Making Your Raspberry Pi Run Faster

(According To Me)

These are any tips I remember to write down, in order to get the most performance out of your pi.

X Server (Desktop) Mode

  • Edit /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart
    • Comment out the line (I used a #) which says pcmanfm --profile LXDE, to remove the desktop icons and background, which waste resources.
  • The line starting with lxpanel is the 'start menu' equivalent. I leave this running, because the default Openbox menu (right-click the desktop) is somewhat lacking if used as a full desktop, although you can disable that the same way.

Commandline (SSH or direct tty bash) Mode

These two don't actually speed your pi up, but they are invaluable tools in order to work out what is slowing you down:-

  • install htop: it's a syntax-highlighted extension of top, which supports scrolling, sorting by clicking, and lots of other cool, sanely-designed features. As opposed to memorising key presses to perform something simple like sorting by memory usage, with top.
    • Also get gpm: general purpose mouse server for terminal. This gives you mouse usage even without X running, allowing you to use unix-style copy/paste (highlight to copy, middle-click to paste), click columns to sort by them in htop. You can even have a semi-decent browsing experience, if you also:

  • Install a text-mode browser, such as elinks. I have also heard good things about w3m and netsurf, but neither seem as easy to use straight-off as elinks. Tip: if your mousewheel doesn't scroll, then use the insert and delete keys instead. Having a text-mode browser is handy if you have to configure a router which only accepts admin logins locally, and you're somewhere else, SSH'd into the pi.

  • Set up a static IP (more on this later), then uninstall the dhcp client (it goes by many names in the repositories -- search for dhcp), iplugd (handles plugging and unplugging of your ethernet cable) and network-manager(high level abstraction shit you don't need) Because something needs to bring up your ethernet 'interface' (port), add this line: ifup eth0 (where eth0 is the linux name of your eth plug, checkable with ifconfig) to /etc/rc.local to run it on boot.

  • install sysv-rc-conf: its ncurses interface is a bit claggy (how do you increase the daemon name column's width?) but this program allows you to edit which daemons (services) start in which run levels. Handy for a quick removal of a daemon you want to keep, but not at startup, such as gpm (which you won't want running ALL the time, only when you're logged in).

Tagged as: linux tips raspi raspberrypi raspberry pi apt debian ubuntu server devops