I guess I skipped a question that you may have missed: If not for Linux, then for what operating system would a PC without Microsoft or Apple software be designed?
None. Again, the point I made was that it has never been a problem to buy a machine without "paying the MS tax".
In the context of an example using Sun and you saying it's incorrect because of semantic irrelevancies, yes.
Thumb drives are about $2/gig on the low end, while SSD's are about $3/gig on the high end.
I think you mean "low end". An 80GB Intel X25-M ("low end") is around $280 (so >50% more than a good USB thumbdrive). A 32GB Intel X25-E ("mid range") is about $380 (~$11/GB). A "high end" SSD (as you might find in an EMC SAN) probably costs 2-3x that.
Now you are stearing away from the posters point completely. His point is that SSD's are replacing rotational media, and they are.
Not when storage volume is a factor, they're not. If you want a dozen terabytes of disk space, SSDs are almost certainly not a realistic option.
Hard Drives didnt supercede them, so I guess your point is that hard drives are a cache for 2" tape reels, that SSD's are a cache for hard drvies, and RAM is a cache for SSD's?
These are typically referred to as HSM systems. Although so-called "MAID" is beginning to displace tape in many installations as the penultimate tier.
However, my actual point is that multilevel caching exists everywhere in computing, and has done pretty much forever, so attacking it as a principle by insisting a faster storage tier is going to just flat-out replace another is a bit silly. SSDs (or "flash", if you prefer) are going to find just as much - if not more - usage as an extra caching layer, as they will for dedicated storage. NetApp will almost certainly be rolling out an SSD-based complement to their existing DRAM-based Performance Acceleration Module in the near future. I expect an SSD-based Accelerator Appliance will be coming as well.
Heck, with ZFS you can even DIY an SSD-accelerated storage system. and get nearly all the performance benefits for relatively little cost increase.
The fact is that for all intents and purposes, SSD's will be replacing hard drives.
It will be quite a while before SSDs replace multi-terabyte disk arrays wholesale, especially when using them as a caching layer can deliver 90% of the performance benefits at a mere fraction of the cost (this is the principle Sun's 7000 series are built around - cheap and big SATA disks on the back end, with a much smaller SSD cache sitting in front of it). The same applies to consumer usage - a 1TB drive with a well managed 10-20GB SSD cache in front of it will deliver nearly all the benefits of an SSD, without massively increasing price or sacrificing capacity and usability.
If all your data will fit into the puny sizes of current SSDs, great. I suspect most people's will not, especially in these days of HD handycams and movie downloads.
Not in my home town. Best Buy and Target recently discontinued their Linux subnotebooks, and locally-owned computer shops tell me they don't do Linux.*
This is a straw man. The request wasn't for a machine to be supported running Linux, it was for a machine to not have the "MS tax".
Ahhh. All irrelevant. In effect, anyone who doesn't agree with your position is irrelevant.
No, a discussion about how people living in third world countries can't afford computers after a starting argument of
Errr - realize that a number of people migrate to Linux because they believe Linux to be more secure than Windows. Such people are more likely to do some studying, and follow best practices as they learn them. I'll even go so far as to say that people migrating to Linux tend to be more security minded when they need or want to use a Windows machine.
There are millions of Americans who scrabble for the money to feed themselves every day. And, with the current economy, those numbers are increasing.
People who are genuinely "scrabbling to feed themselves" aren't going to care about a computer at all, let alone what OS it's running.
It hardly matters where you live, if you look around you, you can and will find huge numbers of people who can't afford a couple hundred dollars for a computer.
Which is irrelevant.
Now, look at the immigrant population. And, look outside the United States. For every person who CAN afford a couple hundred dollars for a computer, there are probably a thousand who cannot.
Also irrelevant.
I think you've taken this sufficently far enough off topic to demonstrate that your original argument was a load of bunk.
Sun 7000 doesnt use SSD's.. but it does use several types of FLASH memory.
This is called "being a pedantic ass". Especially since Sun themselves use the terms interchangeably.
ReadyBoost is actualy made moot by SSD's, which perform better than ReadyBoost (without the extra layer of complexity.)
No, it is not. Unless SSDs have suddenly dropped to the same price as thumb drives, or increased in size to the same as magnetic media.
I really must admit I'm struggling to understand why anyone would try and argue against the principle of multilevel caching, given both its prevalence and proven utility throughout pretty much all aspects of computing.
Everyone gets windows for "free". Sorry, that is wrong on two levels.
Pretty much everyone. Although since your whole line of reasoning here is a big straw man, I suppose piling another one on top isn't that unsurprising.
Some don't. But, more switch this year, than switched 5 years ago.
Given how much Linux has improved in even just half that time, it's hardly surprising more people find it usable.
