Re: [SLUG] Solid State Disk Works Okay with Linux on Kogan Laptop
On 14/12/11 19:53, Jake Anderson wrote: On 12/12/2011 09:27 AM, Tom Worthington wrote: ... replaced the 2.5 Inch SATA disk drive with a Solid State Disk (SSD) ... double check your file system has options appropriate to make use of TRIM ... Done for the main partition. But I was not sure if I should do this for the swap partition as well. As I understand it, adding the discard option tells the system to send an ATA_TRIM command to the solid state storage device, to tidy up (a bit like de-fragmenting a disk): http://sites.google.com/site/lightrush/random-1/howtoconfigureext4toenabletrimforssdsonubuntu -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Solid State Disk Works Okay with Linux on Kogan Laptop
On 12/16/2011 08:31 AM, Tom Worthington wrote: On 14/12/11 19:53, Jake Anderson wrote: On 12/12/2011 09:27 AM, Tom Worthington wrote: ... replaced the 2.5 Inch SATA disk drive with a Solid State Disk (SSD) ... double check your file system has options appropriate to make use of TRIM ... Done for the main partition. But I was not sure if I should do this for the swap partition as well. As I understand it, adding the discard option tells the system to send an ATA_TRIM command to the solid state storage device, to tidy up (a bit like de-fragmenting a disk): http://sites.google.com/site/lightrush/random-1/howtoconfigureext4toenabletrimforssdsonubuntu The general advice for SSD's is to run without swap, minimising writes to disk etc. That said, If you want to use swap, then use trim on it. Basically it comes down to this. writing to a SSD cell is moderately quick reading from a ssd cell is blazing fast. Overwriting a ssd cell is dog slow, it first reads the block (which can be 128kb in size) then it erases it (this is the really slow part), then writes back the data with the changes you have asked for (probably 4kb if you have a standard block size). SSD's have a wear levelling thing built in that remaps logical sectors to physical sectors to try and avoid the erase part of an overwrite but once all the sectors are used it can't be avoided any longer and it goes really slowly. Generally file systems don't actually have a mechanism to delete or erase data, there's no point on magnetic media as writes are always the same speed. TRIM sends erase commands to the disk so it can do that slow erasing at its leisure (aka when your not waiting for it ;-) You should be using TRIM on everything that touches the disk, otherwise it'll keep filling up its empty blocks table with stuff from your swap writes. I haven't verified it but logic seems to dictate cleanup can be accomplished without a security erase by writing a huge file to the disk and deleting it with trim support. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Android for work
I will give pclinux a go next time, I think. Well, by lack of answers it would seem Android may just be a toy. Given nobody is putting their hand up to say 'yeah, its a good work tool'. Will run a phone though.. No debate about that. On 12/15/11, Heracles herac...@iprimus.com.au wrote: On 15/12/11 13:02, David Lyon wrote: On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 9:45 AM, James Linderj...@tigger.ws wrote: When an elderly and distinguished scientist say something is not possible he is nearly always wrongsmile I know I could buy more memory or get multicores.. involves money and time.. The memory footprint of ubuntu 11 is obviously too much for the hardware I have and I'm not claiming anything else. I found Puppy to be kewl, but a bit off the beaten track. I used it for small embedded stuff, and much as I'm not a fan of the whole ubuntu paradgsm it does work and there is lots of expertise if you need it. Still if puppy works for you then use it :-) Embedded is what I'm working on.. so the speed advantage is what I need. PCLinuxOS is fast, uses a light X11 interface and works well in older hardware and just about set up my wifi for me. I have the 64bit version and it flies. Heracles -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Android for work
