Boo Ubuntu

[yogi]

I know how much you enjoy reading about my travels and travails in the land of Linux, and that is why I will update you on my latest adventure.

Linux Ubuntu 19.10 was released to the wilds about a week ago. This distro of Linux has always had the top spot on my list of favorites so that it was only natural for me to download it and test it out. I made a live USB version just to see what it looked like. The pre-release reviews said this was going to be the model for the LTS release coming in about six months. A lot of new features and improvements were included. It's just the kind of thing that gets my curiosity rolling in high gear.

I didn't expect it to go smoothly, to be honest. I've been jaded by all the negative, but enlightening, UEFI experience I've acquired lately. My expectations were not denied when I tried to install Eoan Ermine to my hard drive along side Windows 10. I've been running the previous version of Ubuntu in that slot and deleted it's partition to make room for the new guy in town. It was actually pretty simple until I got to the end of the installation. At that point the installer halted and issued an error message something to the effect that it could not install Grub into the EFI partition. I quit the installer and tried to boot just to see what the damage was, if any. All I got was the Grub shell prompt after selecting Ubuntu from the Windows boot manager. Previously, Ubuntu would load Grub and run, but since there was no Grub there was nothing to run with.

As you may recall, not only do I have Windows 10 on this hard drive, but I also have Kali Linux and Mageia, each of which have their own version of Grub inside their partition. Not only that, but I also now have rEFInd installed along with the Windows boot manager, and can boot to anything on that drive that way. So, the fact that Ubuntu didn't install Grub didn't stop me from loading it via a back door. It looked good at first and even updated Grub when I told it to. Rebooting, however, didn't change the options in the boot device selection menu. I still only got the Grub command line when selecting Ubuntu. While that was unfortunate, I figured it wasn't that big of a problem in that I can still boot using somebody else's bootloader. Well, yes, I could indeed boot, but some things simply didn't work. It did not complete installation when it issued the Grub error. It was like 98% complete, but that last 2% was missing critical files.

The question in these kind of situations is, "Is it me, or is it the software?" causing the problems. Being the clever person I now am, I mounted the system ESP partition, where all the UEFI boot files are located, and looked over what was in there. To my surprise Grub from Ubuntu was there. I didn't know if it was left over from the previous install or if the current Ubuntu actually put it there and lied to me about not being able to do it. To find out I had to dig up some specialized tools that would allow me to edit the Windows boot manager device selection menu. The goal was to delete the Ubuntu entry so that there would be no remains from a previous lifetime. Once you have the right tools, it's easy to do. So I did it. No more Ubuntu. I also deleted the Ubuntu partition again. Thus no traces of Ubuntu were on that hard drive.

Did the installation again and got the same results again. Grub was in fact installed where it's supposed to be, but the Ubuntu installer (which goes by the name Ubiquity) insisted it could not install Grub to the /target. Scratching my head I looked over the situation with Gparted and discovered that Ubiquity not only mounted the ESP partition but also the Ubuntu partition, which it labeled /target. So ... I was then wondering if it was trying to install Grub to the wrong partition. How in heck would I know that? Did you say go to the Ubuntu tech support forums? Regardless of your answer that is exactly what I did.

Well, I won't go into the details in any depth, but the Ubuntu support for this kind of problem is terrible compared to the same forum in Linux Mint. The moderator's answer was how to fix this problem with a workaround for installing Ubuntu onto a USB memory stick. I told him several times I'm not trying to do that, and he answered each time that is how he fixed his problem when making a removable copy of Ubuntu. Ugh! He did leave a comment that rang a bell, however.

First of all, Ubiquity is flawed. It only works when installing Ubuntu onto bare metal. It's does not work in dual, or in my case multi-boot, situations. Forget about anything that might be USB related. The references he cited for a similar problem go back to 2013 where people are bitching about the same symptoms I was seeing. The conclusion to be drawn is that the bug in the installer has existed for six freaking years and nothing has been done to fix it. In fact things were done to make it worse given that I'm getting the error message about installing Grub to the wrong partition. When I looked at the Grub script that Ubiquity installed in the correct ESP partition I noted something I've seen before when dealing with Ubuntu. The UUID for the partition was altered. Ubiquity did it. Obviously. I know I've reported this aggressive misbehavior before in this forum, and here it is again. With the wrong UUID, of course Ubuntu would not boot. There is no such drive as it is specifying.

