issue133:mon_opinion
Différences
Ci-dessous, les différences entre deux révisions de la page.
Les deux révisions précédentesRévision précédenteProchaine révision | Révision précédente | ||
issue133:mon_opinion [2018/06/06 12:33] – auntiee | issue133:mon_opinion [2018/06/15 14:37] (Version actuelle) – d52fr | ||
---|---|---|---|
Ligne 5: | Ligne 5: | ||
L'un des meilleurs aspects de GNU/Linux est qu'il ne nécessite pas toujours un matériel de pointe pour fonctionner ; ses performances sont tout à fait convenables là où d' | L'un des meilleurs aspects de GNU/Linux est qu'il ne nécessite pas toujours un matériel de pointe pour fonctionner ; ses performances sont tout à fait convenables là où d' | ||
- | Par conséquent, | + | Par conséquent, |
**As a first example, let us consider my Acer Extensa 5220 laptop that came out in 2008 and that I acquired new that year. This computer sufficed quite well for my needs at the time, with one GB of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive - with the then-new SATA interface - and Windows Vista. That sets one back a step in time, I suppose. Although I upgraded the RAM to two GBytes at some point, it is clear that some of the technical specifications cannot be belied: RAM must be of the slow DDR2 type since this is all the motherboard will support, the USB 2 ports must remain what they are, and I would be hard pressed to find a suitable replacement for the 802.11g WiFi Card. The processor is a single-threaded Intel Celeron 32-bit CPU running at all of 1700 MHz, and this is not upgradable. However, it still has a fairly nice keyboard, and the screen is fine for my eyes, so it stayed running off and on for the last decade. Even the battery retains about 10 minutes of charge, enough to set off the effects of a sudden power drop. | **As a first example, let us consider my Acer Extensa 5220 laptop that came out in 2008 and that I acquired new that year. This computer sufficed quite well for my needs at the time, with one GB of RAM, an 80 GB hard drive - with the then-new SATA interface - and Windows Vista. That sets one back a step in time, I suppose. Although I upgraded the RAM to two GBytes at some point, it is clear that some of the technical specifications cannot be belied: RAM must be of the slow DDR2 type since this is all the motherboard will support, the USB 2 ports must remain what they are, and I would be hard pressed to find a suitable replacement for the 802.11g WiFi Card. The processor is a single-threaded Intel Celeron 32-bit CPU running at all of 1700 MHz, and this is not upgradable. However, it still has a fairly nice keyboard, and the screen is fine for my eyes, so it stayed running off and on for the last decade. Even the battery retains about 10 minutes of charge, enough to set off the effects of a sudden power drop. | ||
Ligne 11: | Ligne 11: | ||
This computer is running the latest and greatest Linux Mint at the time of writing, version 18.3 Sylvia XFCE (i386) with all applications updated to their latest versions. Aside from Dropbox - which does seem to bog things down a bit with slower hard drives - I have every reason to be satisfied with the computer’s speed. The boot process, from GRUB menu to desktop, takes 126 seconds, Firefox starts up in 10 seconds, and LibreOffice in 7. All this means that if I make some provision for booting (ie, go get my coffee while it does its thing), I can actually use it for some productive work in the fashion it was meant to be used. Even the Firefox and Chrome browsers seem to work relatively well in JavaScript hell, though I do admit to using mostly LibreOffice for text editing on this particular machine.** | This computer is running the latest and greatest Linux Mint at the time of writing, version 18.3 Sylvia XFCE (i386) with all applications updated to their latest versions. Aside from Dropbox - which does seem to bog things down a bit with slower hard drives - I have every reason to be satisfied with the computer’s speed. The boot process, from GRUB menu to desktop, takes 126 seconds, Firefox starts up in 10 seconds, and LibreOffice in 7. All this means that if I make some provision for booting (ie, go get my coffee while it does its thing), I can actually use it for some productive work in the fashion it was meant to be used. Even the Firefox and Chrome browsers seem to work relatively well in JavaScript hell, though I do admit to using mostly LibreOffice for text editing on this particular machine.** | ||
- | Comme premier exemple, examinons mon portable Acer Extensa 5220 qui est sorti en 2008 et que j'ai acheté neuf la même année. Cet ordinateur répondait très bien à mes besoins du moment, avec un Go de RAM, un disque dur de 80 Go - avec la nouvelle interface SATA - et Windows Vista. Un retour vers l' | + | Comme premier exemple, examinons mon portable Acer Extensa 5220 qui est sorti en 2008 et que j'ai acheté neuf la même année. Cet ordinateur répondait très bien à mes besoins du moment, avec 1 Go de RAM, un disque dur de 80 Go - avec la nouvelle interface SATA - et Windows Vista. Un retour vers l' |
- | Cet ordinateur-ci fait tourner actuellement la toute dernière version de Linux Mint, la version 18.3 Sylvia XFCE (i386) et toutes les applications sont mises à jour à leur version la plus récente. À part Dropbox, qui a effectivement une tendance | + | Cet ordinateur-ci fait tourner actuellement la toute dernière version de Linux Mint, la version 18.3 Sylvia XFCE (i386) et toutes les applications sont mises à jour à leur version la plus récente. À part Dropbox, qui a effectivement une tendance |
**So, is it still worth my money to upgrade further the existing hardware? At this point, just about the only part that could be swapped for something new would be the hard drive. A rather cheap SSD drive is an obvious candidate. In internal 2.5” form, with a SATA connector, these days they can cost anywhere from about 40€ (35 GPB, 50 USD) new - if one is not too demanding on quality and capacity - to about zero if there is a spare drive lying around in a drawer somewhere. Some of the earlier drives with capacities of 32 or 64 GBytes could very well be doing just that, having been replaced with larger sizes in a production computer somewhere along the line. This is the path I took, with a 32 GByte SSD drive or, more precisely, a 32 GByte m-SATA drive, in card format, placed inside a 2.5” format adapter. I connected the new drive to the computer with an external USB-to-SATA interface, formatted it using btrfs and transferred both system and user files over using the btrfs send/ | **So, is it still worth my money to upgrade further the existing hardware? At this point, just about the only part that could be swapped for something new would be the hard drive. A rather cheap SSD drive is an obvious candidate. In internal 2.5” form, with a SATA connector, these days they can cost anywhere from about 40€ (35 GPB, 50 USD) new - if one is not too demanding on quality and capacity - to about zero if there is a spare drive lying around in a drawer somewhere. Some of the earlier drives with capacities of 32 or 64 GBytes could very well be doing just that, having been replaced with larger sizes in a production computer somewhere along the line. This is the path I took, with a 32 GByte SSD drive or, more precisely, a 32 GByte m-SATA drive, in card format, placed inside a 2.5” format adapter. I connected the new drive to the computer with an external USB-to-SATA interface, formatted it using btrfs and transferred both system and user files over using the btrfs send/ | ||
Ligne 19: | Ligne 19: | ||
One nice thing about working with this class of computers is that one is not overly concerned about messing things up. The financial implications would be rather low, even if the worst happened. A second point is that access to the computer’s internals is actually quite good for this particular model, as for other laptops of the same time-period. A single cover needs to be removed (held on with 8 Phillips 00 screws), and then RAM, hard drive and WiFi card can all be accessed together. Perhaps this could be a good way of introducing youngsters into the arcane arts of actually working on their devices. But I digress…** | One nice thing about working with this class of computers is that one is not overly concerned about messing things up. The financial implications would be rather low, even if the worst happened. A second point is that access to the computer’s internals is actually quite good for this particular model, as for other laptops of the same time-period. A single cover needs to be removed (held on with 8 Phillips 00 screws), and then RAM, hard drive and WiFi card can all be accessed together. Perhaps this could be a good way of introducing youngsters into the arcane arts of actually working on their devices. But I digress…** | ||
- | Étant donné tout cela, est-ce que cela vaut le coût de faire des mises à niveau supplémentaires sur ce matériel ? À ce stade, la seule composante qui puisse être remplacée par quelque chose de nouveau semble être le disque dur. Un disque SSD plutôt bon marché serait le candidat évident pour ce faire. En format 2,5" en interne, avec un connecteur SATA, ils peuvent coûter | + | Étant donné tout cela, est-ce que cela vaut le coût de faire des mises à niveau supplémentaires sur ce matériel ? À ce stade, la seule composante qui puisse être remplacée par quelque chose de nouveau semble être le disque dur. Un disque SSD plutôt bon marché serait le candidat évident pour ce faire. En format 2,5" en interne, avec un connecteur SATA, neufs leur côut s' |
- | Travailler avec ce genre d' | + | Travailler avec ce genre d' |
**Once the hard drive had been swapped, I timed the same actions. Boot from GRUB to desktop was now 103 seconds. So, about a quarter of a minute had been shaved off, but both the limitations of the CPU and of the hard drive’s SATA I bus (just 150 MBytes/s, compared to ATA’s 133 MBytes/s) mean that the speedup is certainly there, but may be seen as marginal as regards actual usability. As for applications, | **Once the hard drive had been swapped, I timed the same actions. Boot from GRUB to desktop was now 103 seconds. So, about a quarter of a minute had been shaved off, but both the limitations of the CPU and of the hard drive’s SATA I bus (just 150 MBytes/s, compared to ATA’s 133 MBytes/s) mean that the speedup is certainly there, but may be seen as marginal as regards actual usability. As for applications, | ||
Ligne 27: | Ligne 27: | ||
For this class of machine, I would probably conclude that upgrading some of the hardware would certainly have an educational purpose to it, but that the benefit for practical use of the laptop would at best be marginal.** | For this class of machine, I would probably conclude that upgrading some of the hardware would certainly have an educational purpose to it, but that the benefit for practical use of the laptop would at best be marginal.** | ||
- | Une fois le disque dur remplacé, j'ai mesuré le temps nécessaire pour les mêmes actions. Le démarrage de GRUB au bureau était maintenant de 103 secondes. Ainsi, j' | + | Une fois le disque dur remplacé, j'ai mesuré le temps nécessaire pour les mêmes actions. Le démarrage de GRUB au bureau était maintenant de 103 secondes. Ainsi, j' |
- | Pour cette classe de machine, je conclurais probablement que la mise à niveau de certaines composantes | + | Pour cette classe de machine, je conclurais probablement que la mise à niveau de certains composants |
**As a second example, let us take my Acer Aspire One (AO-722) netbook. This one dates from 2011, has an AMD C60 processor with one core but two threads - still at 1600 MHz total frequency, but each thread can take 800 MHz separately - and it is actually a 64-bit machine. The original complement was a 320 GByte rotational hard drive, two GBytes of the slightly faster DDR-3 RAM, and Windows 7 Home Edition. The screen is a 11.7” unit that has its quirks, but still works well. Unlike the Extensa, this netbook does not have an optical unit. Battery life is pretty low after this time, but, with a bit of care, one can eeke out about one hour of power. It currently runs Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia with the Cinnamon desktop (64-bit). On the positive side for upgraders, access is really easy, with a bottom panel that comes out by unfastening a single Phillips 0 screw. | **As a second example, let us take my Acer Aspire One (AO-722) netbook. This one dates from 2011, has an AMD C60 processor with one core but two threads - still at 1600 MHz total frequency, but each thread can take 800 MHz separately - and it is actually a 64-bit machine. The original complement was a 320 GByte rotational hard drive, two GBytes of the slightly faster DDR-3 RAM, and Windows 7 Home Edition. The screen is a 11.7” unit that has its quirks, but still works well. Unlike the Extensa, this netbook does not have an optical unit. Battery life is pretty low after this time, but, with a bit of care, one can eeke out about one hour of power. It currently runs Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia with the Cinnamon desktop (64-bit). On the positive side for upgraders, access is really easy, with a bottom panel that comes out by unfastening a single Phillips 0 screw. | ||
Ligne 35: | Ligne 35: | ||
