Why my Ubuntu setup was dead slow lately.

My Ubuntu setup had been running insanely slow for a couple of weeks. I tried deleting all my configurations, but it didn’t work. Then 2 days earlier, when I was browsing Ubuntu forums, I stumbled upon some threads suggesting editing my /etc/hosts file would help. I desperately tried this not hoping this would change anything. Then as suggested, I added my hostname (which is ubuntu) to the end of the line :

127.0.0.1 localhost

Now it’s :

127.0.0.1 localhost ubuntu

This unbelievably increased the desktop performance. The gnome-terminal would take more about 10 secs to load, now it takes only about 1 or 2. Firefox loads much more faster.

If you are experiencing performance problems on a high-end computer, the /etc/hosts file should be the first to check.

Note that this will not make your old pc fly. I guessing that my /etc/hosts was corrupted somehow and that the “fast” version is the default one.