More speed (responsiveness) for the linux desktop

Ram and file system cache:

vm.swappiness=20
vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50
more info

Preload most used applications/libs:

preload 
more info

Mounting /tmp to RAM

add this to your fstab:

tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,nodev,nosuid,mode=1777 0 0

more info

BFS Kernel

There is a set of kernel patches that increases the responsiveness of the linux desktop. This is not limited to archlinux btw.

There are two main ways to get it on archlinux:
Build it from AUR: yaourt -S linux-ck

Or us a repository with precompiled packages:

[repo-ck]
Server = http://repo-ck.com/$arch

more info

Sync bash history between sessions on the fly

If you work with more then one bash terminal at a time, it can be annoying that the bash history is only available in the other session after you closed the terminal (default bash behavior).

You can fix it by adding this to your .bashrc

shopt -s histappend
export PROMPT_COMMAND="history -n; history -a"

More about it here: http://briancarper.net/blog/248/

*EDIT:
I found it confusing that the history is always synced, even in the current session. This can be confusing while working, so i changed the above a bit:

HISTSIZE=10000
HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth:ignoredups:erasedups
shopt -s cmdhist
shopt -s cdspell
shopt -s histappend
#PROMPT_COMMAND="history -n; history -a"
PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a"

Beside the obvious changes  there are some more variables changes . "HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth:ignoredups:erasedups" to prevents bash to add dups. So your .bash_history keeps clean. Beside that i have added some more fun stuff. "cdspell" fixes typos while changing directories (yeah) and HISTSIZE increases the history size to 10000 lines. 


Removing "history -n;" has the effect, that the history is still up to date when you open a new terminal but existing terminals will not get the changes immediately. You have to execute "history -n" manually if you need the changes in the current terminal.

change chrome gtk colors

Chrom(ium) has the ability to use the colors from the gtk theme currently used by your desktop. Anyway, sometimes the colors chrome extracts from you gtk theme do not match with the rest of your desktop. To fix this problem you can modify how chrome uses this colors or define complete new colors.

How to do it is described here: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxGtkThemeIntegration

You can add that stuff to your ".gtkrc-2.0" file.

I uses this in KDE4 with qtcurve and it works fine.

Resetting screen resolution with xrandr

If a game or an other application messed up you resolution you can easiely reset it by executing:

$ xrandr -s 0

how to extract archives the simple way

Its easy as this.

*edit: Or you can use "atool". A script that covers the same functionality as the code below but supports even more complex operations. http://www.nongnu.org/atool/

Add this code to your .bashrc:

extract () {

   if [ -f $1 ] ; then

       case $1 in

           *.tar.bz2)   tar xvjf $1    ;;

           *.tar.gz)    tar xvzf $1    ;;

           *.bz2)       bunzip2 $1     ;;

           *.rar)       unrar x $1     ;;

           *.gz)        gunzip $1      ;;

           *.tar)       tar xvf $1     ;;

           *.tbz2)      tar xvjf $1    ;;

           *.tgz)       tar xvzf $1    ;;

           *.zip)       unzip $1       ;;

           *.Z)         uncompress $1  ;;

           *.7z)        7z x $1        ;;

           *)           echo "don't know how to extract '$1'..." ;;

       esac

   else

       echo "'$1' is not a valid file!"

   fi

 }

From now on you can extract the listes archives simply by calling "extract archive".

Spped up your linux system with cgroup

Here is a way described how to speed up your linux system.

I used the ubuntu way even on archlinux and it works.

http://www.webupd8.org/2010/11/alternative-to-200-lines-kernel-patch.html

Remove files recursively

Simple as this:

find mydir/ -iname "*.tmp" -exec rm {} \;