Hi,
I'm going to install ubuntu in my thinkpad x61s, and wanted to ask the
following questions for the most experienced persons around:
small programs (no video work)
compatibility. is that right?
model), bcf2000, wacom tablet
and all work files are in a 3rd partition.
much space should I reserve to install the ubuntu system?
Any other suggestions are welcome.
Thanks,
João
hi João,
I'm going to install ubuntu in my thinkpad x61s, and wanted to ask the following questions for the most experienced persons around:
- the computer is for media work, 97% only Pd. Maybe some ardour or
other small programs (no video work)
- is the latest ubuntu version recommended? 12.04 LTS?
I don't like ubuntu for music cause it's bloated by default.. (I'm an happy arch user)
at least you should think about using a lightweight wm (Ã la xfce4, awesome, ...) instead of latest gnome|unity. on my thinkpad x60, this makes a big difference =)
- although the computer is 64b, I think the 32b is better for
compatibility. is that right?
I'd say go 64, unless you really have to use old fancy things
- hardwares I mostly work with are hammerfall multiface hdsp (original
model), bcf2000, wacom tablet
no problem
- anything else I should consider? does this version copes well with ntfs?
*you want* to use ext4
- usually I have my systems (w7 + ubuntu) in their individual
partitions, and all work files are in a 3rd partition.
as I said above, I'd use a ext4 partition for linux and avoid even reading from ntfs when working. ntfs == windowz
- following the guidelines above (or any others you find relevant), how
much space should I reserve to install the ubuntu system?
15-20Gb should be more than enough and keep you safe for your system if you have a separate $HOME partition.
my 20 COP :) ciao
y
Hi,
yvan volochine wrote:
- although the computer is 64b, I think the 32b is better for
compatibility. is that right?
I'd say go 64, unless you really have to use old fancy things
I'd say stick with 32bits unless you need more than 4GB _at once_. I had a x60s with archlinux, and 32 bits felt faster (esp. Java/processing is unusable on 64bits). On my new x201 I installed 32 bits too.
Just an feeling, no hard data ;).
- anything else I should consider?
Get a ssd drive. That's the main bottleneck on these computers. My thinkpad got to boot to X from 15s to 6s just by changing the drive. Switching to systemd makes it in about 4s.
- following the guidelines above (or any others you find relevant), how
much space should I reserve to install the ubuntu system?
15-20Gb should be more than enough and keep you safe for your system if you have a separate $HOME partition.
Agreed :)
Charles
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On 2012-10-18 09:55, Charles Goyard wrote:
- anything else I should consider?
Get a ssd drive. That's the main bottleneck on these computers. My thinkpad got to boot to X from 15s to 6s just by changing the drive. Switching to systemd makes it in about 4s.
hmm, getting booting speeds from 15s to 6s is really something that is cool to show off at presentations. however, i doubt that it will effect you in real live (that is, unless your system likes to crash during shows and you need to get back after a cold reset in front of a waiting audience)
my personal experience (with an eee901 and a 128GB SSD disk - one of the best systems i ever had, though obviously no number-cruncher) was rather mixed: after about 2 years the harddisk started to die away. i never found out whether the problem was the SSD or a faulty controller, but i stopped being unconditionally in favour of SSD then. (and it seems most people who praise SSD have only been using it for 6 months or).
On 2012-10-18 00:39, yvan volochine wrote:
- anything else I should consider? does this version copes well
with ntfs?
*you want* to use ext4
- usually I have my systems (w7 + ubuntu) in their individual
partitions, and all work files are in a 3rd partition.
as I said above, I'd use a ext4 partition for linux and avoid even reading from ntfs when working. ntfs == windowz
now this seems to imply that there is only a philosophical reason to not use NTFS. and while i'm always in when it comes to w32 bashing, i'd like to add that there are technical reasons as well. first, on any recent linux distribution you should be able to "just use" NTFS, with reading, writing, and what not. great! the bad news is that nowadays NTFS support is implemented via a FUSE driver ("NTFS-3G"), which means that the driver is not a kernel-driver but is running in user-space. afaik, this has mostly licensing reasons, but anyhow: running in user-space means that the *performance* of the NTFS-access will simply be deplorable. it's certainly good enough to backup your system or to share data. but if you want to use that partition to hold your ardour session, then i'd rather use something else (ext2 might still be the fastest, ext3/4 might be more feasible)
fgadmsr IOhannes
On 18/10/12 10:24, IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
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On 2012-10-18 09:55, Charles Goyard wrote:
- anything else I should consider?
Get a ssd drive. That's the main bottleneck on these computers. My thinkpad got to boot to X from 15s to 6s just by changing the drive. Switching to systemd makes it in about 4s.
hmm, getting booting speeds from 15s to 6s is really something that is cool to show off at presentations.
Also when in these situations it might be handy to 'hibernate' the system, saves battery and you have it up and ready very quick.
however, i doubt that it will effect you in real live (that is, unless your system likes to crash during shows and you need to get back after a cold reset in front of a waiting audience)
Shouldn't SSD speeds also affect some overall performance aspects? Like it or not you are always writing/reading something from disk at a certain point no? I'd imagine for example you would have some benefit for multitrack hard disk recording et sim. Of course the benefit/cost assessment is another, in my opinion open, matter.
my personal experience (with an eee901 and a 128GB SSD disk - one of the best systems i ever had, though obviously no number-cruncher) was rather mixed: after about 2 years the harddisk started to die away. i never found out whether the problem was the SSD or a faulty controller, but i stopped being unconditionally in favour of SSD then. (and it seems most people who praise SSD have only been using it for 6 months or).
