Re: [Sheflug] Choice of Laptop

[John Southern <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday 14 January 2008 18:58:19 Richard Ibbotson wrote:
> Adam
>
> > I was under the impression that flash-type drives (like camera cards and
> > USB keys) weren't suitable as a substitute for hard drives because of
> > the limited read-and-write life.  Is that no longer the case, or is this
> > drive something different?
>
> Can't give you a correct and proper answer in the way that I should but I
> can tell you that I've used countless numbers of compact flash cards to run
> OpenBSD and Linux.  For example...
>
> https://kd85.com/soekris.html
>
> using this hardware you can use either a laptop hard drive or a CF card.
> Such as the one that a Nikon or Canon camera might use.   I've never had a
> problem running an operating system on that kind of hardware.  In a similar
> way, I would be amazed if the EeePC ever hiccuped once.   Well, maybe if
> there was a virus or worm in there ;)  (of course, no one has ever seen a
> virus on Linux (much smugness)).

Flash memory does have a theoretical limited Read/Write that would cause 
problems with some file systems such as swap which can be overwritten many, 
many times (some are now quoted up to one million writes, but most still 
mention 10K+). To combat this we use other filesystems more suited to 
handling long wear levelling. Since 2.4.10 we have had support for JFFS2.

Flash memory is used in many embedded devices very successfully, especially 
where you do not need to change the contents often such as inside routers 
etc.

As the EEEPC has the solid state memory soldered onto the board, it will be 
fun to replace when they do wear out, but I should imagine that without swap 
the machine would last a couple of years without any trouble compared to a 
standard laptop which would probably have the same life span.

The Puppy Linux forums have a discussion about replacing the Xandros distro as 
Puppy runs in RAM and only writes out every thirty minutes or when you power 
down.

John

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