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Linux needs less fragmentation

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  Linux needs less fragmentation Lars Poulsen <lars@beagle-ears.com> - 2026-10-04 14:08 -0700
    Re: Linux needs less fragmentation Michael Logies <logies@t-online.de> - 2026-10-04 23:33 +0200
      Re: Linux needs less fragmentation The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-10-05 09:20 +0100
    Re: Linux needs less fragmentation Leroy H <lh@somewhere.net> - 2026-10-04 21:44 +0000
    Re: Linux needs less fragmentation rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-10-05 01:53 +0000
      Re: Linux needs less fragmentation c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-10-05 03:14 -0400
        Re: Linux needs less fragmentation The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-10-05 09:28 +0100
          Re: Linux needs less fragmentation "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-10-05 19:20 +0200
            Re: Linux needs less fragmentation The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-10-05 19:43 +0100
              Re: Linux needs less fragmentation Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2026-10-08 15:25 +0100
                Re: Linux needs less fragmentation The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-10-08 15:29 +0100
                Re: Linux offers choice, BSD offers fragmentation Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-10-08 20:59 +0000
                Re: Linux needs less fragmentation c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-10-09 02:42 -0400
                Re: Linux needs less fragmentation "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-10-09 20:47 +0200
                  Re: Linux offers choice, BSD offers fragmentation Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-10-09 21:20 +0000
                    Re: Linux offers choice, BSD offers fragmentation "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-10-09 23:27 +0200
                    Re: Linux offers choice, BSD offers fragmentation c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-10-10 04:01 -0400
                    Re: Linux offers choice, BSD offers fragmentation c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-10-11 04:31 -0400
          Re: Linux needs less fragmentation Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2026-10-05 18:57 +0000
            Re: Linux needs less fragmentation The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-10-05 20:08 +0100
              Re: Linux needs less fragmentation Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2026-10-05 20:18 +0000
                Re: Linux needs less fragmentation Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> - 2026-10-06 08:34 +0100
                  Re: Linux needs less fragmentation The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-10-06 11:17 +0100
                    Re: Linux needs less fragmentation c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2026-10-06 23:59 -0400
                  Re: Linux needs less fragmentation rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-10-06 14:39 +0000
                    Re: Linux needs less fragmentation Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> - 2026-10-06 13:50 -0400
      Re: Linux needs less fragmentation The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-10-05 09:25 +0100
        Re: Linux needs less fragmentation rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-10-05 19:36 +0000
          Re: Linux needs less fragmentation "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-10-05 21:49 +0200
            Re: Linux needs less fragmentation rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-10-06 02:35 +0000
            Re: Linux needs less fragmentation Philippe <p.naudin+nntp@free.fr> - 2026-10-06 08:13 +0200
              Re: Linux needs less fragmentation "Carlos E. R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2026-10-06 11:12 +0200
                Re: Linux needs less fragmentation rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2026-10-06 14:48 +0000
    Re: Linux needs less fragmentation The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2026-10-05 09:19 +0100

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#92973

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On 05/10/2026 19:57, Rich wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>> On 05/10/2026 08:14, c186282 wrote:
>>>> MANY choices these days ... a lot better than Winders.
>>>>
>>>>   Linux is "fairly" resistant to disk fragmentation, better than Win
>>>>   for the most part.  Some of the utils can kind-of deal with it.
>>>>   However if things get really bad, like on a server drive, in the
>>>>   end you have to copy over to a new drive.  This is not guarenteed
>>>>   to get the boot/efi sectors alas.  'dd' is TOO literal, won't fix
>>>>   yer frag.
>>>>
>>> Never had to in years.
>>> SSDs simply dont care, since a sector seek is no more expensive than
>>> 'next sector'
>> 
>> Exactly.
>> 
>>>>   Some say that frag is NOT important anymore due to e-disks.
>>>>   Sort-of true, sort-of not.  In the end you will get more and more
>>>>   kinda unusable sectors.
>>>>
>>> More ignorant bollocks
>> 
>> Our human-AI hallucinating yet another incorrect answer to a question
>> no one asked.  He's hallucinating worn out SSD "sectors" and the SSD
>> remapping system as if they have something to do with fragmented files.
> 
> It is weird that this conversation seems to crop up, as if there were 
> some actually relationship between a sector as seen by the operating 
> system and a physical RAM location on the SSD.

It happens when the humans have no knowledge of how the SSD works 
internally, and simply believe it is divided up into "sectors" like a 
hard disk is.  So they hallucinate that the "sectors" their OS 
reads/writes are also how the memory cells in the flash on the SSD are 
divided up.

> There is none. The SSD is running its own operating system  with  caches 
> and write behinds , wear levelling, block erases and block reallocation.

