slackware-friendly netbook
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From: Douglas Mayne on 30 Mar 2010 10:42 On Tue, 30 Mar 2010 15:24:47 +0100, Martin wrote: > On 03/30/2010 03:03 PM, Michael Black wrote: >> On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, notbob wrote: >> >>> On 2010-03-30, Pirillo <remailer(a)reece.net.au> wrote: >>>> >>>> It's not only about memory and processor power. Some of these >>>> netbooks have no moving parts.... >>> >>> Some, not all. My Asus eee comes with a 160G hdd and is most >>> certainly a "netbook". >>> >> The solid-state only netbooks didn't last very long, maybe about a >> year. Now, it looks like few if any do not have a hard drive. >> >> It wasn't clear if they switched to get around the issue of all that >> writing to the solid state drive, or if they did it for marketing, >> nobody really wanted something with "only" 8gigs of "hard drive". >> >> Michael >> >> > > What was the problem with solid-state drives on netbooks? I'm not sure I > understand the last couple of posts > I am not sure I understand the subtle difference that Pirillo is making. In my mind, first and foremost, it is the form factor that defines a netbook. Something physically smaller and lighter than a traditional laptop, especially very low weight (< 2 lbs (=1 kg)). Pirillo is generally correct about rewrite cycles with flash memory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Memory_wear However, the current generation of flash memory may be guaranteed for 5 years, or for lifetime. Some of the memory on this page has a lifetime guarantee: http://www.kingston.com/flash/cf.asp BTW, I have setup an 8G flash module as a hard drive for testing purposes. It is a "do it for yourself" kit, that uses a Kingston CompactFlash Elite Pro 133X (documented on ref. page) and a simple flash- to-sata controller module. So far, I haven't been blown away by its performance. I was actually expecting a bit more than the performance it is reporting so far: raw read speed: 25 MB/s Magnetic drives can achieve 50-100 MB/s. YMMV. -- Douglas Mayne
From: Sylvain Robitaille on 30 Mar 2010 10:44 On 2010-03-30, Pirillo <remailer(a)reece.net.au> wrote: > > It's not only about memory and processor power. Some of these netbooks > have no moving parts.... notbob followed up: > > Some, not all. My Asus eee comes with a 160G hdd and is most > certainly a "netbook". Mine came with a 4GB SSD. I use an 8GB SD card for /home and /local (for software installed separately from what ships with the OS). The smartest thing I ever did for this thing was replace the original (Xandros based) OS with Slackware. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sylvain Robitaille syl(a)encs.concordia.ca Systems analyst / AITS Concordia University Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science Montreal, Quebec, Canada ----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Sylvain Robitaille on 30 Mar 2010 11:33 Pirillo wrote: > ... Some of these netbooks have no ... hard drives. The OS runs > entirely on flash cards or similar. They have a limited life, a > standard distro like Slackware would probably wear them out very > quickly. ... Tune your mounts. This isn't terribly difficult. It's not a perfect solution, but neither are hard disks with rotating platters. They all fail in some way eventually. The decision for me (with my Asus EeePC) was to stay with the pre-installed (Xandros-based) OS, for which updates had apparently stopped being produced, or switch it to Slackware, which I use on every other computer I own. It wasn't exactly a tough decision. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sylvain Robitaille syl(a)encs.concordia.ca Systems analyst / AITS Concordia University Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science Montreal, Quebec, Canada ----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Helmut Hullen on 30 Mar 2010 10:34 Hallo, Martin, Du meintest am 30.03.10: > What was the problem with solid-state drives on netbooks? I'm not > sure I understand the last couple of posts. The price (price per GByte). For 100 Euro I get (here in germany) 500 GByte HD or 32 GByte SSD. Viele Gruesse Helmut "Ubuntu" - an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me".
From: Sylvain Robitaille on 30 Mar 2010 11:36
Michael Black wrote: > The solid-state only netbooks didn't last very long, maybe about a year. You must mean in terms of availability on the market. My EeePC is still going strong. > It wasn't clear if they switched to get around the issue of all that > writing to the solid state drive, or if they did it for marketing, > nobody really wanted something with "only" 8gigs of "hard drive". More likely the latter. Heck, mine has only 4GB of "hard drive" (I got tired of waiting for the 8GB version to be available, and decided to get the 4GB version instead). -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sylvain Robitaille syl(a)encs.concordia.ca Systems analyst / AITS Concordia University Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science Montreal, Quebec, Canada ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |