Hard drives so small, you might miss them

Intel is making tiny, tiny flash-memory drives for the cell phone, media player and mini-notebook market.

Pictures via Intel, via ZDNet, where I also heard about the story from Storage Bits writer Robin Harris.

Review: PCLinuxOS 2007, GNOME and MiniMe

What version of Linux has been at the top of the Distrowatch rankings for months now that I’ve never tried until today? PCLinuxOS.

Everybody I know who has runs PCLinuxOS has good things to say about it. Scott Ruecker of LXer and the Los Angeles Daily News’ own City Hall reporter Rick Orlov are among those who have used and liked it.

I couldn’t boot the CD on my test machine (VIA C3-based converted thin client), but on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450) it’s booting just fine.

To start with the live CD, I selected the “copy2ram” option because I have 1 GB to play with on this machine. It takes quite a while to copy the system files to RAM, but once that’s done, the system should run very fast.

The 2007 version of PCLinuxOS has received continual updates and is a sort of rolling release — the coders behind it don’t create new ISO images on a continual basis like we get from Ubuntu, for instance. Once you install PCLinuxOS, it’s easy to bring it up to day. Actually, I prefer it this way. I’d rather do a bunch of updates than continually burn new CDs.

Thin Puppy Torture Test II, Day 11

I haven’t updated much in the past few days because I haven’t used the Puppy box much in that time. I finished up my long gOS review — and come to think of it, Puppy would be perfect for the Everex Linux PC. You could keep gOS on there but boot Puppy from the CD/DVD drive and have a super-fast system that blows the standard gOS install out of the proverbial water.

But back to the second Thin Puppy Torture Test. The box has been chugging along, no problem.

Today I had somebody ask me to grab a bunch of photos off of two SD Flash memory cards. I plugged my card reader into the remaining USB port, used the Puppy Drive Mounter to mount and open it, and then I dragged a bunch of images to the My-Documents folder, which if you’ve used Puppy before, is owned by root.

And in Puppy, you run as root, not in a normal user account. There have been all kinds of arguments about the wisdom of running as root — and it’s many people’s main complaint about Puppy, that running as root is not safe. Damn Small Linux creates a user account when you boot the live CD, and you can go multiuser and create named accounts if you want. I believe the GrafPup spin of Puppy also allows the use of user accounts. … And Puppy allows you to create any number of pup_save files, booting into whichever one you wish (and also encrypting and password-protecting them if you want), allowing for multiple users on the same computer (but still running as root).

I’m not really qualified to comment on the root vs. user debate, but I’ve never had any problems, and I understand that especially in the live CD environment, it doesn’t matter as much. Again, I leave it to the experts.

But back to the photos. There were quite a few of them, and I only have a 256 MB Flash drive connected to the Thin Puppy box, so I didn’t/couldn’t transfer them all to Puppy’s filesystem.

Still, after I transferred some and then later deleted them, my Puppy “free RAM” indicator dropped from 111 MB to 89.9 MB and stayed there. I’ve been told that this indicator is not a true picture of free RAM on the system, but it’s curious that it drops and, at this point at least, doesn’t rebound after files are deleted.

I pulled the card reader before unmounting the Flash card, and I got a warning message from Puppy. Remember to unmount your media!! The message suggested that I reboot, but since this is the Thin Puppy Torture Test II, I ignored that warning.

The system is still running fine, and I got the chance to use MtPaint and GTKSee as image viewers. MtPaint isn’t really designed to look at images in a “slide show” fashion, but one good thing is that you can open an image in a directory, use ctrl-mouse wheel to shrink it so it fits in the window, and then retain that image size when viewing all the other images in the directory, opening them up as needed.

But GTKSee is better for doing a slide show. Just open the application (under Graphics), navigate to the proper directory, and start the slide show under the Tools menu (or by typing ctrl-S).

P.S. Since I didn’t have enough memory in the Thin Puppy to burn a CD with all those images, I started up Puppy 2.17 (it was the first Puppy CD I found) on my Windows box, mounted the SD chip and threw everything into a directory on the Windows drive. I got the usual warnings about writing to NTFS partitions, but I ignored them. I got a warning the next time I booted into Windows, but everything was there, and everything was fine. (I burned my CD in Windows, not Puppy because I had work to do with the proprietary publishing software that I need for my “real” job).