It turns out that there is a way to run the installer without an attempt to install the bootloader, i.e., headless. I did that just be be certain that the installation completed even if there was no Grub. I don't need no stinking Grub now that I have rEFInd. Regardless, after the reinstall completed I rEFInd booted into it to prove it works. And it did. Then it was just a simple matter of going into the EFI partion Grub and replacing the erroneous UUID with the correct one. Now, I am back to normal. Ubuntu and all the other OS's boot as expected from within the Windows boot manager.

Blaming Windows for this catastrophe would be easy, but I proved to myself at least that Windows is innocent and doing what it does best: it just works. Ubuntu, on the other hand, can't even install itself properly because somebody hasn't fixed a six year old problem nor even recognizes a new problem where Ubiquity corrupts boot files on any system that is not it's own. This clearly boils down to the major issue I have with FOSS. The developers of Ubuntu took it upon themselves to modify the open source booting software to the point where it is useless. Why? Because they can. It's free and open.

[Kellemora]

Maybe if you do it this way.
Start with a clean empty hard drive.
Install Ubuntu FIRST and make sure it is all working properly.
Then go back and install Windows and see if it installs and works properly without messing up Ubuntu.

The Linux community no longer views Windows as GOD.
We are tired of trying to find a work-around when dealing with Windows.
If Windows won't install second fiddle to Linux, then having Windows is simply not worth the trouble.
The World Runs on Linux, and the desktop market is almost no more.

I noticed at my doctors office yesterday, they replaced all of their desktop computers with a little Lenovo ThinkCentre network box bolted to the back of the monitor.
Looks like they used their existing monitors and just added this little box between the monitor and swivel wall mount. No more big box on the floor.
These are dedicated to run the doctors office programs supplied by their larger company and that package is the only thing they will boot into. So I didn't learn much about them, other than they only cost about 250 bucks each installed. The server in the back office is new also and only cost them 450 bucks installed. It was all by the same company that has handled them for years and in cahoots with the main company these offices belong to.
The girls in the office there don't like them because they can't back out of the program to get to a web browser, hi hi.

[yogi]

Ubuntu was my go-to Linux OS until relatively recently. They cannot handle UEFI unless they are the sole operating system on a given machine. There are people, like yourself, who are perfectly happy with that scenario. When it comes to multi-boot or portable installations, the flaws Ubuntu has been protecting for half a dozen years become glaringly obvious. The fact that the installer breaks anything it it's path might be considered a desirable feature by dedicated fans, but since when did asserting one's authority become part of a computer operating system?

Until a couple months ago I knew next to nothing about UEFI booting. Today I know a little more than that but not enough to consider myself an expert, or even well informed. I know enough, however, to understand what works and why. I realize fully that you don't agree, but Windows does work in a UEFI environment alone or along side other operating systems. That cannot be said of very many Linux distributions. In the case of Ubuntu, they had a very good idea and destroyed it's usability. I can only attribute that diversion to the fact that it's not proprietary and has no hard specifications. Developers are free to break it as they see fit. There was a time when those comments would have been based on hearsay. Not so anymore. I know what Ubuntu is doing, and what it is not doing, because I have tried to use it as it is supposed to be used. The problem is not with Windows; believe it or not.

The UEFI specifications call for one and only one master boot manager. If Windows assumes that role because it was installed to work that way, then I don't see how it deviates from the specifications. There is no reason why Linux or any other boot manager cannot assume the master boot role. The UEFI specs do not call for Microsoft nor Intel nor anybody else to take over the boot process. They provide standard tools and methods that not everybody is following. This is a transition period, after all. My hope was that Linux, Ubuntu in particular, would have made the transition by now.


It's good to see the medical field coming into the computer age. Neither Windows nor Linux was designed with them in mind, but that doesn't mean either is excluded. The third option is a dedicated stand alone system, which might be what your doctor has in his office. I can think of a good reason why they would go that route; it would be much harder to hack compared to well known operating systems. That stand alone dedicated operating system is what I think the world is coming to. People of the future will have several dedicated computers available to make their lives easier, and they will all be bullet proof because no two would be the same. Of course, being bullet proof is no protection from a mortar attack, but still.

[yogi]

Source: https://askubuntu.com/questions/882724/ ... ub-instead

I know this does not apply to you anymore, but here are the instructions to change booting to Grub2. When I feel brave enough, I'll test it out to see if it works.

Make sure Windows Fast Boot is turned off. These instructions are for your CSM boot but you can learn about turning off Fast Boot here: (Installing Ubuntu Alongside a Pre-Installed Windows with UEFI)

On non-UEFI systems or on UEFI systems using CSM (legacy BIOS boot), open the terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T and type:

sudo grub-install --target=i386-pc --recheck /dev/sda
sudo update-grub

This will replace whatever boot manager is on the first HDD or SSD. In rare circumstances where you are booting from the second drive replace sda with sdb

From then on if you make changes to grub, do not reinstall but rather from the terminal use:

sudo update-grub

[Kellemora]

The only thing Ubuntu did for me was get me back to using Linux again.
But I soon switched to using Debian and have ever since.
Started playing with Linux Mint but am still using Debian as my main go to OS.

Dual booting came about so folks with only one computer could have their Windows and try out Linux.
Then came UEFI and everything has been in turmoil ever since.
All along, Windows always had to play GOD on a computer system.
It had to be the first installed if you wanted to Dual Boot a computer.
Perhaps Ubuntu decided they were tired of Windows playing GOD and decided it was their turn to play God.

There is a definite BUG in the UEFI system, and the so called Security it is supposed to provide.
It needs to either be revamped or changed to something that is user friendly to all OS's, or scrapped completely and start over using another approach.

As far as the medical field goes, they have been combining services for a long time now, and a few large companies are coming out on top, and whole medical groups are joining one of the larger groups, who provide all the computing necessities for every doctors office. Works great when the Internet is up, hi hi.

[yogi]

After talking with you for as long as we have been talking, it's clear to me that Windows is not suitable for your application. That is a given and no amount of fact checking would change your needs. Some opinions you have expressed, however, are direct quotes from quarters lacking in certain fundamental understanding about what is going on the the computer world today. The comment about Windows being GOD is a good and humorous example. I used the analogy myself to lash out at the Linux bootloader, Grub. Viewing the necessary function of bootloading in a competitive light misses the point. Neither Microsoft nor the Linux community seeks out world domination, although their adherents would have the world think it is so. UEFI was invented out of necessity. DOS became too old to be useful. Something had to take it's place. The specifications were not written unilaterally by any one group. All the major interests were involved in writing the specs, including the Linux community. Implementing it all is where the problems arise. Not everybody does a good job of it.

In my research of late I've run across a few, very few, articles that are superior in terms of expertise. The one I'm citing here is probably the best available explanation of what UEFI is all about. You can't get a clearer picture from a more authoritative source. You can read it if you care to, but I doubt that it is worth your time. It's an exceptionally long article that goes into every aspect imaginable regarding UEFI. I've read some of it and perhaps some day will read it in its entirety. The reason I bring it up at this point is found in the Recommendations section at the end of the article. You probably won't ever have a need to follow those recommendations, but this hacker wannabe does. I'm not quoting the entire list either; just the pertinent parts. You will enjoy reading them nonetheless, I'm sure.

https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/01/2 ... work-then/

*If you can possibly manage it, have one OS per computer. If you need more than one OS, buy more computers, or use virtualization. If you can do this everything is very simple and it doesn’t much matter if you have BIOS or UEFI firmware, or use UEFI-native or BIOS-compatible boot on a UEFI system. Everything will be nice and easy and work. You will whistle as you work, and be kind to children and small animals. All will be sweetness and light. Really, do this.

*If you absolutely must have more than one OS per computer, at least have one OS per disk. If you’re reasonably comfortable with how BIOS-style booting works and you don’t think you need Secure Boot, it’s pretty reasonable to use BIOS-compatible booting rather than UEFI-style booting in this situation on a UEFI-capable system. You’ll probably have less pain to deal with and you won’t really lose anything. With one OS per disk you can also mix UEFI-native and BIOS-compatible installations.

*If you absolutely insist on having more than one OS per disk, understand everything written on this page, understand that you are making your life much more painful than it needs to be, lay in good stocks of painkillers and gin, and don’t go yelling at your OS vendor, whatever breaks. Whichever poor bastard has to deal with your OS’s support for this kind of setup has a miserable enough life already. And for the love of cookies, don’t mix UEFI-native and BIOS-compatible OS installations, you have enough pain to deal with already.

[Kellemora]

Love it, that's a good set of quotes there Yogi, hi hi.

Maybe for their next attempt, they will abolish Partitioning of Drives, eh?

You know what this is all leading to don't you?
Computers that do nothing except connect to the cloud, and monitored by Big Brother!

[yogi]

In my humble opinion, the architecture of the operating system should be transparent. No matter what OS I decide to install, it should just boot without a need for me to get an advanced degree in computer science. I don't want to know about partitions and the difference between file formats and disk formats. I just want to turn on Ubuntu and see it work. Amazingly enough, I can do that now.

A couple days ago I came upon some information that solved a lot of my self-imposed problems. The issue of Windows boot manager taking over the boot process, or Grub searching out and destroying such, has a simple solution. I should say most of the time it's simple, but it could get a little tricky. The BIOS we all know and love from UEFI emulation has two sets of settings that determine what is booted and when. Legacy BIOS might have it too, but I've not looked into it yet. That's the next project. The first group of settings are the ones we often talk about wherein we can select which boot device gets looked at first, second, third, etc. etc. We are talking hardware here. You and I would like to see the DVD/CD port or possibly the USB port checked out for something bootable first and the hard disk where all the normal action is would be the default and last choice. I know you have jiggled those setting in the past. So have I. Because my BIOS looks at the USB port first, any bootable memory stick I plug into my computer will fire up before the Windows bootloader. Just plug in the memory stick and away we go.

There is another group of settings for BBS priorities. Apparently this can go by one of several names, but the BBS designation is pretty common. The BBS settings are made for crazy people just like me, i.e., people who have multiple operating systems and their bootloaders all on the same physical hard drive. The BBS settings determine which bootloaders have priority. The boot device priorities will get the BIOS to look at my hard drive, but then what? There are five (5) possible choices for booting on my hard drive. Because Windows ended up at the top of the list, it's boot manager is what I see every time I activate the hard drive. I have rEFInd in there too, and three versions of Linux each with a Grub (bootloader) of it's own. All I need to do is put my loader of choice at the top of the list, and voila! No more Windows bootloader. Even if Windows should be so audacious to displace the bootloader of choice, it can be changed easily. I have yet to prove Widows will not displace Grub if Grub has first priority in the BBS list, but that too will be tested at some convenient time.

I'm about to prove AdamW (author of the recommendations) is exaggerating. All of these OS's have in fact been living side by side peacefully on my MSI hard drive. Most if not all the troubles I've had were due to my lack of understanding UEFI, not to mention all the settings available on my laptop. It could change, but as of this moment I have to stand by my previous comments and observations. Windows has UEFI down pat. Linux has a ways to go.

[Kellemora]

I've not gotten into anything regarding learning how UEFI works.
But I do know a couple of guys who decided to install Ubuntu FIRST and the Windows 10, and both were successful in doing so. I think they created the EFI/Ubuntu and EFI/Microsoft partitions first. Turned off Secure Boot of course.

One of them had an EFI partition he named EFI/HP/Ubuntu and EFI/Ubuntu for Linux Mint, Windows is in EFI/HP/Windows.

How the bootloader finds them is beyond me.

There are several groups working on a new type of bootloader, some of them are out already.
When the machine boots into EFI/whatever, it then displays a list of OSs to boot from, much like the old Grub used to do.
I think one was called EZ2Boot, but I'm not sure on that name.

From what I understand UEFI was well thought out before being implemented.
But the methods of using it properly were never made public, and therein lies most of the problems.

On a totally separate note:
I think you told me the Bus Speed of the Silver Yogi was 100 mHz.
The slow as molasses Windows computer I bought for Debi claims the Bus Speed as 1600 mHz.
Which I know is probably really just the clock speed.
I spent a few minutes looking for the bus speed on each of my computers mobo's and none really claim what the bus speed is, at least not in a meaningful way. They all toss out a lot of numbers everything from 100 mHz up to 3 gHz as the speed of the computer. Even though the SDRAM may only be 2 gHz or whatever it was, done shredded my notes, hi hi.

In any case: Based on the spec sheet for Debi's computer, it should have screamed like lightning. It is far better than the specs on any other machine I have here. Yet every machine here, even the old XP machine is 100 times faster.

A lot of people are dumping Win 10 and going back to Win 7. Apparently they don't like Win 8 either.

[yogi]

One of them had an EFI partition he named EFI/HP/Ubuntu and EFI/Ubuntu for Linux Mint, Windows is in EFI/HP/Windows.
How the bootloader finds them is beyond me.

That is the question to which I discovered the answer recently, and how I got my degree in UEFI-ology. LOL As I explained eloquently in a previous post, one of the obvious things that distinguishes UEFI from legacy BIOS is the existence of that (EFI system partition) ESP partition. This partition is reserved for storing bootloaders be they grub, Windows, or anything else. Inside that partition, among others, is a /EFI directory. Up to that point it's all standard.

There are sub-directories under /EFI and it is those sub-directories that contain the nitty gritty of booting. So, you can have multiple sub-directories for Ubuntu's many flavors, but each has to be labeled differently so that they can be distinguished from one another. That's the rule Linux Mint ignores so arrogantly. Sooo ... in effect each sub-directory of the /EFI directory would be a choice of bootloaders on the menu of the boot manager.

The firmware for UEFI is what figures it all out. The standards describe that directory tree up to a point (/EFI), then leave it up to the developer to figure out the remaining structure. This is a common practice in open source code.

The ESP partition has all the possible boot information, but that partition does not have any way to know which one to run first, or run at all. That decision is made in the firmware. Two sets of settings on my laptop define the order for booting. The first settings prioritize the hardware and the second set prioritizes the software (bootloaders). Single OS machines are not a problem, but when you have the Godzilla that I created, those settings become critical. UEFI standards do not specify how these priorities are to be determined. They just say do it. There really aren't too many variations but the micro-coding can be as different as day and night.


Bus speed ... which bus are we talking about? Even if we know which bus, how do you measure that speed? Let me count the ways. Your CPU may be rated at 2.3GHz but you and I know that not every one of those cycles are used. There is a lot of idle time. Plus, each processor has a billion settings to control the flow of data. If a coder picks the right combination of settings you will have lightning speed processing of data through the processor. But, as you might guess, some things can't work that fast. So, they deliberately slow down the processor to accommodate the slow hardware. This is one reason why you should never buy OEM installed Windows. They bugger it up for whatever their reasons are.

The central processing unit isn't very useful by itself. It communicates with various memory chips and other processing hardware, such as GPU's. The bus connecting RAM to the processor is blazing fast and typically will be that speed specified by the DDR or SDRAM memory card - it's typically less than the core processor speed, but not by much. I configured part of my 16GB of RAM as ram-disk to take advantage of that high speed bus. The most critical buses for speed are the control bus, the data bus, and the address bus. I'll agree that those speeds are difficult to pick off a spec sheet, but like the RAM memory you can look up the "chip set" speed to give you a good idea how fast things can move along between the CPU and memory. Then there is PCI bus for your expansion hardware, and of course, USB. I'm sure I'm missing a few, but you get the idea. Bus speed is whatever the marketing people determine it to be. It generally has nothing to do with reality.

You can try an experiment some day when you have a few hours to spare. Go to the Microsoft download site and download a copy of the exact version of Windows that your wife had on her computer. They have a download tool for you to put it on USB or DVD, whichever you prefer. Don't worry about them badgering you for a product key; you will be able to run the system in a limited way without one. What you are looking for by doing this is to see if this version of Windows runs any faster than the OEM version you trashed. It should be noticeably different, but it might not be. If you like what you see you can try applying the old product key from the version of Windows you discarded. Otherwise just consider yourself enlightened and carry on with Linux.

[Kellemora]

For a long time, I kept a tag on my computers telling what the CPU and RAM speeds were, how much RAM, and what size HD's were in the machine.
Seems like the Speed they classify the CPU had little do with how fast each machine was.
I had machines with 2 gig CPU's running faster than 3 gig CPU's. both had equal RAM amounts and RAM speed.

The one and only surprise I've had was when I got the Silver Yogi, with 16 megs of memory.
I had two identical computers, same mobo and CPU. The first had 4 megs of memory when it was built and the swap file was never used. So I took 2 megs out and put it in the second computer i had built so they now both had exactly 2 megs of memory.
I never noticed any greater speed with 4 megs as I did with 2 megs, and the swap file was never used.
By my logic, if the swap file wasn't used, the extra memory was wasted which is why I didn't buy memory for the second computer.

Along comes the Silver Yogi and it ran light lightning.
So as a test on my second computer mentioned above, I bought two new 8 meg sticks, and put the two 2 meg sticks back in the first computer bringing it back up to 4 megs. I still did not see an increase in speed on the first computer, but that second one now screamed almost as fast as the Silver Yogi. The Silver Yogi still won by a wide margin of course.

I don't remember what I did to test them, other than it was a graphics heavy program that opened images rotated them 90 degrees and resaved them again. I think I also played the same game on each and used a timer to see how fast I could get through like a dozen screens doing the same steps in each.

I know you explained it to me once, but it was probably way over my head, hi hi.
But apparently the swap file really isn't needed if you have enough RAM.
However, the more RAM you have, the more the computer will use without considering the swap file, which must only be needed if there is an overflow of data more than the RAM that is needed can handle.

Although I don't do much streaming video, I also saw where the more RAM in the machine, the more of a show gets buffered. Too little RAM and the stream may pause as it catches back up again, but part of that has to do with net congestion as well. Comcast is notorious for throttling downloads over a certain size.

I've never been more pleased with a computer as I have been with the Silver Yogi, and as you know, it is using the on-board graphics since the slot had a trace or two break in transit. No biggie though, it runs great! Love It!

[yogi]

Swap space has always been a puzzle to me. Rarely, if ever, did I see any swap being used. I never logged it's usage but during my personal observations the RAM used up all the volatile memory and Swap used nothing. Recently, while investigating UEFI and Linux Mint, I discovered that the latest edition of Linux Mint does not require a swap partition. They create a swap file in the root directory to do what the partitions space used to do. That still uses up memory so that all they gained, perhaps, was some speed. But, the real lesson coming out of that is the discovery of a system parameter called swappiness. That parameter sets the amount of time which swap space is used. Default is 60 but you typically won't notice any lagging if you reset it to 10. The point here is that the use of swap space is adjustable from within the OS. And, all distros of Linux have it apparently, not just Mint.

