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On my desktop at home, a 2008 Vaio w/4GB RAM and dual core processor running 12.04 LTS, I've been experiencing of late a perceived performance degradation. It's most apparent at startup but it's also noticeable when working with/on (JS, mainly) the browser (especially, Chrome but also Firefox). My system is up to date but it includes (for sure) thousands of programs which are not used very often.

I've read a thread about this issue but it looked pretty old and it didn't address the LTS vs normal distro stuff.

So, my questions are:

  1. Does an installation (and I mean a LTS one, of course) gradually degrades its performance over time even when it's regularly updated? If so, why?
  2. Is there any actual difference between a clean install and an upgrade in the case of a LTS distro? If so, how would installing (lots of) new software after the system is working could affect its preformance?
  3. How to recognise the signs showing that it might well be the time to invest on a new computer?

Thanks in advance,

Nacho

P.S. In case of carrying out a clean installation, is there any way of ending up with basically the same software base you had before?

nmizar
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1 Answers1

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  1. An installation should not gradually degrade, if your software is reliable (no bugs). Slow downs in my experience are generally down to issues with specific pieces of software and usually fixable without the need to reinstall.
  2. If you do a full wipe you would get a clean new home. Pending bugs in the upgrade process you should not have any difference with installed software. You don't need to do a full wipe to clean your home out.
  3. There are no Ubuntu specific signs. When tasks that you normally do take too long that would be acceptably faster on a newer machine.

You can backup the list of installed software on your machine - How to backup settings and list of installed packages has all the steps required.

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NGRhodes
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