With the original two Gbytes of RAM and rotational hard drive, boot-up time from GRUB to the (cinnamon) desktop was 65 seconds, launching Firefox took 10 seconds, and LibreOffice 13. This result is interesting in itself. This computer could be expected to be quite a bit faster than the Extensa, by virtue of its superior CPU, faster hard drive connection (SATA-II instead of SATA-I), and faster RAM. While general system boot-up times are coherent with this line of reasoning, Firefox seems to stick to its 10-second times, and LibreOffice is now noticeably slower than before. I am loathe to give a precise explanation for this behavior, but perhaps some of the blame can be placed on using 64-bit versions of this software, which are known for taking up slightly more disk space and RAM than the 32-bit versions used on the Extensa. Other causes related to system libraries may also come into play.** | With the original two Gbytes of RAM and rotational hard drive, boot-up time from GRUB to the (cinnamon) desktop was 65 seconds, launching Firefox took 10 seconds, and LibreOffice 13. This result is interesting in itself. This computer could be expected to be quite a bit faster than the Extensa, by virtue of its superior CPU, faster hard drive connection (SATA-II instead of SATA-I), and faster RAM. While general system boot-up times are coherent with this line of reasoning, Firefox seems to stick to its 10-second times, and LibreOffice is now noticeably slower than before. I am loathe to give a precise explanation for this behavior, but perhaps some of the blame can be placed on using 64-bit versions of this software, which are known for taking up slightly more disk space and RAM than the 32-bit versions used on the Extensa. Other causes related to system libraries may also come into play.** | ||
- | Prenons mon netbook Acer Aspire One (AO-722) comme deuxième exemple. Cet ordinateur | + | Prenons mon netbook Acer Aspire One (AO-722) comme deuxième exemple. Cet ordinateur |
- | Avec le disque dur rotatif et les 2 Go de RAM présents à l' | + | Avec le disque dur rotatif et les 2 Go de RAM présents à l' |
**Upgrading the RAM installed to four GBytes gives no speed advantage in the least: 68 seconds to boot the desktop, 10 seconds to launch Firefox and 14 to launch LibreOffice. Within the margin of error of the previous measurements, | **Upgrading the RAM installed to four GBytes gives no speed advantage in the least: 68 seconds to boot the desktop, 10 seconds to launch Firefox and 14 to launch LibreOffice. Within the margin of error of the previous measurements, | ||
Ligne 43: | Ligne 43: | ||
As before, I ended up swapping the rotational hard drive for an SSD, this time a NGFF 32 GByte unit also installed inside an adaptor case to fit into the Aspire’s 2.5” SATA bay. As before, I mounted the new hard drive using an exterior USB cable, formatted it using btrfs, and transferred the system and data snapshots over to the new drive using the btrfs send/ | As before, I ended up swapping the rotational hard drive for an SSD, this time a NGFF 32 GByte unit also installed inside an adaptor case to fit into the Aspire’s 2.5” SATA bay. As before, I mounted the new hard drive using an exterior USB cable, formatted it using btrfs, and transferred the system and data snapshots over to the new drive using the btrfs send/ | ||
- | Augmenter la RAM à 4 Go ne donne vraiment aucun avantage : 68 secondes au démarrage pour arriver au bureau, 10 secondes pour lancer Firefox et 14 pour LibreOffice. Ces temps tombent à l' | + | Augmenter la RAM à 4 Go ne donne vraiment aucun avantage : 68 secondes au démarrage pour arriver au bureau, 10 secondes pour lancer Firefox et 14 pour LibreOffice. Ces temps tombent à l' |
- | Comme auparavant, j'ai fini par remplace | + | Comme auparavant, j'ai fini par remplacer |
**With the new SSD drive, boot time went down to 45 seconds, while Firefox and LibreOffice both launched in 8 seconds. So a noticeable improvement has been seen here, making the drive swap perhaps a worthwhile investment for this class of computer. This bump in speed is actually even more visible when the computer has a more powerful CPU. A Lenovo from a similar time frame (late 2011) boots up in less than 20 seconds, helped no doubt by its then-powerful Intel Core i5 dual core (four-threaded) processor. | **With the new SSD drive, boot time went down to 45 seconds, while Firefox and LibreOffice both launched in 8 seconds. So a noticeable improvement has been seen here, making the drive swap perhaps a worthwhile investment for this class of computer. This bump in speed is actually even more visible when the computer has a more powerful CPU. A Lenovo from a similar time frame (late 2011) boots up in less than 20 seconds, helped no doubt by its then-powerful Intel Core i5 dual core (four-threaded) processor. | ||
Ligne 51: | Ligne 51: | ||
