Does removal of unnecessary kexts should reduce boot time and increase performance?

[XLR]

On a technical level, i'm more familiar with apple pre-OSX operating systems, and i was able to speed up boot time and drastically optimize system performance just by disabling some extensions and control panels in the System Folder.How does it works in OSX? Are OSX kexts work like OS9 extensions? Are they being loaded into memory at boot process? Is there anything i can do in order to optimize system performance, reduce boot time, and free up memory for other applications in OSX? Any tips?

[alicizmar]

Here's a tip for ya...name your thread so it's ASKING for tips, not reading as though it CONTAINS them.

You'll get much more respect for it and your question answered.

[poopmonkey]

Slimtool can remove the PPC or Intel part of the application to save some HDD space.

[XLR]

Here's a tip for ya...name your thread so it's ASKING for tips, not reading as though it CONTAINS them.

You'll get much more respect for it and your question answered.

 

I see, so you're also looking for some tips?

Thread renamed btw, hope it looks better now.

[XLR]

Slimtool can remove the PPC or Intel part of the application to save some HDD space.

Seen, thanks.

[Beerkex'd]

Leopard Cache Cleaner can 'delocalize' your OS - deleting language packs that you don't need frees up +1GB of space.

 

It can also perform many other maintenance tasks, like scan for virus using ClamAV and defragment your harddrive.

[DukeRaoul]

On a technical level, i'm more familiar with apple pre-OSX operating systems, and i was able to speed up boot time and drastically optimize system performance just by disabling some extensions and control panels in the System Folder.How does it works in OSX? Are OSX kexts work like OS9 extensions? Are they being loaded into memory at boot process? Is there anything i can do in order to optimize system performance, reduce boot time, and free up memory for other applications in OSX? Any tips?

 

Do you miss the Extensions Manager? I do.

To answer your question, probably so. I bought a cheap iBook a few years ago, and it came loaded with Panther (10.3) but only had 256MB of RAM. So after bootup, I had not a lot of free memory to run stuff. Thinking in the Old Mac head frame of reference, I went looking for the Extensions and how to disable the unnecessary ones... found them in /System/Library/Extensions/. There's currently 272 Extensions in my Leo.4 "Extensions" folder, and I know I don't need them all, but now I have 2 GB of RAM on this newer mac and I'm not worried about it as I always have plenty of free RAM.

 

I don't know for sure if boot time will speed up much, but the amount of available RAM will increase if you remove unnecessary Extensions from their normal folder. I don't know of any actual program or "Control Panel" to use for this task, but you can manually do it like I did on the ol' iBook:

 

Make a folder on the Desktop or wherever you want it called Disabled Extensions, then use your own best judgement as to which of the 200+ Extensions you won't be needing... I know for example that I don't need "Apple_iSight.kext" since I don't have an iSight camera.

Drag each unnecessary Extension file into the Disabled Extensions folder. This will only create copies of them in that folder - backups in case you break something. To actually remove an extension the easy way, just drag it from the Extensions folder to the trash. It will ask for your admin-user password to do this, so it might be tedious if you are doing a lot of them.

This is the simplest way I know of to do what you're asking. Use at your own risk! Extensions are protected by the OS with special permissions for a reason - many of them are crucial.