[sf-lug] USB 3.0 Flash Drives - Penguin shaped and others

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):

> Either of these distributions are now desigened to provide on suitably
> specced machine a way to move your system from machine to machine.

Yes, this has been a particular aim of Knoppix for a long time, and 
I indeed read the NomadBSD documentation where the same focus was
obvious.

But is there a reason why you're ignoring my point?  I said:

  > This is preliminary to the meeting notice for May 5th which will be
  > out next week and may make some folks interested in getting a Flash
  > Drive to run Nomad BSD or Knoppix from.

  Ja, but...

  USB flash drives are _painfully slow as main storage_, compared to an
  internal hard drives or SSDs.  Although running a live distro from one
  is very useful for utility purposes, to test-boot a distro, or to
  evaluate Linux driver support for hardware, it's very suboptimal for
  ongoing computer use, because of the mass-storage performance
  bottleneck.


>> At a certain point, Bobbie, it's wise to, y'know, install an operating
>> system, and stop incessantly kicking tires and avoiding committing.
>>
>> But if you want a minimum-commitment OS installation, I can recommend
>> installing into VMs (e.g., with VirtualBox).  For one thing, then you
>> can actually live with the installed OS, maintain it, make changes,
>> etc. -- but without dedicating the entire machine to that, and with the
>> ability to use the host and guest OSes simultaneously.

> For me I am committed to the use of PCLinuxOS64 as long as it is
> available and updated.  I do not expect to convert others to my
> POV.  I will not in the future be likely to offer to install my OS
> on systems for converts as I have too many devices to service now.

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to sound confusing, there.  I didn't mean that
_you personally_ hadn't picked an OS and done a real installation rather
than incessantly tire-kicking distributions live-booted from flash
drives.  Yes, I'm aware that you have PCLinuxOS installed, and am
delighted that you're happy with it.  

What I was commenting on was your focussing primarily and increasingly
on live distros booted from flash drives, in your offerings to SF-LUG.
What I was saying is that this mode of deployment portrays Linux badly
because of dreadfully bad mass-storage performance, and that the running
system cannot be reasonably maintained and expanded, hence the user
doesn't really experience a representative system, just a limited but
working model of one.  That has very slow disc reads.  ;->

It's the difference between tourism and living somewhere.  And, what I
was saying is that an installed system running in a VM is, unlike a live
distro booted from a flash drive, a real and realistic Linux system,
that a user can try out and see how things go without having to devote
an entire computer to it.