There are many of us who are willing to purchase their machine in bits and pieces, exercising our right to avoid the MS tax.
There is no such thing as "the MS tax". There are, and always has been, a plethora of vendors willing to sell you a computer without an OS.
I have never suggested Windows is a solution for everyone. I have asked for a reason why, when the same security-related (you may recall that secu was the original topic under discussion) processes and knowledge will work as well on Windows as they will on Linux, the average person would want to go through the hassle of switching.
People who cannot afford a couple of hundred dollars for a computer, or don't already own one, are not a typical case.
The fact is, I can almost always build a No-OS machine that is superior to the OEM's offerings for the same, or a lesser cash outlay.
All of them love the idea of running a legal operating system, for FREE.
Pretty much everyone gets Windows for "FREE". It comes with their computer. Which is why the economic argument for switching makes as little sense in the home market as it does in the corporate market.
Soft raid? If you looked at the performance impact of that, not to mention the very poor reliability, you'd stop...
No, if you actually looked at the performance and reliability in comparison to hardware RAID - which you have obviously not - you'd be crazy not to use software RAID.
There are some good reasons to use hardware RAID. Performance and relability are not two of them.
But by building the Veyron, the engineers found problems that they wouldn't have found by building small hatchbacks. Ideas then are refined, and trickles down to normal roadcars.
If you parked it on the street without an armed guard, you'd deserve it.
Maybe in America. Here in Switzerland, it's not at all unusual to see expensive Ferraris Porches, Audis, Lamborghinis, and the like parked out on the street overnight. And they get a hell of a lot more driving than just to the track a few times a year.
You ask for evidence. How about some evidence that SSD's are being used anywhere in the way that you describe.. as a cache between rotational media and ram.
* Most Sun 7000-series storage systems. Probably numerous tsandalone ZFS-based systems as well.
* In the fairly near future, NetApp storage systems (and probably other vendors over the next year).
* Any Vista system using ReadyBoost.
Readyboost and Superfetch are really just hacks to get around the 3GB or so ceiling in 32 bit Vista due to incomplete support of the Pentium Pro and later processors (PAE extension). With the 64 bit versions (or the server 32 bit versions, or any OS produced by anyone other than Microsoft in the last decade) you can use real memory instead for improved performance. Consider that you are grabbing all that stuff from disk and doing the relatively slow write to flash to save time when it needs to go into memory later. The far better answer is to have enough memory and only handle the stuff once.
There's never enough memory for that, which is the whole point of why it's needed. To say nothing of RAM being volatile.
There are some hybrid SAN's, but they're damn expensive. At that price they have a hard time competing with simpler pure-flash SAN's.
Er, what ? NetApp and Sun are two examples of vendors with "hybrid" NAS/SANs that use SSDs as an extra caching level, and they're _very_ price competitive with pure-flash SANs. Particularly if data volume is important.
Or are you calling a Linux machine stuffed with Intel X25-Es and an iSCSI target a "SAN" ?
One that has the OS installed in read only flash and applications on a separate drive. you might ask why? but then stop to realize what would happen if viruses couldn't overwrite the system settings. that to clean up a virus all you had to do was to reboot.
Why would rebooting clean up a virus that had inserted itself into the user's data and programs ?
Or are you proposing a system when the user can't write to anything as well ? We have those already, they're called consoles.
Errr - realize that a number of people migrate to Linux because they believe Linux to be more secure than Windows. Such people are more likely to do some studying, and follow best practices as they learn them. I'll even go so far as to say that people migrating to Linux tend to be more security minded when they need or want to use a Windows machine.
The same knowledge and practices protect you equally well in Windows. Why, then, go through the additional pain of migration when you've already solved the problem ?
Would you prefer to own a botnet of laptops and desktops connected part time through adsl or worse, running a bloated OS between game sessions or one made of always available servers with fast connection and a fast OS full of tools for remote admin and networking?
Would you prefer to own a few dozen machines run by professionals, who will almost certainly notice their machines have been penetrated, or a few thousand machines owned by ignorant end users who still wouldn't be sure their machine was 0wned if it popped up a dialog box saying so ?
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I guess I skipped a question that you may have missed: If not for Linux, then for what operating system would a PC without Microsoft or Apple software be designed?
None. Again, the point I made was that it has never been a problem to buy a machine without "paying the MS tax".
Any more straw men you'd like to bring up ?
So Sun gets to decide what SSD means?
In the context of an example using Sun and you saying it's incorrect because of semantic irrelevancies, yes.
Thumb drives are about $2/gig on the low end, while SSD's are about $3/gig on the high end.
I think you mean "low end". An 80GB Intel X25-M ("low end") is around $280 (so >50% more than a good USB thumbdrive). A 32GB Intel X25-E ("mid range") is about $380 (~$11/GB). A "high end" SSD (as you might find in an EMC SAN) probably costs 2-3x that.