My interest in swap originates in the fact I put Linus on USB memory sticks and inside virtual machines. I rarely add swap space to the memory sticks and never in the virtual machines. The VM's are between 10-11GB in size so that you would think missing swap would make a difference. It doesn't. Also in the VM's I assign no more than 2048MB to RAM usage. Considering Ubuntu wants to see 25GB of disk space, it's a miracle that it runs at all in my VM's. Actually I have taken to cheating with Ubuntu these days and only install the minimum software in my VM's. Don't even need the nVidia drivers there. The only thing I can attribute to the success of these cramped spaces is the 16GB RAM available to the system.

I don't know what to say about the Silver Yogi that I haven't already said. The guy who put it together knew what he was doing and I am sure the bus speeds you and I have talked about are all matched. In other words the memory chips run at a speed that the north bridge and south bridge of that Intel processor can use most efficiently. Also to be noted, that mother board was an off the shelf item. The firmware was not buggered up by some OEM who had an agenda. It's not the fastest system you can ever configure, but apparently it is pretty darn efficient. I didn't have problems running Windows on it, but back in those days I didn't expect much from Microsoft. LOL

The combination of Windows 10, 16GB RAM, an SSD storage medium, and an 8 core AMD processor all in the laptop is surreal. Given all the negative experiences you have had with Windows I don't expect you to appreciate what is going on over here. However, in most, but not all, situations Windows 10 runs faster than the Linux distros I have on the same laptop.
The ASUS tower runs Windows 7 at about the same speed in spite of the fact that the processor clock is twice that of the laptop. This is amazing when you consider how bloated Windows 10 is compared to Windows 7. Someday I may get some benchmarking software to verify my visual observations. It's hard for me to understand why WIndows 10 is performing so well, but I am certain it has something to do with my particular hardware set. The fact that I'm running a beta version of Windows may have something to do with it also, but I doubt it.

I think that you should replace your mechanical hard drive in the Silver Yogi with an SSD equivalent. If you think it's running fast now, you will be blown away at what a solid state drive will do for you.

[Kellemora]

My oldest accounting computer only had 512k of memory in it.
If I opened my accounting program, and then opened the folders with purchase orders and invoices, it did use the swap file.
I would open the purchase order to get the order date, and then jump back to the accounting program to enter the date, and had to wait for the accounting program to reload again.
I upped this computer to 1 meg and it still used the swap file, but I did not have to wait for the accounting program to reopen after switching screens like I did before.
None of my 2 meg machines ever used the swap file that I know of. They have always shown zero usage in their history.

I don't think I need an SSD drive, since almost all of my work is just simple typing, and an occasional book cover to make.
The programs I use to do those things open almost instantly as it is.

[yogi]

You are good to go with the setup you have, obviously. When I put Windows 7 on a solid state drive, that alone cut the boot speed down to 1/3rd of what it could do on a mechanical drive. That alone was impressive. The download speeds were also reduced, but that depended on the server more than on my storage. Few of the programs I used ran noticeably faster. PSP, the graphics editor, was about the same speed but could now load albums as fast as it used to load single pictures. The most taxing game of it's day, Witcher 3, ran smoothly during game play, but that was a hybrid situation. I installed the program onto a spare hard drive because I knew there would be a lot of disk activity and didn't want to burden the SSD. However, the actual game play takes place on drive C:\ along with the rest of the OS. Since you don't do any of the things that I do, perhaps you would not benefit from upgrading the hard drive.

[Kellemora]

I think, once I load a particular program, the work I do in it is done using the RAM and the only time the HD drive runs is when I'm saving my work. Now some of my programs automatically save every 5 minutes or so, but it does that in the background so I never have a slow down while doing something graphic intense like creating a new book cover using GIMP.
When I did CAD/CAM work there were several times the computer would slow down for a minute or two, but this was usually only when it had to redraw the entire screen, not just add the lines I was adding. I think the lines I am adding or not really saved until the screen is redrawn and with some of the detail I get into when doing CAD/CAM work, there are one heck of a lot of lines to have to redraw. But then if I close and open the drawing, it loads much faster than it takes when it does a redraw. I figure this is because it has to calculate all the connection points and what lines connect to them, but once it does that it saves it in the order it needs to open a drawing properly. Although I don't really know how it works under the hood, hi hi.

