.service                                            >
  52ms rsyslog.service                                                         >
  46ms colord.service                                                          >
  46ms kerneloops.service                                                      >
  43ms systemd-fsck@dev-disk-by\x2duuid-098d2e2c\x2deeb3\x2d4cea\x2d9b4a\x2df12>
  37ms dns-clean.service                                                       >
  36ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service                                          >
  31ms systemd-sysctl.service                                                  >
  30ms pppd-dns.service                                                        >
  28ms dev-disk-by\x2duuid-cdba27ec\x2dc75c\x2d409d\x2d8552\x2d00616aae6799.swa>
  25ms [email protected]                                           >
  24ms setvtrgb.service                                                        >
  23ms dev-mqueue.mount                                                        >
  23ms grub-initrd-fallback.service                                            >
  22ms dev-hugepages.mount                                                     >
  22ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service                                      >
  22ms sys-kernel-debug.mount                                                  >
  22ms bluetooth.service                                                       >
  22ms sys-kernel-tracing.mount                                                >
  21ms systemd-sysusers.service                                                >
  20ms blk-availability.service                                                >
  19ms systemd-random-seed.service                                             >
  18ms kmod-static-nodes.service                                               >
  17ms systemd-remount-fs.service                                              >
  16ms plymouth-start.service                                                  >
  14ms plymouth-read-write.service                                             >
  13ms home.mount                                                              >
  13ms systemd-update-utmp.service                                             >
  13ms systemd-journal-flush.service                                           >
  12ms console-setup.service                                                   >
  11ms systemd-update-utmp-runlevel.service                                    >
   9ms systemd-backlight@leds:tpacpi::kbd_backlight.service                    >
   9ms systemd-backlight@backlight:intel_backlight.service                     >
   9ms systemd-user-sessions.service                                           >
   8ms rtkit-daemon.service                                                    >
   7ms sys-kernel-config.mount                                                 >
   7ms finalrd.service                                                         >
   6ms ifupdown-pre.service                                                    >
   4ms sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount                                           >
   3ms openvpn.service