Now you are stearing away from the posters point completely. His point is that SSD's are replacing rotational media, and they are.
Not when storage volume is a factor, they're not. If you want a dozen terabytes of disk space, SSDs are almost certainly not a realistic option.
Hard Drives didnt supercede them, so I guess your point is that hard drives are a cache for 2" tape reels, that SSD's are a cache for hard drvies, and RAM is a cache for SSD's?
These are typically referred to as HSM systems. Although so-called "MAID" is beginning to displace tape in many installations as the penultimate tier.
However, my actual point is that multilevel caching exists everywhere in computing, and has done pretty much forever, so attacking it as a principle by insisting a faster storage tier is going to just flat-out replace another is a bit silly. SSDs (or "flash", if you prefer) are going to find just as much - if not more - usage as an extra caching layer, as they will for dedicated storage. NetApp will almost certainly be rolling out an SSD-based complement to their existing DRAM-based Performance Acceleration Module in the near future. I expect an SSD-based Accelerator Appliance will be coming as well.
Heck, with ZFS you can even DIY an SSD-accelerated storage system. and get nearly all the performance benefits for relatively little cost increase.
The fact is that for all intents and purposes, SSD's will be replacing hard drives.
It will be quite a while before SSDs replace multi-terabyte disk arrays wholesale, especially when using them as a caching layer can deliver 90% of the performance benefits at a mere fraction of the cost (this is the principle Sun's 7000 series are built around - cheap and big SATA disks on the back end, with a much smaller SSD cache sitting in front of it). The same applies to consumer usage - a 1TB drive with a well managed 10-20GB SSD cache in front of it will deliver nearly all the benefits of an SSD, without massively increasing price or sacrificing capacity and usability.
If all your data will fit into the puny sizes of current SSDs, great. I suspect most people's will not, especially in these days of HD handycams and movie downloads.
Not in my home town. Best Buy and Target recently discontinued their Linux subnotebooks, and locally-owned computer shops tell me they don't do Linux.*
This is a straw man. The request wasn't for a machine to be supported running Linux, it was for a machine to not have the "MS tax".
Ahhh. All irrelevant. In effect, anyone who doesn't agree with your position is irrelevant.
No, a discussion about how people living in third world countries can't afford computers after a starting argument of
Errr - realize that a number of people migrate to Linux because they believe Linux to be more secure than Windows. Such people are more likely to do some studying, and follow best practices as they learn them. I'll even go so far as to say that people migrating to Linux tend to be more security minded when they need or want to use a Windows machine.
is irrelevant.
There are millions of Americans who scrabble for the money to feed themselves every day. And, with the current economy, those numbers are increasing.
People who are genuinely "scrabbling to feed themselves" aren't going to care about a computer at all, let alone what OS it's running.
It hardly matters where you live, if you look around you, you can and will find huge numbers of people who can't afford a couple hundred dollars for a computer.
Which is irrelevant.
Now, look at the immigrant population. And, look outside the United States. For every person who CAN afford a couple hundred dollars for a computer, there are probably a thousand who cannot.
Also irrelevant.
I think you've taken this sufficently far enough off topic to demonstrate that your original argument was a load of bunk.
Sun 7000 doesnt use SSD's.. but it does use several types of FLASH memory.
This is called "being a pedantic ass". Especially since Sun themselves use the terms interchangeably.
ReadyBoost is actualy made moot by SSD's, which perform better than ReadyBoost (without the extra layer of complexity.)
No, it is not. Unless SSDs have suddenly dropped to the same price as thumb drives, or increased in size to the same as magnetic media.
I really must admit I'm struggling to understand why anyone would try and argue against the principle of multilevel caching, given both its prevalence and proven utility throughout pretty much all aspects of computing.
Everyone gets windows for "free". Sorry, that is wrong on two levels.
Pretty much everyone. Although since your whole line of reasoning here is a big straw man, I suppose piling another one on top isn't that unsurprising.
Some don't. But, more switch this year, than switched 5 years ago.
Given how much Linux has improved in even just half that time, it's hardly surprising more people find it usable.
There are many of us who are willing to purchase their machine in bits and pieces, exercising our right to avoid the MS tax.
There is no such thing as "the MS tax". There are, and always has been, a plethora of vendors willing to sell you a computer without an OS.
I have never suggested Windows is a solution for everyone. I have asked for a reason why, when the same security-related (you may recall that secu was the original topic under discussion) processes and knowledge will work as well on Windows as they will on Linux, the average person would want to go through the hassle of switching.
People who cannot afford a couple of hundred dollars for a computer, or don't already own one, are not a typical case.