Summing up all these factors, my final recommendations would be as follows. In the first place, when working with older 32-bit hardware, a maximum of two GBytes of RAM should be plenty to run most applications. It is also probably not worth the time and hassle to change the hard drive for something faster, since the motherboard will likely not be able to use the supplementary speed. It would be best, to my mind, to simply use lighter distributions such as Xubuntu or Linux Mint XFCE editions, with Linux Mint MATE or Lubuntu as strong alternatives.** | Summing up all these factors, my final recommendations would be as follows. In the first place, when working with older 32-bit hardware, a maximum of two GBytes of RAM should be plenty to run most applications. It is also probably not worth the time and hassle to change the hard drive for something faster, since the motherboard will likely not be able to use the supplementary speed. It would be best, to my mind, to simply use lighter distributions such as Xubuntu or Linux Mint XFCE editions, with Linux Mint MATE or Lubuntu as strong alternatives.** | ||
- | Avec ce nouveau SSD, le temps de démarrage est descendu | + | Avec ce nouveau SSD, le temps de démarrage est descendu à 45 secondes, tandis que Firefox et LibreOffice se lançaient en 8 secondes. On voit ici une amélioration sensible, ce qui fait éventuellement le remplacement du disque un investissement valable pour cette classe d' |
- | En résumant tous ces facteurs, mes recommandations finales seraient les suivantes. D' | + | En résumant tous ces facteurs, mes recommandations finales seraient les suivantes. D' |
**On the other hand, once we are speaking of hardware that was formerly of a slightly superior class, such as a 7-to-8 year-old Core i5 or other 64-bit processor, in that case upgrading to a 64-bit version of our favourite distribution will mean that RAM requirements should probably begin at about two GBytes, and move on up from there. Most of these upper tier user-grade or entry-level business-class computers will usually have come with about four GBytes of RAM, which is perfect for most modern GNU/Linux distributions. Naturally, owners with special use-cases, such as video editing, may wish to invest in more RAM - and yes, I have successfully edited quite long videos on my 2011 Lenovo with no difficulties. | **On the other hand, once we are speaking of hardware that was formerly of a slightly superior class, such as a 7-to-8 year-old Core i5 or other 64-bit processor, in that case upgrading to a 64-bit version of our favourite distribution will mean that RAM requirements should probably begin at about two GBytes, and move on up from there. Most of these upper tier user-grade or entry-level business-class computers will usually have come with about four GBytes of RAM, which is perfect for most modern GNU/Linux distributions. Naturally, owners with special use-cases, such as video editing, may wish to invest in more RAM - and yes, I have successfully edited quite long videos on my 2011 Lenovo with no difficulties. | ||
Ligne 59: | Ligne 59: | ||
In any case, this class of computer will benefit more from a faster hard drive, so upgrading to an SSD model can be seen as a smart move. Besides the clear advantage in speed, it may also be noted that these drives with no moving parts tend to support better use and abuse when on the move, beside requiring less power to work. So changing the drive will usually impact battery life favourably, and make the computer less susceptible to loosing data from hits and falls.** | In any case, this class of computer will benefit more from a faster hard drive, so upgrading to an SSD model can be seen as a smart move. Besides the clear advantage in speed, it may also be noted that these drives with no moving parts tend to support better use and abuse when on the move, beside requiring less power to work. So changing the drive will usually impact battery life favourably, and make the computer less susceptible to loosing data from hits and falls.** | ||
- | En revanche, quand il s'agit d'un processeur qui était d'une classe légèrement supérieure, | + | En revanche, quand il s'agit d'un processeur qui était d'une classe légèrement supérieure, |
- | De toute façon, cette classe d' | + | De toute façon, cette classe d' |
**A final reflection I would like to make is that most GNU/Linux developers are definitely in the power-user category. As such, they tend to favour high-end hardware. For this reason, when on the lookout for an older computer to repurpose with any of the variants of Ubuntu or most other mainstream distributions, | **A final reflection I would like to make is that most GNU/Linux developers are definitely in the power-user category. As such, they tend to favour high-end hardware. For this reason, when on the lookout for an older computer to repurpose with any of the variants of Ubuntu or most other mainstream distributions, | ||
+ | |||
+ | Une dernière réflexion que j' | ||
+ | |||
+ |
issue133/mon_opinion.1528281230.txt.gz · Dernière modification : 2018/06/06 12:33 de auntiee