Even more speedup tricks

My Thinkpad is really showing its age. Even with all the speedup tricks I've used, this laptop still feels slow sometimes. Using the top monitor, I found one of the biggest resource hogs was gdm.

So, I turned it off. I kept it from starting up automatically at rcconf.

But...but...isn't gdm the Gnome Desktop Manager? Indeed it is. If I turned it off, I wouldn't be able to log on to the computer, right? Well, it only affects graphical logins.

Now I start off with a command-line prompt, after which I bring up graphical mode with startx. Performance improvement? You bet!

However, turning off gdm also does have the unfortunate side-effect of disabling automount of USB devices and CD-ROM drives. I still keep gdm handy in case I need to.

One other thing: by default, startx brings up Gnome, but I prefer working within Openbox. I also had to create an .xsession file within my home directory. Only one line is needed there:

exec openbox

Man, I really need to get a new computer.