The fact is, I can almost always build a No-OS machine that is superior to the OEM's offerings for the same, or a lesser cash outlay.
Maybe if your time is worth nothing.
The big problem in this picture is the way that Windows deals with drive errors. It doesn't report them [...]
Windows reports drive errors in the Event Log.
All of them love the idea of running a legal operating system, for FREE.
Pretty much everyone gets Windows for "FREE". It comes with their computer. Which is why the economic argument for switching makes as little sense in the home market as it does in the corporate market.
And spend a month trying to download it when your system fails and you need a full restore...
Still a lot sooner than "never".
Soft raid? If you looked at the performance impact of that, not to mention the very poor reliability, you'd stop...
No, if you actually looked at the performance and reliability in comparison to hardware RAID - which you have obviously not - you'd be crazy not to use software RAID.
There are some good reasons to use hardware RAID. Performance and relability are not two of them.
In normal driving, that sort of acceleration can be handy and is used often enough.
Not if you're a good driver.
Someone earning $100k uses that $50k car for their day to day living.
No-one is buying a Veyron to nip down to the shops, drive to work, and take the kids to soccer.
Would you spend ca. 40% of your net worth on a toy ?
But by building the Veyron, the engineers found problems that they wouldn't have found by building small hatchbacks. Ideas then are refined, and trickles down to normal roadcars.
For example ?
If you parked it on the street without an armed guard, you'd deserve it.
Maybe in America. Here in Switzerland, it's not at all unusual to see expensive Ferraris Porches, Audis, Lamborghinis, and the like parked out on the street overnight. And they get a hell of a lot more driving than just to the track a few times a year.
But other storage vendors (NetApps, EMC, IBM, etc.) are starting to do similar things.
Actually, EMC seem to be most emphatically NOT doing it and are just classifying flash as another tier to be managed by the storage admin,
The author of that article has a vested interest in an operating system prone to such exploits.
No OS is "prone to such exploits". It's a user issue.
You ask for evidence. How about some evidence that SSD's are being used anywhere in the way that you describe.. as a cache between rotational media and ram.
* Most Sun 7000-series storage systems. Probably numerous tsandalone ZFS-based systems as well.
* In the fairly near future, NetApp storage systems (and probably other vendors over the next year).
* Any Vista system using ReadyBoost.
Readyboost and Superfetch are really just hacks to get around the 3GB or so ceiling in 32 bit Vista due to incomplete support of the Pentium Pro and later processors (PAE extension). With the 64 bit versions (or the server 32 bit versions, or any OS produced by anyone other than Microsoft in the last decade) you can use real memory instead for improved performance. Consider that you are grabbing all that stuff from disk and doing the relatively slow write to flash to save time when it needs to go into memory later. The far better answer is to have enough memory and only handle the stuff once.
There's never enough memory for that, which is the whole point of why it's needed. To say nothing of RAM being volatile.
There are some hybrid SAN's, but they're damn expensive. At that price they have a hard time competing with simpler pure-flash SAN's.
Er, what ? NetApp and Sun are two examples of vendors with "hybrid" NAS/SANs that use SSDs as an extra caching level, and they're _very_ price competitive with pure-flash SANs. Particularly if data volume is important.
Or are you calling a Linux machine stuffed with Intel X25-Es and an iSCSI target a "SAN" ?
One that has the OS installed in read only flash and applications on a separate drive. you might ask why? but then stop to realize what would happen if viruses couldn't overwrite the system settings. that to clean up a virus all you had to do was to reboot.
Why would rebooting clean up a virus that had inserted itself into the user's data and programs ?
Or are you proposing a system when the user can't write to anything as well ? We have those already, they're called consoles.
Errr - realize that a number of people migrate to Linux because they believe Linux to be more secure than Windows. Such people are more likely to do some studying, and follow best practices as they learn them. I'll even go so far as to say that people migrating to Linux tend to be more security minded when they need or want to use a Windows machine.
The same knowledge and practices protect you equally well in Windows. Why, then, go through the additional pain of migration when you've already solved the problem ?
Microsoft did not follow this design philosophy [...]
"Security and privilege" is part of the fundmanetal design of Windows NT - even more so than traditional UNIX.
Apple doesn't do it.
The Unixen don't do it.
Please detail what functionality exists in these platforms to stop the user executing arbitrary code.
Would you prefer to own a botnet of laptops and desktops connected part time through adsl or worse, running a bloated OS between game sessions or one made of always available servers with fast connection and a fast OS full of tools for remote admin and networking?
Would you prefer to own a few dozen machines run by professionals, who will almost certainly notice their machines have been penetrated, or a few thousand machines owned by ignorant end users who still wouldn't be sure their machine was 0wned if it popped up a dialog box saying so ?