Saturday, February 12, 2011

Easy way I sped up Chromium browser

I love Google's Chromium browser, but it's slooow.

I sped it up significantly by creating a RAM disk and using that for caching (FYI: This applies to a Linux Desktop. Windows users, you'll have to look elsewhere):

- Create the mount point:
wrexallen@wrex-Qosmio-X505:$ sudo mkdir /var/ramdisk

- Add mountpoint to /etc/fstab:
none /var/ramdisk tmpfs mode=1777,size=512M 0 0

This mounts a memory filesystem in /var/ramdisk on boot. I use the size=512M parameter to limit how much it can grow.

- Mount the new RAM disk:
wrexallen@wrex-Qosmio-X505:$ sudo mount /var/ramdisk

Edit chromium application link by changing:

/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome %U

to:

/opt/google/chrome/google-chrome %U --disk-cache-dir="/var/ramdisk"

Stop/restart chromium.

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Does your office use Cisco VPN and you want to connect with Linux?

Here's how I do it with Ubuntu:

VPN from ubuntu linux:

Download vpnc and kvpnc
- vpnc is a Cisco compatible VPN client
- kvpnc is a vpn clients frontend for KDE

- Install them as follows:
sudo apt-get install vpnc
sudo apt-get install kvpnc

For Gnome integration, grab the following (Thanks Jason C.!):
sudo apt-get install network-manager-vpnc-gnome

-After the install go to Applications->Internet and click on the KVpnc shortcut
KVpnc vpn application will be launched (or in a term window as root, type in kvnc &) .
-Click on the Profile menu and choose Import Cisco pcf file and choose the pcf file
-Now click on the Connect button in the right. You can also change your profile settings, should you need to, here.
-Use Terminal Server Client to remote or rdp to a windows box, if so desired.

My current Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop



Been playing with Compiz Fusion. Like!