[Cialug] Windows Replacement

Wed Apr 9 14:10:27 CDT 2014

Any of the Linux distros will be SSD-compatible out of the box (so to speak).  Any distro will be capable of reading and writing from/to a SATA SSD if it is capable of doing the same with a SATA HDD.  The only difference between the SSD and a spinning disk drive would be the "TRIM" command.  I'm not sure whether the TRIM command is a component of the filesystem used or the SATA driver itself (or a combination of both), but the Linux kernel has supported TRIM for years, now, and the ext4 filesystem has supported it for at least the past 3 years (probably longer).  Whether or not the installer for the distribution of Linux you choose automatically detects the drive as an SSD or not, you should be able to manually enable use of the TRIM command using the instructions in the Arch Wiki to which David linked.  Once you're done with the install, you can open /etc/fstab to see if the proper options are enabled. Assuming that you go with the default ext4 filesystem that most distros will use by default, you would use the "noatime" and "discard" flags/options for the partitions on the SSD.

There is fairly good reason not to create a swap partition on the SSD, but if you don't have a hard drive in the system to put your swap partition on, you might need to.  If you do put swap on the SSD, there is a way to change the "swappiness" of the kernel so that swap is only used when it is absolutely needed, which would help avoid the wear issues SSDs have with frequent writes to disk.  The more memory you have, the less likely you are to need the swap partition (depending on the ratio of memory used to total memory).  I've been running Linux on a couple of virtual machines and on a few tiny ARM computers without swap at all... The VMs have enough memory, and the ARM computers each have 2GB.  The only time I have ever actually run out of memory on the ARM boards is when I tried to compile Firefox from source (which, I found later, requires a minimum of 4GB memory and swap on top of that).

You shouldn't need to purchase any software to grab data from a Windows-formatted drive and save it to your SSD from inside Linux.  I know you can compile the kernel to write to an ntfs partition, but I'm not sure if that option is compiled into the kernel by default in any of the distros.  Reading from an ntfs partition should be enabled by default, though, so taking data from the Windows HDD should be easy enough.  It's possible that ntfs might also be handled by "fuse", which might allow writing to ntfs (though you shouldn't need that).  The only hardware you should need would either be an empty SATA/IDE connection to plug the HDD into on your motherboard or a USB-to-SATA (or USB-to-IDE if it's an older drive) dock or cable.

As for having the ability to do incremental backups to a USB disk:  yes, there is the rsync utility.  I know it can do it, and there are likely other solutions, too.  I'm not sure if there is a friendly GUI available for rsync, though, so you may have to play with options and try it a few times on the command line to make sure it does what you were expecting it to do (and backing up what you expect it to backup).  I've never tried to use rsync before, but there are a few people on this list who know it rather well.

-- Matt (N0BOX)

Sent from my ASUS Transformer

-----Original Message-----
From: David Michael <1.david.michael at gmail.com>
To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group <cialug at cialug.org>
Sent: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 10:26 AM
Subject: Re: [Cialug] Windows Replacement

There are some tweaks you can do it maximize performance and life of an SSD
drive. I think most recent distros handle a lot of that automatically. The
archlinux wiki gives a lot of info on it. One of the most important things
I am aware of is making sure that TRIM is available for your type of
filesystem and is enabled. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SSD

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 10:04 AM, <murraymckee at wellsfargo.com> wrote:

> I'm going to upgrade a couple of Lenovo T60 personal laptops to SSD and at
> the same time convert them from XP to Linux.
>
> Does the fact that I'm planning on using SSD rather than a spinning disk
> make any difference to which Linux version I choose?  (I'm making the
> assumption that at least some Linux versions are SSD compatible.)
>
> Other than capacity, does it make a difference which SSD I choose?  I.E.
> Does SSD brand or model affect Linux compatibility?
>
> Besides the SSD, what do I need to purchase (hardware & software) to get
> the data from the old DASD to the SSD?  (I'm making the assumption that I
> install the SSD, install Linux from a bootable CD / DVD, and then populate
> it with the data from the old drive.  If that's not the best plan, I'm open
> to suggestions.)
>
> I have an external (USB) drive that I use to backup my data and store in a
> safe when not doing backups.  Is there Linux software that will backup only
> the new or changed data to an external USB drive for safe keeping?  Do I
> need to start over with a new drive for the Linux systems?
>
> Thanks in advance for your help.
>
> Murray R. McKee
>
> Operating Systems Analyst
> Mainframe/Midrange Services
>
> Wells Fargo Compute Platform Services  |  800 Walnut Street  |  Des
> Moines, IA 50309-3605
> MAC N0001-037
> Tel 515-557-6127 |  Cell 515-343-6630 |  Fax 515-557-6046 | Text pager:
> 5153436630 at vtext.com
>
> MurrayMcKee at WellsFargo.com
>
> TOG Recognition
>
> _______________________________________________
> Cialug mailing list
> Cialug at cialug.org
> http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
>

-- 
David Michael
_______________________________________________
Cialug mailing list
Cialug at cialug.org
http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug