Both GNOME and KDE are “heavyweight” desktop systems: They are all-
inclusive, all-singing, and all-dancing environments that do far more than
browse your file system. The drawback is that their size makes them run
slowly on older systems. On the flip side, Ubuntu has other systems
available in the repositories, like the Xfce and LXDE desktops, which are a
great deal slimmer and faster than GNOME and KDE. If you find that
GNOME and KDE are struggling just to open a file browser, Xfce or
LXDE are likely for you.Apache
Despite being the most popular web server on the Internet, Apache is by no
means the fastest. Part of the “problem” is that Apache has been written to
follow every applicable standard to the letter, so much of its development
work has been geared toward compliance with standards rather than just
serving web pages quickly. However, with a little tweaking, you can convert
an inexpensive middle-of-the-road server into something capable of surviving
the Slashdot Effect (or “being Slashdotted”).
NOTE
Slashdot.org is a popular geek news website that spawned the Slashdot
Effect—the result of thousands of geeks descending on an unsuspecting
website simultaneously. Although Slashdot is still popular, other sites are
newer and have gained great momentum and popularity (we’re looking at
you, Reddit!). We are not trying to ignore the new sites but rather honor the
original. We freely acknowledge that many other wonderful sources of the
effect exist.The first target for your tuning should be the apache2.conf file in
/etc/apache2, as well as the other files in /etc/apache2. The more
modules you have loaded, the more load Apache is placing on your server.
Take a look through the LoadModule list and comment out (start the line with
a #) the ones you do not want. Some of these modules can be uninstalled
entirely through the Add or Remove Packages dialog.
As a rough guide, you almost certainly need mod_mime and mod_dir, and
probably also mod_log_config. The default Apache configuration in
Ubuntu is quite generic, so unless you are willing to sacrifice some
functionality, you might also need mod_negotiation (a speed killer if
there ever was one) and mod_access (a notorious problem). Both of these
modules can and should work with little or no performance decrease, but
often they get abused and just slow things down.