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The great thing about Linux, the free source operating system, is that people all around the world are working to make it better for you. But to get the most out of the OS, you need to tune it yourself. Because the combinations and permutations of hardware, software and application are literally endless, the advice that follows is necessarily
general but it should provide a good set of guidelines for further investigation.
The first thing to do is make sure that the machine only has necessary functions. If it is a Web server, then mail servers should be disabled, for example. Before you start tuning, run as many benchmarks as you need to establish a baseline for performance, so you can measure how effective your changes are.
There are two main ways to address a disk drive -- SCSI and IDE. The controller chip on a SCSI device does most information processing during a transfer, and IDE does not use a controller, forcing the CPU to take control. If your system is doing a lot of work, SCSI devices can carry some of the load.
Because hard drives are relatively inexpensive, putting more than one in a single machine can greatly increase performance. Today's systems, with two IDE channels, allow two disk drives to run in parallel. Data that is heavily accessed should be most quickly accessed, and be placed on the swiftest disk drive.
Even a lightly loaded system can be slowed down by swap files, so swap space should be on one or more separate partitions. Enough memory should be available to allow important programs to remain in memory, and swap space should store unused programs quickly, when necessary.
Network performance depends on a wide range of variables, from the actual, physical connection to the types of equipment that are being connected to the applications that are running.
The easiest way to tune memory is simply to purchase and install adequate amounts of memory. Some high-end chips carry as much as two megabytes cached on board. And the more that happens in memory, the faster computers run: more applications, more information moving around, more happy users. There are, of course, situations where big memory doesn't mean big gains, as with basic mail machines or Web servers handing out simple pages.
Modifying bus speeds can provide a fast system enhancement. Because most computers come with fairly conservative settings, and high-quality components have a degree of tolerance for higher bus speeds, there may be a chance to make a system 'hotter' without actually cooking it.
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The great thing about Linux, the free source operating system, is that people all around the world are working to make it better for you. But to get the most out of the OS, you need to tune it yourself.
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