I’ll have to experiment with Puppy’s CD burning applications later.

But one thing I always forget is that Puppy runs GREAT on my 3 GHz Pentium 4 Dell. I’m not used to running Linux of any kind on such a “powerful” machine. I’d love to run all my Linux distros on something so “good” (its 512 MB RAM is twice what I have on any other box).

One thing about low-spec Linux distros like Puppy. As well as they run on old, old hardware, if you can get everything configured, they really fly on “modern” PCs.

Pup_save thoughts: The pup_save in Puppy Linux has a predetermined size. Usually the largest you can make is 1.25 GB. There is a warning message that crops up (I can’t remember where) that says you can make a pup_save up to 1.83 GB, but that is the largest tested configuration. I don’t know if there is a limit on the size of a “save” file in Damn Small Linux or Knoppix (both of which use the same “save” technology, I think — but don’t quote me), and having a limit on how big the pup_save can be is somewhat of a limitation in Puppy. I suggest having additional storage space outside of the pup_save on which to store large files — and large amounts of files, for that matter.

On this Thin Puppy, unless I add another Flash drive, I’m stuck with the 256 MB on the primary USB Flash drive.

Thin Puppy Torture Test II, Day 1

As I look back on the past year’s worth of Click entries, I see my adoption of Linux play out. The pace of free, open-source software development is so fast that it makes the year seem very long indeed.

The most fun I had writing these entries was during the month of the original Thin Puppy Torture Test, in which the converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client ran on Puppy Linux (I think I was using 2.14 at the time) for a month with no hard drive — in fact, no storage at all except the onboard RAM.

Since then, I’ve been able to create and access a pup_save file on an attached USB flash drive, and I thought it would be a good time for a second Thin Puppy Torture Test. This time, I burned a fresh Puppy Linux 3.01 CD, booted the thin client, and “upgraded” an existing pup_save file on the flash drive.

I’ve been planning to get a 2 GB or 4 GB Compact Flash module on which I can dual-boot Puppy and Damn Small Linux with frugal installs (copying the few and huge CD files over to the flash drive and making it bootable) and no spinning drives of any kind attached whatsoever, but in the interim, I’m doing this new rendition of the torture test.

One of the reasons I’m going back to a long-term Puppy test is the nagging feeling that running Puppy and/or Damn Small Linux from live CDs — or going all-out and doing the same with Knoppix or Wolvix on a 1 GB RAM box — is a very viable alternative to traditionally installed Linuxes for desktop computer users.

Having a recent Ubuntu Gutsy install go bad on me (twice!) didn’t exactly endear me to traditional Linux installs, and from my use of all the live CDs mentioned — all of which are designed to be used as live CDs rather than as sludgy demos of what a traditionally installed system will do much quicker — running a live CD completely in RAM, with no spinning hard drives or whirring CD drives, is a refreshing change.

I originally wanted to do a Damn Small Linux Torture test, but I couldn’t get DSL 4.0 (or any previous version; I have CDs for 3.2 and 3.3) to boot from CD without a hard drive connected.

So before I begin the torture, I’ll give DSL another try with the USB flash drive connected … but even as I close out this entry, I know that Puppy, out of the box, has more of the apps I want (AbiWord, MtPaint) even while DSL seems lighter on overall resources. (Note: since the original writing, Damn Small Linux has added MtPaint).

Final thought: The mere fact that you can run Linux in a traditional install, frugal install, as a live CD, and make it even quicker by running completely in RAM, illustrates the wonderful freedom of choice we have with a fully open and modifiable operating system.

Having fun with live Linux CDs

As one of the ways to keep track of my journey through the world of Linux and BSD distributions, on every CD I try to write the date I burned it. I can’t remember how I found out about my first Linux live CD, Knoppix 5.1.1 (some Web story must’ve gone on about how great it was to run a full Linux without doing a hard-drive install), but the date I wrote on the case is Jan. 29, 2007 — soon after the 5.1.1 release came out. And it wasn’t just my first live CD, it was also the first Linux CD of any kind I made — and my first experience with a Unix-like operating system since leaving adm3a and VT-100 terminals behind after my college days in the 1980s.

I remember running that Knoppix CD on my Dell box. I didn’t know what Debian was. I had no idea that KDE was Knoppix’s desktop environment — or that there were many alternatives. I didn’t know why the Web browser that looked like Firefox was called Iceweasel.

