Why moving to Linux to avoid Microsoft spying is impossible for most people

Discussion in 'Linux' started by roga, Aug 29, 2015.

  1. toffee

    toffee MDL Senior Member

    Jan 8, 2015
    278
    146
    10
    #1001 toffee, Apr 30, 2018
    Last edited: Apr 30, 2018
    I need Linux insted of Windows for my old slow laptop. Is it good idea?
     
  2. gorski

    gorski MDL Guru

    Oct 21, 2009
    5,514
    1,452
    180
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  3. toffee

    toffee MDL Senior Member

    Jan 8, 2015
    278
    146
    10
    SSD is most expensive than my old laptop. I need it only for surfing in the internet.
    Thanks for your advice!
     
  4. gorski

    gorski MDL Guru

    Oct 21, 2009
    5,514
    1,452
    180
    Nope, there are inexpensive SSDs (not big but...) nowadays...

    We are talking £23 or so, here in the UK, cheaper elsewhere...
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  5. toffee

    toffee MDL Senior Member

    Jan 8, 2015
    278
    146
    10
    You convinced me. :)
     
  6. fabre gastro

    fabre gastro MDL Junior Member

    May 29, 2018
    72
    25
    0
    i got into serious mega major trouble with instant cease of friendship with respect to specially these type of questions related to OS choice, hence i will not bite this click bait question.
    but i will only say one thing, its a matter of choice and adaptation, like food, some like it and some not which is liked by many and disliked by that many as well.
    all i can say that i am an extremely happy linux/bsd user, it never hurt me in anyways, profits are huge with these free and open source tools, but the difficulty level is even higher. back in 1997 i used floppy to install linux, these days i just build my own custom bootstrapper, not just debootstrap. it all depends how much you are interested in getting/gaining complete personal control of your hardware.
    With closed source system you are at the mercy of the OEM/ODM but with open source, you OWN your device, some simply can not afford to waste time and youth and life and lacks patience for them open source is certainly not the choice.
    if you don't know learn, if you already know teach. -> this philosophy doesn't work in real world with respect to OS and programs and et al. Everyone wants everything instantly ready made out of the box.
    so if you like it to own and control your device and software and working and work flow with a keen interest to learn and expand the horizon, then Free and Open Source Software is the way to go. But if you lack perseverance and dedication and completely lack interest of your device and would like to be at the mercy of the OEM/ODM etc etc then closed source is the choice.
    I am making a macOS image for my friend using a hackintosh, once its done? i will go back to good old debian and coreboot and openwrt/lede.
    i find Free and Open Source much more easy to build and manage and its source is also audited by many eyes, hence for me FOSS is the way to go.
    my 0.02 cents (i.e. 0.0002 US$), come and take it from me afterwards. ;-)
     
  7. lewcass

    lewcass MDL Senior Member

    Mar 10, 2018
    429
    251
    10
    120gb wd green is £33 and a good little drive :).
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  8. gorski

    gorski MDL Guru

    Oct 21, 2009
    5,514
    1,452
    180
    A certain gent who started the "Free SW" idea/movement and wrote GNU license would strongly object to "Open Source"... ;)
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  9. Yen

    Yen Admin
    Staff Member

    May 6, 2007
    13,081
    13,977
    340
    #1010 Yen, Jun 7, 2018
    Last edited: Jun 7, 2018
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  10. GOD666

    GOD666 MDL Expert

    Aug 1, 2015
    1,958
    2,059
    60
    Really, the idea that a modern SSD has very limited read and write life compared to standard HDD is kind of an urban myth at this point (it did hold true with some older SSD's but not in today's age, assuming you don't go buying a cheap knockoff from China off of eBay). In any case, it is after all better to have a small independent drive for swap (even if using Windows).
     
  11. Yen

    Yen Admin
    Staff Member

    May 6, 2007
    13,081
    13,977
    340
    #1013 Yen, Jun 10, 2018
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2018
    Since SSD is a relatively new technology we still need to gather experiences.
    But it seems they do last quite a long time. My first one is from the year 2011 and still running. (OCZ Vertex II).

    Most of them are used as system drive since they were expensive before. Recently people do use them to store data, too. I just have got a 1TB Samsung EVO 860 and have replaced the last HDD on my workstation. I only run HDD on my mediaserver.
    Another point is caching of browser data. The system generally makes more use of read/write than just a data storage.

    A reasonable SSD controller is aware of wear of cells and tries to keep it constant by reorganisation (wear levelling). To do that reorganisation well some people advise not to use the full capacity of the drive at once (at least 20% free space). I don't know if this advice still applies to recent technology.

    -TRIM
    -garbage collection
    -wear levelling
    -spare area

    AFAIK if a cell dies it cannot get erased anymore. Contrary to HDD (cluster) the cells get marked as erasable blocks and if collected enough they get erased at once (TRIM). If it cannot be erased anymore they get flagged as unusable and are excluded from the FAT for further usage. SSDs have got spare area which is not directly accessible by the OS.

    This area is used for:

    -read-modify-write
    -wear levelling
    -bad block replacement

    'Good' SSDs have got a bigger spare area. I have read it's between 7% and even 70% of total capacity. And 'good' SSDs have cells which do last longer generally.
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  12. Kim100

    Kim100 MDL Addicted

    Jun 17, 2009
    555
    278
    30
    Interesting conversation. At present I feel that Linux is not SSD friendly and for this reason I continue to use a mechanical drive, Windows seems to be ahead of the game with this technology. Discuss please lol.
     
