5. Installing updates and other packages

5.1 Other Useful Packages

There are a few more packages to pick out from Debian that will make this machine easier to live with. I use Enlightenment and GNOME, but I'm sure KDE has similar packages or can make use of these in particular.

sox

This is a basic, command-line sound-playing program.

aumix

This is a text-based mixer for sound cards. It allows you to set the volume control for the various sources for your sound card.

apmd

This is the APM Daemon. If you compile APM support into the kernel, you may want this.

wmapm

The Debian version is a bit old and has a bug where it never shows battery time over 90%. I grabbed the latest version from Freshmeat and compiled it and it works well.

wmmon

I just love this applet. It's a system CPU, Memory, and IO grapher. Debian has the latest 1.2 version all packaged up.

5.2 Tweaking the disk with hdparm

Another useful utility to get it hdparm. It allows you to set the hard disk parameters and improve performance.

Typing hdparm -i /dev/hda shows a drive and controller's parameters and settings. According to this (under Linux 2.2.5), the included disk can support PIO to mode 4, DMA mode 0 only, and a maximum MultSect value of 16.

I decided to make an init script to set the hard disk's parameters on bootup. It just runs hdparm with my desired settings:

hdparm -m16 -u1 -c1 /dev/hda

I couldn't get DMA working under Linux 2.2.5, though it did work under earlier kernels. I'm not sold on the value of DMA, so it didn't worry me.

Try using hdparm -Tt /dev/hda to test your hard disk's speed.