Yep.  The only reason there's even a "sector" interface at the point of 
the SATA interface port is backwards compatibility.  Doing this meant 
the SSD's could be plug in replacements for existing hard drives and 
the OS'es (well, Windows) did not have to include flash ram specific 
drivers.

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#92997

Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes:
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> There is none. The SSD is running its own operating system with
>> caches and write behinds , wear levelling, block erases and block
>> reallocation.
>
> Yep.  The only reason there's even a "sector" interface at the point
> of the SATA interface port is backwards compatibility.  Doing this
> meant the SSD's could be plug in replacements for existing hard drives
> and the OS'es (well, Windows) did not have to include flash ram
> specific drivers.

Sectors are an abstraction on hard disks too, although granted
historically things like track numbers did get exposed outside the
device. But it’s useful to have a uniform abstraction for accessing
storage devices, papering over the differences between the underlying
technologies, in the same way as we have one for accessing networks
which let you run the same applications unmodified regardless of the
underlying technology.

-- 
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

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#93014

On 06/10/2026 08:34, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
> Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes:
>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>> There is none. The SSD is running its own operating system with
>>> caches and write behinds , wear levelling, block erases and block
>>> reallocation.
>>
>> Yep.  The only reason there's even a "sector" interface at the point
>> of the SATA interface port is backwards compatibility.  Doing this
>> meant the SSD's could be plug in replacements for existing hard drives
>> and the OS'es (well, Windows) did not have to include flash ram
>> specific drivers.
> 
> Sectors are an abstraction on hard disks too, although granted
> historically things like track numbers did get exposed outside the
> device. But it’s useful to have a uniform abstraction for accessing
> storage devices, papering over the differences between the underlying
> technologies, in the same way as we have one for accessing networks
> which let you run the same applications unmodified regardless of the
> underlying technology.
> 

However I think that in the case of SSDs there is so much processing and 
data shuffling going on that the 'disk' need a full blown CPU. RAM  and 
OS to essentially drive it, and such CPUS and memory are very cheap, so 
trying to wrote an SSD 'driver' into Linux. Winders of MACOS was not 
cost effective.

Once you have that interspersed between the host computer and the SSD 
it's a free choice as how you present the interface. And, given that 
nothing is actually lost by mimicking a hard drive interface, its the 
logical thing to do.
So its less papering over than simply coming up with a sane way to 
present the storage to a host computer

Sectors were very much not an abstraction on the floppy disks and indeed 
winchesters that I programmed drives for.

They represented an exact and unique physical location on the disk


-- 
Climate is what you expect but weather is what you get.
Mark Twain

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#93071

On 10/6/26 06:17, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 06/10/2026 08:34, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes:
>>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>> There is none. The SSD is running its own operating system with
>>>> caches and write behinds , wear levelling, block erases and block
>>>> reallocation.
>>>
>>> Yep.  The only reason there's even a "sector" interface at the point
>>> of the SATA interface port is backwards compatibility.  Doing this
>>> meant the SSD's could be plug in replacements for existing hard drives
>>> and the OS'es (well, Windows) did not have to include flash ram
>>> specific drivers.
>>
>> Sectors are an abstraction on hard disks too, although granted
>> historically things like track numbers did get exposed outside the
>> device. But it’s useful to have a uniform abstraction for accessing
>> storage devices, papering over the differences between the underlying
>> technologies, in the same way as we have one for accessing networks
>> which let you run the same applications unmodified regardless of the
>> underlying technology.
>>
> 
> However I think that in the case of SSDs there is so much processing and 
> data shuffling going on that the 'disk' need a full blown CPU. RAM  and 
> OS to essentially drive it, and such CPUS and memory are very cheap, so 
> trying to wrote an SSD 'driver' into Linux. Winders of MACOS was not 
> cost effective.
> 
> Once you have that interspersed between the host computer and the SSD 
> it's a free choice as how you present the interface. And, given that 
> nothing is actually lost by mimicking a hard drive interface, its the 
> logical thing to do.
> So its less papering over than simply coming up with a sane way to 
> present the storage to a host computer
> 
> Sectors were very much not an abstraction on the floppy disks and indeed 
> winchesters that I programmed drives for.
> 
> They represented an exact and unique physical location on the disk

   MAGNETIC disks ... they have read heads that actually
   have to jitter around. Fragmentation just becomes kinda
   important. SSDs, it's all offset pointers, all electronic.
   Doesn't MATTER if the data in a file is spread all over
   in rather small bits. "Nicer", more aesthetic, if the
   data is more or less concentrated, but in practical terms
   it's really not NECESSARY anymore. You lose more time in
   the interface than from loading the new pointers.

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#93045

On Tue, 06 Oct 2026 08:34:03 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

> Sectors are an abstraction on hard disks too, although granted
> historically things like track numbers did get exposed outside the
> device.
> But it’s useful to have a uniform abstraction for accessing storage
> devices, papering over the differences between the underlying
> technologies, in the same way as we have one for accessing networks
> which let you run the same applications unmodified regardless of the
> underlying technology.

