Ridiculously fast

[worker201]

Here's an article I came across about computer speed.  The author, who is a bit of an expert on open source spatial analysis tools, installed a 40GB SSD in his computer for the OS (Ubuntu), and a regular HD for the /home mount point.  Includes a super-shaky video of Ubuntu being ready to go 5 seconds after the BIOS completes.  Supposedly, the SSD only cost $100.

Also, the interesting information, which I didn't know, is that Linux only shows the login screen after all services have been started, while Windows shows the login screen while services are being started.  So a similar test couldn't be performed on Windows, because there would be no way to know when it is really finished loading.

http://fuzzytolerance.info/rant/go-buy-a-ssd-right-now/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FuzzyTolerance+%28Fuzzy+Tolerance%29

[Aloone_Jonez]

Well SSDs are blazingly fast so any OS will be much faster when installed on one.

What about doing an automatic logon and comparing the speed to get to the desktop?

Surely that's more fair because often on Linux (especially with KDE) the desktop takes awhile to load.

[Calum]

the same is true of ms windows, they deliberately take you to the desktop ages before the computer's really ready to work.

imho it should be the time taken for the disk to stop loading the OS up after the desktop's loaded (ie: when you stop hearing it thrashing around in a desperate attempt to prove it was ready all along).

[worker201]

I guess you could tell for sure by monitoring the hard drive buffer for activity.  On a platter HD, you can just listen.

You can see from the video, though, that his desktop is loaded and ready to go instantly, and applications fly open at lightning speed.  I guess he's using Gnome?  Which is well known as a bloated beast.

[Lead Head]

SSDs have very quick random access times. My computer is much faster on a 10 year-old 10,000RPM 73GB SCSI drive then it is on my newer 320GB 7200 RPM SATA drive. The SATA Drive even has a higher average transfer rate, but the slow access time kills it.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I think the best way with Windows is to look at task manager and wait for the CPU usage to drop to 0.

I used to find this was more of a problem with Windows 95/98. XP doesn't seem to have the same problem, the only things I have to wait to load are some of the programs which run directly under my account such as the OpenOffice.org quickstarter and other processes but I imagine that will be similar for Linux.

[davidnix71]

Ridiculous speed sounds like Spaceballs.

http://rubystuff.org/ludicrous/   The Ludicrous JIT compiler.

They've gone into plaid

[Lead Head]

Hilarious movie!

I've noticed on my fathers older (~2005) Dell Laptop with Windows XP, even after the Welcome screen shows it will continue to thrash the hard drive for a good while later. Even if you don't click on a user name and log in.

[worker201]

The buzz about XP when it first came out was that it would constantly be attempting to open network tunnels and send usage information back to the Microsoft mothership.  That's probably what's going on when it's thrashing at odd times like that - trying to phone home.

[bedouin]

I have a 16gb SSD in my netbook running Ubuntu.  It's not as fast as this guy's starting up, but then again his machine is much better specced.

This $100 drive is really tempting in my desktop, where I'm still using a 36gb Raptor as my boot drive.  Hell, getting 4 of them and ditching all my internal HDs is an interesting idea.  180gb should be fine considering all my network storage.  The decrease in case temperature and noise would be awesome.

I'd have a lonely Raptor with no home though.

Also, I could RAID 0 the SSDs with pretty much no fear of mechanical failure.  Oh man -- I hate you for creating this temptation in me.  Another thing justifying it is even though my machine is old (dual 1.8ghz PowerMac), I could use those drives just as happily when I upgrade to a MacPro.

$100/each -- so damn tempting.

[Lead Head]

The cheap SSDs still have good access the time, but many of them have horrible sustained read/writes. Do research first before buying an SSD.

[Kintaro]

Sustained read/write issues can be solved with RAID. However, nearly everything for the end user are non-sequential files. Typically, if you put /usr on an SSD it means the system files and libraries used in bulk, at random times, will load a hell of a lot faster. Unless some aspie locked himself in his room and write a million line header and built it into one giant static object - which hasn't happened.

One area I have noticed problems with sustained read and writes is on servers regarding mirroring. Thus, certain servers simply replicate eachother at night and I only have to imagine that an SSD would blow donkey balls in this backup operation.

Also, if you are interested in chaining yourself to trees, SSDs are the way to go and I suggest you cripple yourself with them.