Since then I’ve spent considerable time running Puppy and Damn Small Linux from live CDs (and in hard-drive installs, usually of the three-or-so-file “frugal” variety).

I recently burned both Puppy Linux 3.0 and Damn Small Linux 4.0. On the one hand, I’m thinking about doing reviews of both. On the other, I think it’s time to replace the Debian setup on the $15 Laptop, a Compaq Armada 7770dmt. I’ve been running it for months with a very basic Debian Etch install. I started with the “standard” install, then added X and Fluxbox, along with the apps I wanted. It’s been running fairly well, but the problems with various applications have been piling up. I know that if I use Puppy or DSL, the apps I want should work perfectly from the get-go. Of course I could also do a fuller Debian install — say the Xfce version — which would include many more applications …

So before I dive back into live CDs, here’s what’s been troubling me with my Debian Etch install. The laptop is so old (probably circa ’98) that it doesn’t have USB ports. I have my trusty Orinoco WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA wireless card installed — it works with just about every Linux distro out there — and I have the CD drive plugged in. The floppy drive is dead, but who needs it? I have the original 3 GB hard drive, and it’s pretty full, even though I’ve got nowhere near the full Debian install on it. I really should buy a new hard drive that’s way bigger and less prone to failure.

Anyhow, the 233 MHz, 64 MB system probably could run Xfce, but I’ve been conservative, running both the console and Fluxbox as needed. Maximum memory for the Compaq is 144 MB, but I’ve been too lazy and cheap to buy the RAM. The CMOS battery is dead, and I’ve really been too lazy to crack the case (TORX screws aplenty) and see how to switch it out. I have the network time server app installed, and that resets the clock at each boot.

I originally wanted to handle my work e-mail over IMAP with Mutt and MSMTP. Never mind that to get a Mutt setup seems to be the height of geek competence (a height to which I do not reach), but since my original push to get the .muttrc and .msmtprc files just right, something changed and I can no longer send mail. I could never figure out how to handle multiple mail accounts over IMAP (POP is easier, since you can POP all the mail down and filter it … and by “easier,” I mean harder but doable).

So I installed Sylpheed, which I figured would be light enough for the 233 MHz box. I’ve always liked Sylpheed, although I’ve migrated over to Evolution and Thunderbird on my other boxes.

On first launch of Sylpheed, I got an error message that some parameter in some file (I confess, I didn’t recognize any of it) was missing. So I went ahead and configured Sylpheed. It didn’t work.

I have AbiWord installed — my go-to lightweight word processor — but the graphics of the laptop just can’t keep up. I type, and the letters appear seconds later. Ted might work better, but it’s broken in Etch. You can neither create a new file nor open an old one.

On the brighter side, the Dillo browser works great (although the fonts are better in Damn Small Linux and Vector), and I also have had no problem with Iceweasel (aka Firefox), Lynx or my favorite light image editor, MtPaint (which should be an official Debian package available via apt-get but for some reason can only be found at Sourceforge and on other distros like Vector and Zenwalk). I’ve also been very pleased with Mousepad as a text editor, with Nano and Vi as backups. (I’m more of a Nano users because I just don’t spend a lot of time in console editors and have ragged Vi chops).

So I’m able to get my work done in Etch, but I have a feeling that I’d be better off — especially at 64 MB of RAM — with Damn Small Linux.

And with the release of version 4.0, what better time to re-evaluate the distro, which has been in or near the Distrowatch top 10 for quite some time.

So I pulled the CDs for Puppy 3.00, DSL 4.0 and Knoppix 5.1.1. I’m not ready to break out the Compaq laptop just yet, so I used my main test box, the converted Maxspeed Maxterm thin client that runs a VIA C3 Samuel 1 GHz processor and 256 MB of RAM.

I plugged in a USB drive, with my hope being that I could then unplug the hard drive, boot from CD and then have no drives whirring for the duration.

That worked with Knoppix, Puppy, even with a Vector SOHO live CD I burned a week ago (and let me say that just as Vector excels with the Xfce desktop, it also does remarkably well in KDE).

But Damn Small Linux? No, it wouldn’t boot with the hard drive disconnected. I tried versions 3.3 and 3.2 as well. No go for any of them.

