[sf-lug] Running Upgrade to 16.04 on the Intel Compute Stick STCK1A8LFC

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ken Shaffer (kenshaffer80 at gmail.com):

[you have an Intel STCK1A8LFC, hereinafter your 'ICS']

> The ICS's 1G memory and 1G compressed swap is sufficient, but the 5G
> root on the $40 ICS was really too small for the update.

It's an eMMC (an embedded MultiMediaCard), soldered onto the mainboard,
which means you're stuck with that, and kinda screwed, relatively
speaking:: An eMMC is sort of like a cut-rate, very slow SSD that you
cannot upgrade/replace.  

_However_, I notice that your ICS also has a UHS-I -compliant (Ultra
High Speed Class 1) MicroSDXC slot.  Have you considered using that,
then?  Performance would be less dire than with USB flash drives.[1]  A
decent UHS-I -rated 128MB microSDXC card is going to run you about $20,
currently, so it's not like that's going to break the bank.

Also, that would permit you to test without messing with your current
installation, I believe.

But dude, seriously, Xubuntu with 1GB RAM?  Booting from a USB flash drive?
You must be a very patient man.  ;->

Believe it or not, there are much lighter-weight, nice graphical
environments than Xfce, even if Canonical, Inc. doesn't believe in them. 


[1] It's a head-scratcher to me that some of you folk keep wanting to
use USB for nearly everything, especially when there are better
alternatives.  Me, I go out of my way to _not_ use USB except in its
natural area of strengths:  to attach casual and occasional storage, and
for other peripherals that formerly required PS/2, RS-232C, or
Centronics connections.  Otherwise, generally speaking, you can do
better for both speed and reliability.

Just to set expectations, though, a UHS-I MicroSDXC device is probably
going to have only about half the raw read/write throughput that your
5GB eMMC internal drive does.  But either of those is going to be way
faster than anything you attach to that USB 2.0 port.