That's my same doubt with SSD (together with their current price). Because adoption (and widespread of it) is rather recent, it's hard to really assess reliability and risk factors.
On the other hand I have a couple of very bad experiences with _external_ hard disks where the arm borke and failed, could be because even in laptops hard disks are much better protected than in mobile cases. Fortunately these were 'travel' disks and I had backups. I got somewhat 'paranoid' with digital backups when a few years ago I lost some stuff: no hardware failure, I deleted it by mistake: as silly as it may sound it does happen, and when it does it bites!
On 2012-10-18 00:39, yvan volochine wrote:
- anything else I should consider? does this version copes well
with ntfs?
*you want* to use ext4
- usually I have my systems (w7 + ubuntu) in their individual
partitions, and all work files are in a 3rd partition.
as I said above, I'd use a ext4 partition for linux and avoid even reading from ntfs when working. ntfs == windowz
now this seems to imply that there is only a philosophical reason to not use NTFS. and while i'm always in when it comes to w32 bashing, i'd like to add that there are technical reasons as well. first, on any recent linux distribution you should be able to "just use" NTFS, with reading, writing, and what not. great! the bad news is that nowadays NTFS support is implemented via a FUSE driver ("NTFS-3G"), which means that the driver is not a kernel-driver but is running in user-space. afaik, this has mostly licensing
The only real reason to use NTFS is that realistically it is more portable, so if you read need to read the disk from an OS that won't easily read the ext-* family go for NTFS. But i guess that would be for more of a backup/portable/transfer disk.
Lorenzo.
reasons, but anyhow: running in user-space means that the *performance* of the NTFS-access will simply be deplorable. it's certainly good enough to backup your system or to share data. but if you want to use that partition to hold your ardour session, then i'd rather use something else (ext2 might still be the fastest, ext3/4 might be more feasible)
fgadmsr IOhannes -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
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IOhannes m zmoelnig wrote:
hmm, getting booting speeds from 15s to 6s is really something that is cool to show off at presentations.
Sure :). But not only. It also speeds up loading heavy sound files and videos. In fact, the point of the "look at boot-up speed" is to show how fast it is to access hundreds of files compared to hard-drive without caching.
*** The search plugin of Jonathan needs no indexing :) ***
Real-world example: A friend and I have developped a patch for an exhibition (vvvv, sorry) on a ssd equipped laptop. The production machine (a brand-new HP workstation) has a hard disk, and can't run the patch (it blocks or crashes) without preloading the 15 full-hd videos into a cache.
my personal experience (with an eee901 and a 128GB SSD disk) was rather mixed: after about 2 years the harddisk started to die away.
There's been a bit of progress since the eee901 came out. However, you're quite right: I make more regular backups since I have a ssd.
Ok, back to some more pdish topic :).
- anything else I should consider?
Get a ssd drive. That's the main bottleneck on these computers. My thinkpad got to boot to X from 15s to 6s just by changing the drive. Switching to systemd makes it in about 4s.
hmm, getting booting speeds from 15s to 6s is really something that is cool to show off at presentations. however, i doubt that it will effect you in real live (that is, unless your system likes to crash during shows and you need to get back after a cold reset in front of a waiting audience)
I'm also not a big fan of ssd as well: I don't mind waiting for my boot,
don't use hardly any media that really demand those speeds, the price is
still to high and the technology too new, and afaik, there's still a limit
of times the sectors can be written.
- anything else I should consider? does this version copes well
with ntfs?
*you want* to use ext4
- usually I have my systems (w7 + ubuntu) in their individual
partitions, and all work files are in a 3rd partition.
as I said above, I'd use a ext4 partition for linux and avoid even reading from ntfs when working. ntfs == windowz
now this seems to imply that there is only a philosophical reason to not use NTFS. and while i'm always in when it comes to w32 bashing, i'd like to add that there are technical reasons as well. first, on any recent linux distribution you should be able to "just use" NTFS, with reading, writing, and what not. great! the bad news is that nowadays NTFS support is implemented via a FUSE driver ("NTFS-3G"), which means that the driver is not a kernel-driver but is running in user-space. afaik, this has mostly licensing reasons, but anyhow: running in user-space means that the *performance* of the NTFS-access will simply be deplorable. it's certainly good enough to backup your system or to share data. but if you want to use that partition to hold your ardour session, then i'd rather use something else (ext2 might still be the fastest, ext3/4 might be more feasible)
I don't mind much about philosophical reasons there are not to use
whatever, windows is and will be my main system.
practical reasons are more important. for the w7/ubuntu common work
partition, I usually use ext32. I just wanted to know if ntfs was already
safe to use, but I can remain with fat32 - I don't have many files that go
over the size limit (although probably there are other disadvantages I
don't know)
I could use put some work in the linux partition (e.g. ardour sessions, if
I ever touch that program again), but ideally I use the common partition
for that - then I can work on Pd from both windows and linux sides, look
at my browser sessions, etc.
thanks for all the feedback,
jmmmp