#softupdates

This may be quite trivial and it can be found also in the FAQ with a simple Google search, but I've somehow missed it until now. Enabling softupdates can really boost your desktop performance. It's not something I can measure and prove it, but the general feeling is that Xfce feels faster and this time it's usable and not that laggy. There's room for speed improvements still, especially in the video card department, but I'm happy with how the things are for the time being.

Enabling softupdates is very simple, just edit /etc/fstab, by adding the softdep keyword, as in the following example:

fec2653dbd41594a.a / ffs rw,softdep 1 1

This is an example from an /etc/fstab file with UUID, but it's trivial for the other, older type:

/dev/sda0a / /ffs rw,softdep 1 1