  13. lewcass

    lewcass MDL Senior Member

    Mar 10, 2018
    429
    251
    10
    The only ssd i have is a WD Green 120GB that is used for 2nd pc testing purposes. I am thinking of upgrading to 2 Crucial MX500's, either 250GB or 500, i havnt decided yet.

    I want to use Crucial because i have read that a user had to return a faulty samsung ssd. The dealer said contact samsung, samsung said contect the dealer, dealer said contact samsung etc.
    I can buy direct from Crucial, the prices are favourable compared to buying them from my usual supplier and buying direct means if i need to return a faulty unt i am dealing with the orgran grinder, not a monkey.

    The 20% space question. If i allow a 25% empty space on an unpartitioned drive i will have 375GB space to partition, 366GB once formatted. I wont use all those 366GB's but it will give me plenty of leeway if i start to eat those GB's up.

    Trim, Enabled or Disabled? An SSD has its own garbage cleanup routines, Trim(as far as i know) overwrites deleted files, so am i better off disabling Trim and let the ssd do its own garbage cleanup routines?
    Some say Trim Enabled, Some say Trim Disabled.
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  14. GOD666

    GOD666 MDL Expert

    Aug 1, 2015
    1,958
    2,059
    60
    #1016 GOD666, Jun 10, 2018
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2018
    40 years old is a new tech? SSD drives (Solid State Drives) have been around longer than I have been alive. Originally invented in 1978. The first SSD sold was back in 1991 (27 years ago) by SanDisk Corporation (then SunDisk) and only had 20 MB. But due to cost (they were insanely expensive) were not adopted until the early 2000's when corporations began using them (nearly 20 years ago). Consumers didn't really start to pick up on them until around 2010, nearly 10 years ago (8 1/2).

    I'm only teasing you YEN. :p I always get a small personal laugh when someone claims tech is "new".

    That would be incorrect. Linux was the first operating system to adapt to SSD, originally. If you had actually bought some of the first SSD drives back in the 1990's and were using Windows, you would have been out of luck as the manufacturer didn't even think to include specialized drivers at the time (at least the ones my job got never came with any). This is because the first SSD's didn't have anything fancy in the way of hardware and just registered as standard drives via the BIOS and while Windows would have detected the drive it would have spit out a (false) read or write error since the system would have assumed failure based on how fast the read and write times were generated (kind of silly, don't you think? lol ). When Microsoft finally corrected this, it still took them a few years to disable defrag for SSD's by default and of course, Linux never had to worry about that, to begin with. Ironically, Apple even adapted to SSD well before Microsoft.

    Today, any OS, from Windows, Linux, to Apple can easily function equally with an SSD.
     
  15. Kim100

    Kim100 MDL Addicted

    Jun 17, 2009
    555
    278
    30
    So to get this straight, there are no hoops to jump through, just install Linux to SSD with default settings, no complicated Terminal Voodoo to go through, just install and run? And thats on any off the shelf SSD? This is not what I have been reading on various distro home pages. Trim would appear to be disabled in Debian for instance, activating this is not straightforward. I have seen the advice to not have a swap partition on an SSD in a number of locations, this would suggest that a decent amount of ram is required and therefore SSDs and old PCs dont go well together.
     
  16. Yen

    Yen Admin
    Staff Member

    May 6, 2007
    13,081
    13,977
    340
    #1018 Yen, Jun 11, 2018
    Last edited: Jun 11, 2018
    Erm. Linux and SSD go well together. In fact Linux was first with integrating SSD related commands. (TRIM at kernel 2.6.33 onwards).
    Those commands are powerful. For instance to set the HPA by hdparm command or the smartctl command to get info about current condition.

    BTW: I am using Linux Mint on SSD. Anything at default. Never applied something manually.

    At my 7 years old SSD I had always and still have always TRIM enabled. The controller recognizes if the OS sends ATA TRIM command and applies own measures respectively.

    I have said 'relatively' new...:)
    Strictly seen one of the first SSD (per definition a non volatile memory, based on solid-state-Physics) was the magnetic-core-memory in the 50s :p

    I'd define the 'start' of SSD together with flash memory 1983 with Psion PCs. This was before sandisk

    But I guess most of people's first contact with 'SSD' started with the BIOS (Flash-EEPROM).

    SSDs are affordable now and I never forget the moment when I installed windows on my first SSD in 2011.
    This was the most noticeable performance upgrade I ever had when I replaced something at my PC.

    Just wow and a huge bottleneck before.

    I recommend even at old devices (which support AHCI/SATA-II onwards) means up to an age of 10 years to get an SSD. 250GB SSDs are around 60 Euro and you can take it to use on a new PC whenever one wants.

    It's never a purchase which is for an old device alone...
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  17. gorski

    gorski MDL Guru

    Oct 21, 2009
    5,514
    1,452
    180
    Well, whaddyaknow, a "God" with maths problem... :D How long ago was 1991? Did you say 16 years ago? :D

    My various SSDs have in some places developed bad "patches", sadly...

    Anyone knows how to turn TRIM on with SSD?
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  18. Yen

    Yen Admin
    Staff Member

    May 6, 2007
    13,081
    13,977
    340
    #1020 Yen, Jun 12, 2018
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2018
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...