Ah, the good old days of floppy sectors. The system couldn't necessarily 
handle more than 1 sector's worth of data at a time. To avoid waiting for 
one revolution to read the next adjacent sector, the sectors were 
interleaved so the next logical sector would be further along on the 
track. The Western Digital floppy control could be programmed with many 
options. Companies had different ideas of the best solution so CP/M 
floppies wound up with about a dozen different formats. 

That went back to drum storage but drums weren't passed around like CP/M 
floppies so you didn't need an utility to read a foreign formant.

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#93056

rbowman wrote this screed in ALL-CAPS (fixed):

> On Tue, 06 Oct 2026 08:34:03 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>
>> Sectors are an abstraction on hard disks too, although granted
>> historically things like track numbers did get exposed outside the
>> device.
>> But it’s useful to have a uniform abstraction for accessing storage
>> devices, papering over the differences between the underlying
>> technologies, in the same way as we have one for accessing networks
>> which let you run the same applications unmodified regardless of the
>> underlying technology.
>
> Ah, the good old days of floppy sectors. The system couldn't necessarily 
> handle more than 1 sector's worth of data at a time. To avoid waiting for 
> one revolution to read the next adjacent sector, the sectors were 
> interleaved so the next logical sector would be further along on the 
> track. The Western Digital floppy control could be programmed with many 
> options. Companies had different ideas of the best solution so CP/M 
> floppies wound up with about a dozen different formats. 

I remember the "Twister" floppy format on the Atari ST. The difference in
speed was notable.

AI:

     Originally introduced by the magazine START, the Twister
     format proved so successful that Atari later incorporated the
     twisted format directly into the operating system (TOS 1.2)
     of the Mega ST.

Damn, I had so much fun with the Atari ST!

Linux is fun, but the ST is nostalgia.

> That went back to drum storage but drums weren't passed around like CP/M 
> floppies so you didn't need an utility to read a foreign formant.

-- 
April is the cruellest month...
		-- Thomas Stearns Eliot

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#92918

On 05/10/2026 02:53, rbowman wrote:
> On Sun, 4 Oct 2026 14:08:35 -0700, Lars Poulsen wrote:
> 
>> A lot of the noise is "Ubuntu based distributions" and "Fedora based
>> distributions". In my opinion, those should not be distributions, they
>> should be packages to load on top of those mainstream distributions.
>> In the cases that I am aware of, they are basically tweaks to the GUI to
>> suit a particular taste.
> 
> Ubuntu has a few GNOME tweaks that make it more usable than vanilla GNOME.
> KDE on Fedora, Arch, and SUSE are all very similar with little
> customization. MX does a nice job with Xfce, better than Debian or Devuan.
> 
> Ubuntu has Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Kubuntu. Mint offers Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce
> with separate isos for each.  Fedora has 'spins' with GNOME and KDE now as
> mainstream. SUSE includes GNOME, KDE, and Xfce in the offline installer.
> Devuan has those and a couple of more.
> 
> What you're overlooking is some of the other differences. Rolling, semi-
> rolling, or slow releaes. Snpa, flatpak, or nothing by default? Systemd,
> SysVinit, runit? X11 or Wayland?

As I said. the average noob doesn't give a tuppeny F...

All he wants is a trivially easy installation and his every day needs 
met without having to understand a damned thing.

Ubuntu first, then Mint later recognised that need and built distros 
around it

Mint MATE was the first distro that worked on my hardware and did 
everything I wanted more or less. I never saw reason to change.

I am not that interested in the ins and outs, the command line or 
whatever. I had all of that pre X windows in Unix.

Today's Guis do nearly all that is needed.

-- 
Of what good are dead warriors? … Warriors are those who desire battle 
more than peace. Those who seek battle despite peace. Those who thump 
their spears on the ground and talk of honor. Those who leap high the 
battle dance and dream of glory … The good of dead warriors, Mother, is 
that they are dead.
Sheri S Tepper: The Awakeners.

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#92967

On Mon, 5 Oct 2026 09:25:11 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> Ubuntu first, then Mint later recognised that need and built distros
> around it

I would argue Mandrake was the first user friendly distro. Ubuntu made 
their nut shipping free CDs to anyone who asked. Meanwhile Mandrake had 
stepped into it with copyright issues and became Mandriva. I tried to get 
openMandriva up in a VM with not success. 

Mandrake came in a nice boxed set but unbelievably you had to buy it 
rather than getting free gibs.

