Preload - Prefetching Daemon

If you want to improve startup time of your applications and the overall performance of your desktop, Preload is the right application for you. Preload is an adaptive prefetching/readahead daemon. Preload will determine common used applications and will keep the libraries in your RAM before you even load them up - this leads to a faster startup time. Preload is also adaptive enough to determine if you change your working habits as well.

Preload is in the Ubuntu software repositories, so you can install it this way:

sudo apt-get install preload

Preload doesn't need to be configured as it is adaptive and relies on a count of the number of times an application is launched. The configuration file for Preload is kept in /etc/preload.conf and the default values should be fine for most people.

Monitoring Preload
You can monitor Preload and see what files it holds in your RAM and how much RAM it uses.

sudo tail -f /var/log/preload.log
sudo less /var/lib/preload/preload.state