Using Linux to quieten your computer

Optical drives
Modern CD- and DVD-rom drives spin very rapidly causing much noise. Compromising speed to lower the noise can be done by lowering the drive's speed. There are a few ways of doing this:

Another way is increasing the readahead. Note that adjusting this is tricky since it might result in the drive spinning down after a read just to spin up again. This acceleration could cause a lot more noise then the drive simply continuously reading the disk.

Duron/Athlon (XP) processors
Due to some odd and mysterious reason AMD Socket A CPUs don't save power when they are idle (at least not as much as possible) unless you explicitly tell them too.

These processors can run A LOT cooler if you ask them too. The intricate instructions and explanations are found in the Athlon Powersaving HOWTO, or you could just use athcool

= System Bell = See turn off the system bell.