I love the look of Unity so much (despite other opinions) but the laptop I want to buy only has 2gb of ram and a Core 2 duo processor, so from what I've heard Ubuntu will be averagely speedy. But I want it to be even more responsive, is there some options of Unity that I can turn off to do so?
To fine tune Unity effects you can use compizconfig-settings-manager. If you don't already have it you can install it by first enabling the Universe Repository and then installing the package via either the software center or with the command sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
When you run it you will receive a warning as shown below:
This is the moment when you should consider whether you have a recent backup This warning exists because many people got themselves in trouble by disabling the Unity Plugin entirely. Since we have current backups, we will click OK and continue.
I can't stress enough that if you find your self looking at the screen below, DO NOT UNCHECK the box in the left column of the window:
Most of the heavier effects are handled by compiz Effects - Choose Effects from the right hand column and you should see something like this:
Unchecking all the boxes on this page should turn off unnecessary eye candy and result in reasonably good performance. You can of course experiment with other settings and evaluate the impact on performance on your particular system. Personally, I leave Animations and Fading Windows on as they don't seem to have a major impact on performance on my hardware, but turning them off does have a positive impact on performance.
