How to disable animations in Ubuntu 16.04

Solution 1:

From unity tweak tool go to General and switch off Windows animations as seen below:

If you don't have it, you can install it with sudo apt install unity-tweak-tool.

Solution 2:

For the super key animation, you can try to disable background blur, using the Unity Tweak Tool, disabling any suggestion, history, etc, can speed up the super key.

To alt-tab I don't know anything that can disable the effects, but in Unity Tweak Tool you can disable windows animation on the section Window Manager -> General, for me, this was very significant to performance.

What you can do as well is disable the shadows from windows.

Solution 3:

It turned out I just needed to enable video acceleration in VirtualBox. This was more effective in speeding up my virtual Ubuntu than disabling animations.

1. Shut down the guest OS.
2. In VirtualBox Manager, right-click the VM.
3. Go to Display.
4. In the Screen tab, check "Enable 3D Acceleration."