My USB key is a little unsual. It was a freebie, and has a CD advertising image (detected almost always as drive sr0) as well as a 256 MB flash memory. Puppy found the flash just fine (I’ve always had great luck with hardware detection, especially of drives, with Puppy), and I was able to boot without a hard drive, run entirely in RAM, and save my settings and files to the pup_save on the USB drive. Brilliant, as usual.

Neither Knoppix nor DSL could find the USB flash drive, but I suspect with a “pure” USB drive the results would be different.

Even so, I’ve done quite a few Puppy reviews, and I wanted to start out with Damn Small Linux. So I plugged in a hard drive, booted DSL (using the dsl toram boot code that loads the whole distro into RAM) and was off.

Quickly, things that are better in DSL 4.0: network configuration is smoother than ever. Once I entered my static IP, DSL guessed the rest of the info pretty darn well. I entered my local name servers, but the gateway and broadcast addresses were correct without me doing anything. I was able to get printing working with apsfilter (I could never replicate my success in Etch, by the way).

The default window manager in DSL is now JWM, and the thing I miss most is the menu that used to come up with a right mouse click. It’s easy enough, however, to change window managers to the old DSL’s Fluxbox, and then everything is the way I like it. But I’m getting used to JWM (Joe’s Window Manager) in DSL, and I like the clickable folders on the desktop — it’s easier and more intuitive than using the file manager.

Anyhow … I’m not ready yet for a full DSL review, so let me just tell you that to me — and many others, I suspect — Puppy, DSL and Knoppix are VERY important distros in the Linux universe. Going from Windows or Mac to the world of Linux might not have happened for many of us if we didn’t have live CDs that actually work that way with which to experiment.

And in many cases, working with a live CD or frugal install that allows files and parameters to be saved, either on the hard drive or on removable media, can be an easy, secure and preferable way to use a PC. Especially when it comes to DSL and Puppy, upgrading can be as easy as downloading and burning the latest ISO. And if you don’t want to upgrade? No problem — just use the version you want.

I did spend at least half a day running Knoppix with no hard drive. As I said above, Knoppix didn’t find my USB drive (a situation that might be remedied with a more standard flash drive). As the king of live CDs, Knoppix, which is not one of those distros that is continually coming out with new releases, runs very, very well. Even when not running it in RAM, Knoppix is surprisingly quick, even with KDE. And if you do have 1 GB of RAM, I highly recommend running it with the toram boot option. I definitely plan to get the book “Knoppix Hacks,” which has a new release slated for this month, as well as the new Damn Small Linux book.

And this thought has crossed my mind: I just might hack together a PC with 2 GB of RAM, and either a Compact Flash card or USB flash drive for storage, with no hard drive at all, to run Knoppix entirely in RAM.

(By the way, Puppy seems to know when it has enough memory to run in RAM — I don’t think you have to pass that information in a boot code).

And while the live CDs of Ubuntu, Mepis and others are helpful in terms of evaluating hardware detection, they’re not designed to be used day-to-day in that manner. But DSL, Puppy and Knopix are — and they all can be installed to the hard drive if you wish.

Before I wrap up this entry, I want to say that everybody should try Puppy, DSL and Knoppix. Download the ISOs, burn the CDs and start experimenting with all the boxes you can find. I’ve had more fun with live CDs than in anything else I’ve done with Linux. After a few months in Debian, Slackware and Ubuntu, it’s a nice change of pace (and yes, I’ve tried Slax — which I like — and I plan to give Wolvix a spin soon).

So burn yourself some live CDs — and make a half-dozen or so extras to hand out at will. It’s the best way to get people started on exploring the non-Windows world of computing.

The upshot: Flash memory lasts longer than we’ve been led to believe

Everybody’s always worrying that using flash memory instead of traditional magenetic hard-disk drives will mean quick burnout of the flash devices, which supposedly can accept a limited number of writes before they give up the ghost.

Well, this article from StorageSearch.com seems to say that we have less to worry about that we think, and that solid-state flash memory is ready for whatever our PCs can throw at it.

I’ll spare you the details, but the writer says that today’s “SSD’s,” or solid-state devices, i.e. flash memory, will last at least 51 years to more than 85 years under current loads.

I’ll be expecting a totally flash-based Mac notebook any day now. Really.