Are you like me and do you own a netbook with rather low specs, like 1GB RAM for example?

Then you might have noticed that Xubuntu can become painstakingly slow after using it for a while. Not to mention all the moaning and groaning your hard disk does This is not you having way to many applications open or whatever, this is Xubuntu. Since it is not you, the problem can be fixed

Fire up terminal and log in as root.

Type

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

After you hit enter a number will return, it will be most likely 60.

This is way to high and this is the cause of Xubuntu’s slowness. We need to decrease this number to 10.

Type

mousepad /etc/sysctl.conf

(the “l” in sysctl is that letter of the alphabet, not the the number “one”)

After you hit enter this screen will open.

Scroll all the way down and add this line add the end of the document:

vm.swappiness=10

Make sure to save the changes before you close mousepad!

Reboot (yes this time you really need to reboot) and check in terminal if swapiness is 10. As you can see in my case it was
(Remember, you can always do the cliccie for a larger piccie!)