Ok all you Intel Duo users out there. I have an Sony Vaio VGN N130G. My OS is Linux Mint 10 Julia with Linux 2.6.36-mfat (i686) Kernel and I have a Intel Centrino Duo processor. Unfortunately Hyper-threading is not supported but there are some tweaks that you can do to improve your Duo processors performance. Some you may already know about and some not. I included all I know about tweaking my Duo here. If you know of anything else don't hesitate to comment back to let me in on it.

   First, open your Hardinfo Benchmark and run CPU Blowfish or whatever CPU benchmark you want. Note your results, its only good if you see improvement after the tweaks right? Now, edit /etc/default/rcS, and insert CONCURRENCY=startpar to enable parallel init.d script execution with serialized output. Edit DELAYLOGIN from yes to no, if it is not already no. Thus allowing kdm/gdm/xdm to log in users while the machine boots in the background.

  Then thru synaptic install intel-microcode and microcode.ctl. The microcode data file for Linux contains the latest microcode definitions for all Intel processors. While the regular approach to getting this microcode update is via a BIOS upgrade, Intel realizes that this is an administrative hassle; the Linux Operating System has a mechanism to update the microcode after booting the OS. This package contains only the microcode, so it needs the loader provided in the package microcode.ctl.

  The microcode_ctl utility is a companion to the IA32 microcode driver:

  It decodes and sends new microcode to the kernel driver for Intel IA32 family (Pentium Pro, PII, Celeron, PIII, Xeon, Pentium 4, etc.) and Intel x86_64 family processors; It signals the kernel driver to release any buffers it may hold. The microcode update does not permanently alter the CPU and must be performed each time the system is booted.

  Install the insserv package thru synaptic if it is not already installed, and then you must run update-bootsystem-insserv in terminal to reorder the boot scripts for maximum parallel execution based on dependency information. Review the order in /etc/rc*.d/ to check that it still looks sane, it should be fine. This step can be undone using 'update-bootsystem-insserv restore'.

  Now reboot your machine and run Hardinfo Benchmark again. I shaved six seconds off my boot time and 3 seconds off my CPU Blowfish benchmark. If you see good overall improvements drop me a comment and let me know!