On 16/12/2011, at 9:00 AM, slug-requ...@slug.org.au wrote: On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 9:45 AM, James Linder j...@tigger.ws wrote: When an elderly and distinguished scientist say something is not possible he is nearly always wrong smile I know I could buy more memory or get multicores.. involves money and time.. The memory footprint of ubuntu 11 is obviously too much for the hardware I have and I'm not claiming anything else. I found Puppy to be kewl, but a bit off the beaten track. I used it for small embedded stuff, and much as I'm not a fan of the whole ubuntu paradgsm it does work and there is lots of expertise if you need it. Still if puppy works for you then use it :-) Embedded is what I'm working on.. so the speed advantage is what I need. Just to harp on for a moment U11 does not have any significant memory issues, gnome and the GUI do. Ditch those and you are good to go. U makes it easy to do and to manage. And to harp yet more ... embedded and speed have nothing to do with each other, you can have any combination that you choose. Both U and Knoppix running from ramdisk are really slick n quick If you are playing with ARM, I am finding the gumstix overo to be rather neat. http://gumstix.com James-- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
[SLUG] Re: Android for work
Is anyone on the list using Android for a significant amount of work? I've been considering the Asus Transformer for the ability to have a proper keyboard and touch pad and then use it as a tablet when that's all I want. However, I see it as a bigger version of my phone - with a bigger keyboard. Connecting to another device or text-based work (writing, blogging etc) - sure. Past that, I'm not clear either what level of 'work' one is able to achieve. You could connect to your home machine and then get it to do the hard work??? Correct me if I'm wrong :)) but unless you're using some cloud-based server to do the hard work (eg. using Piknic for your photo editing) I would imagine Android wouldn't be as useful or capable as having a proper 'nix install. Given I only have Android on my phone, I really can't say I've enough experience on which to base a globally useful reply :)) Regards, Patrick -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Android for work
Well I noticed that it has gftp, some text-editors, maybe geany, a command line. It can run python and compile java. Subversion it can also run I think. So I'd say its got the potential not to be a toy. On 12/16/11, elliott-brennan elliottbren...@gmail.com wrote: Is anyone on the list using Android for a significant amount of work? I've been considering the Asus Transformer for the ability to have a proper keyboard and touch pad and then use it as a tablet when that's all I want. However, I see it as a bigger version of my phone - with a bigger keyboard. Connecting to another device or text-based work (writing, blogging etc) - sure. Past that, I'm not clear either what level of 'work' one is able to achieve. You could connect to your home machine and then get it to do the hard work??? Correct me if I'm wrong :)) but unless you're using some cloud-based server to do the hard work (eg. using Piknic for your photo editing) I would imagine Android wouldn't be as useful or capable as having a proper 'nix install. Given I only have Android on my phone, I really can't say I've enough experience on which to base a globally useful reply :)) Regards, Patrick -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
Re: [SLUG] Re: Android for work
All of which is fair enough. I guess it depends on your definition of work. In general a text editor lets me do the work I'm interested in. Most of the rest (eg. video editing), for me, requires a lot more grunt. This is not a criticism of Android as it's not aimed at these areas of work. P On 16/12/11 18:02, David Lyon wrote: Well I noticed that it has gftp, some text-editors, maybe geany, a command line. It can run python and compile java. Subversion it can also run I think. So I'd say its got the potential not to be a toy. On 12/16/11, elliott-brennanelliottbren...@gmail.com wrote: Is anyone on the list using Android for a significant amount of work? I've been considering the Asus Transformer for the ability to have a proper keyboard and touch pad and then use it as a tablet when that's all I want. However, I see it as a bigger version of my phone - with a bigger keyboard. Connecting to another device or text-based work (writing, blogging etc) - sure. Past that, I'm not clear either what level of 'work' one is able to achieve. You could connect to your home machine and then get it to do the hard work??? Correct me if I'm wrong :)) but unless you're using some cloud-based server to do the hard work (eg. using Piknic for your photo editing) I would imagine Android wouldn't be as useful or capable as having a proper 'nix install. Given I only have Android on my phone, I really can't say I've enough experience on which to base a globally useful reply :)) Regards, Patrick -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
