Speed Up Linux Application Loading Time Using Preload

Speed, in every sense of the word, is I believe the main reason why we all use computers nowadays; whether in recreation, editing family photos from the previous summer vacation, or even when browsing your favorite website on the Internet – we want speed, and lots of it. That’s one fact I think that everyone would agree.

Although Linux operating system is already known to it’s speed, there is one tool called preload that was created to add more spice to that flavor. I first encountered preload a few years ago when part of its source code and its usability was featured on a Linux magazine. I did not really pay attention to it until just recently while I was thinking of other ways to add more boost to my Linux apps’ loading time that I once again thought about it. So I did a little search for it in the Arch repo, fortunately it’s there so I installed it. Preload, as described in its manual, “is an adaptive readahead daemon that prefetches files mapped by applications from the disk to reduce application startup time.”

If you’re using a lot of applications at the same time (multi-tasking), like I do, then preload is one great companion that can help you ease things out a little bit and make those apps load in the fastest way possible. Although it’s a little hard to tell the difference in speed performance after you install it for the first time, maybe because preload needs a little time before it learns how to reduce the loading time of your Linux applications. If you’d like to know more about this sort of performance adjustment, you can check out preload’s official documentation (see Chapter 6: Experimental Evaluation).

To install preload in Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S preload

To install preload in Debian-based such as Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install preload

To install preload in RPM-based such as Fedora:

sudo yum -y install preload

Then make preload run on all runlevels (except runlevel 1):

sudo chkconfig preload on

.