A new addon I've just discovered is a package called PRELOAD which basically runs in the background learning what kind of apps you like loading (firefox, etc.) and then puts these into free memory so when you open them they'll boot up faster.
Installing
From the terminal, install with...
sudo yum install preload //fedora
sudo aptitude install preload //ubuntu, etc.
Monitoring
You can monitor what resources it's using by...
sudo tail -f /var/log/preload.log
Or more specifically with...
sudo less /var/lib/preload/preload.state
These will give you output from it's logs as to exactly what programs it's caching and how it's operating.
Remove?
If you don't like it and want to remove it,
sudo yum uninstall preload //fedora
sudo aptitude uninstall preload //ubuntu, etc.
Links
More can be found at...