[yogi]

Every so often I look at the system resource monitor to see all the activity that is ongoing under the hood of my computer. I also have a widget on my Windows 7 desktop that shows disk activity, both read and write. In my situation the disk reads and writes are never idle. Linux might be different, but I can't recall ever seeing zero activity there either. It's not just a matter of keeping the program you are using updated. There are quite a few background services and processes that must be run to keep the session alive. This is true in both Windows and Linux, but again I don't know if Linux is any less busy. The way I see it is that when the obvious things are running faster and my response time is better, the entire system is benefiting from whatever I did to improve it. For what I do with computers it only matters that I can do it. Nothing useful comes from what I'm doing here.

[Kellemora]

I keep my System Monitor up all the time, usually with 3 windows instead of 4 open.
The first monitors the processor, the second the memory usage, and swap which never shows usage, and the network in and out. I do have the 4th window open on a computer with two hard drives and one of them seems to be acting up.
Both of the drives show they are A-OK when I run the bank of tests on them. I have Windows XP on one drive and all of my Linux OSs on the second drive. I also have the same Linux OSs on the first drive now too. Because for some reason, any time I use the second drive as the boot drive, the programs all run super slow. Both drives are the same size and brand.

Speaking of which, I put a second drive in the Silver Yogi to use for on-site backup, before it goes out to the external drive. For some reason this drive is super slow also. I can save to the external faster than to the internal drive. Strange!

I overheard the manager talking to someone in the back rather loudly and found out our local auto parts store's computers are running Windows 8 Enterprise in the back and Windows 8 Pro on the front counters. But they are running the main program directly from the home office, whatever that means.
I asked the counter guy about what I heard and he said he has no idea what is on the computers, all he sees is the parts screen and checkout screen, nothing else.

[yogi]

The built in system monitors I've been using have only one window, but several tabs and at least 4 graphs. I can look at one resource or several depending on my mood. I like to use something called Process Explorer which is a variation of the Windows Task Manager. It shows the same basic information in a slightly different format. But it also sends samples of each running process to Total Virus Upload. I can thus see in real time if any malware is running. Of course the malware could be there waiting for a trigger and I'd not see it. This program only shows what is running in real time.

All the system monitors consume CPU time and I keep them off until needed for that reason. They generally run less than 1% of CPU time which is insignificant. But to us purists, it's wasted time. Foxfire now has a feature whereby it shows you all the trackers that are spying on you. You have the option to turn them all off or pick and choose the ones you care about. It's no surprise that Google has a bunch on nearly every web site even those not connected to Google. I checked out this site and found a single cookie; nothing else. That must tell you something.

I read today where Chromebook is going into Linux in a big way. I don't know if they are doing what Windows is doing or something more. They didn't explain it in any depth. The Windows implementation is plain vanilla and if you want any GUI action you have to install and configure it on your own. I know you figure Linux rightfully should run the world, but I don't quite get why Google is cuddling up to it. I'm guessing it has to do with cloud computing in some way.

[Kellemora]

Google has their own OS, it just happens to use the Linux Kernel is all.
They are working on building something new from the ground up, including the kernel, so I'm sure it will be 100% proprietary.
From what I understand, the whole way computers work is going to be quite different in the very near future.
They won't be binary anymore either, from what I've read. No more just on/off or 0/1, they will be multi-layered. Perhaps this is what Quantum Computing is all about?

[yogi]

Google does have it's own OS. The news here is that it can now run Linux in the native mode. Coming up with a new OS altogether is a different project, but as you point out it may be obsolete before it gets widely used. Quantum computers are not binary. Every state between a one and a zero is valid, and from what I understand is voted upon to extract usable data. I read an explanation of how it all works, but most of that was beyond me. Their computing power is quantum leaps greater than anything in existence today. One of the big problems in the quantum world is security. Those quantum computers would be able to brute force any password that ever existed or will exist in the future in a matter of seconds. So, forget about using passwords in the quantum world.