Tweaking Linux

DELETION CANDIDATE

Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Reason: This article only has two tweaks and could easily be merged with multiple other articles

This article was created for Linux users to share tips and tricks with each other.

General tweaks

Use tcmalloc/jemalloc instead of Glibc malloc

Warning: this is NOT recommended and may cause segfaults IF your piece of software statically links a malloc implementation. Doing it on a per-program basis is safer.

Glibc's malloc is not as performant or scalable as tcmalloc, or even jemalloc. You can expect some small to massive performance gains¹, depending on your workload, by forcing software to use your memory allocator of choice.

To do this, use your preferred editor to create:

/etc/ld.so.preload

/usr/lib/lib*.so

... where * is either jemalloc, or tcmalloc.

Tip: to start a program once with your preferred implementation of malloc, issue LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/lib*.so program using the terminal.

Xorg server

Disable mouse acceleration in X

In order to disable mouse acceleration use your text editor of choice to create:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-mouse-acceleration.conf

Section "InputClass"
  Identifier "My Mouse"
  Option "AccelerationNumerator" "1"
  Option "AccelerationDenominator" "1"
  Option "AccelerationThreshold" "0"
EndSection

Your config file will take effect the next time you start X.