What an interesting question... Why not use all the RAM and HD space you have as long as it doesn't affect performance? It's one that's been nagging at me a lot lately.

I've seen an 8.10 64bit Live CD running on a dual monitor setup and I've seen it do so VERY beautifully. Everything except sound worked right out of the box. If I had a desktop system like that, I'd be running it that same way. It was fast, responsive, pretty, everything.

On the other hand, that isn't my system. My system is a laptop. Why care about these things on a laptop? How about the obvious. My trimming system usage when you're running you can save battery life by miles. With newer laptops coming out with less and less battery power, that's worth something.

The 6-cell battery this laptop was purchased with provided Vista with "Up to 1.5hr battery life." Wow, like omg, really? Vista will give me 1.5hr battery life. Holy crap, that's slightly over the length of one of my classes.

YES! Battery life is a big factor in optimization. That's not the only thing though.

When I tell my computer to do something, I don't want to wait for it. I want it done before I finish telling the system to do it. So speed/responsiveness is another concern.

When I want to do something, I don't want to try to figure out what the process was to do it. I want the process remembered for me.

I want my system doing exactly what I want it to. Nothing more and nothing less. When I want to do something that alone takes 1GB RAM, like running a Vista virtual machine, I don't want to worry about killing other things to do it.

So, what do I do this for?

1. I want long battery life on a small battery
2. I want a fast system
3. I want a responsive system
4. I want everything automated
5. I want my system to be mine
6. I want my system resources when I need them

So, what do I do about these things?

1. The fewer processes I'm running, the less RAM I'm using. I use the RAM as a measure of how much activity is going on in my system. The fewer things that are running, the longer my battery will last. By trimming intensive processes, I'll obtain longer battery life. This isn't the only measure I use, but it's the fastest accurate measure I can obtain. Currently over 60% of my battery life goes to the LCD display.

2. Since I want everything to load as fast as possible, I need to find ways to trim down the load time of everything. I need to trim the load time of Ubuntu, Login Manager, Firefox, Irssi, Desktop Environment, etc. This is one of the things I do.

3. By taking care of #2, I take care of a lot of this. I also develop techniques that allow the system to react to my input faster than normal.

4. I write many scripts that automate things that I do. Create an entire drupal website with a large number of scripts to run? I run 'site-addsite SITENAME' and it's done. I want to feed a minimally formatted data file to a backup script run by cron? Yes I do and it works perfectly.

5. I make it work exactly like I want it to. If I want my menu to pop up with Super+M, I do(did) it. If I want the clock to show milliseconds, I'll do it in one small modification.

6. I keep it lean. When I want to do something like run a Vista VM, an XP VM, and 2 other Linux VM's and the same time, then I just do it.

I have a lot of reasons that I make my system as fast, lean, and mean as I possibly can. You probably got here from IRC, please don't tell me I'm just wasting my system resources. Perhaps realize that I enjoy making Ubuntu work for me in ways that Windows and Macintosh couldn't dream of.

Thanks for your time,
-MTeck