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#92971

On 2026-10-05 21:36, rbowman wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Oct 2026 09:25:11 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> 
>> Ubuntu first, then Mint later recognised that need and built distros
>> around it
> 
> I would argue Mandrake was the first user friendly distro. Ubuntu made
> their nut shipping free CDs to anyone who asked. Meanwhile Mandrake had
> stepped into it with copyright issues and became Mandriva. I tried to get
> openMandriva up in a VM with not success.
> 
> Mandrake came in a nice boxed set but unbelievably you had to buy it
> rather than getting free gibs.

I would argue that SuSE was the first user friendly distro, according to 
a magazine I read in summer 1998. You could buy it with nice paper books 
included. And the books were translated to Spanish.

-- 
Cheers,
        Carlos E.R.
        ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺.

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#92988

On Mon, 5 Oct 2026 21:49:20 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

> I would argue that SuSE was the first user friendly distro, according to
> a magazine I read in summer 1998. You could buy it with nice paper books
> included. And the books were translated to Spanish.

Possibly. My memory fails. I have the SuSE Linux Pro 8.0 box set which I 
believe was 2001. It has 6 CDs plus a DVD should one have the capability 
as well as manuals. I bought it off the shelf at BestBuy.

I no longer have the box but I believe I had Mandrake 7.0.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjFUzlnsfHc

At 33 seconds, he shows the 7.0 box where the penguin has a magic wand. I 
believe he lost the wand in later editions as the Mandrake the Magician 
copyright problem started. That would be 2000.

My first was Slackware, downloaded floppy by floppy from the ftp server 
over dialup. Anything that came in a box was welcome. I think Yggdrasil 
was the first with a CD offering. 

When I started with the company I retired from in '99 I used Red Hat 
Linux. iirc I got a hand me down machine with it installed. I didn't 
really like GNOME and getting KDE up was tedious. The gcc 2.96 fiasco was 
the last straw for RHL. 

Anyway it's much easier today and 'beginners distro' doesn't mean much 
with the exception of LFS, Gentoo, or the classic Arch install. 

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#92994

Le lun. 05 oct. 2026 21:49:20, Carlos E. R. a écrit:

> On 2026-10-05 21:36, rbowman wrote:
> > On Mon, 5 Oct 2026 09:25:11 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> >   
> >> Ubuntu first, then Mint later recognised that need and built distros
> >> around it  
> > 
> > I would argue Mandrake was the first user friendly distro. Ubuntu made
> > their nut shipping free CDs to anyone who asked. Meanwhile Mandrake had
> > stepped into it with copyright issues and became Mandriva. I tried to get
> > openMandriva up in a VM with not success.
> > 
> > Mandrake came in a nice boxed set but unbelievably you had to buy it
> > rather than getting free gibs.  
> 
> I would argue that SuSE was the first user friendly distro, according to 
> a magazine I read in summer 1998. You could buy it with nice paper books 
> included. And the books were translated to Spanish.
 
I bought RedHat Linux 4 from a local bookshop in 1997. It comes with a 
printed manual, but I don't remember if it was translated. 

It was "complete newbie" friendly.


-- 
Philippe

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#93008

On 2026-10-06 08:13, Philippe wrote:
> Le lun. 05 oct. 2026 21:49:20, Carlos E. R. a écrit:
> 
>> On 2026-10-05 21:36, rbowman wrote:
>>> On Mon, 5 Oct 2026 09:25:11 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>    
>>>> Ubuntu first, then Mint later recognised that need and built distros
>>>> around it
>>>
>>> I would argue Mandrake was the first user friendly distro. Ubuntu made
>>> their nut shipping free CDs to anyone who asked. Meanwhile Mandrake had
>>> stepped into it with copyright issues and became Mandriva. I tried to get
>>> openMandriva up in a VM with not success.
>>>
>>> Mandrake came in a nice boxed set but unbelievably you had to buy it
>>> rather than getting free gibs.
>>
>> I would argue that SuSE was the first user friendly distro, according to
>> a magazine I read in summer 1998. You could buy it with nice paper books
>> included. And the books were translated to Spanish.
>   
> I bought RedHat Linux 4 from a local bookshop in 1997. It comes with a
> printed manual, but I don't remember if it was translated.
> 
> It was "complete newbie" friendly.

The first distro I installed was Redhat of a magazine, I think. I could 
not make head or tails of it. No books, no help. Then I read a magazine 
comparison which said that SuSE was the easiest of all, and next week or 
so, a magazine appeared with a two CD envelope of SuSE 5.3. No books, 
but the article pointed to SuSEhelp (a script that offered help), and to 
YaST (yast1), a program that permitted to do admin tasks easily.

I was happy and started to learn.

-- 
Cheers,
        Carlos E.R.
        ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺.

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#93047

On Tue, 6 Oct 2026 11:12:57 +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:

> The first distro I installed was Redhat of a magazine, I think. I could
> not make head or tails of it. No books, no help. Then I read a magazine
> comparison which said that SuSE was the easiest of all, and next week or
> so, a magazine appeared with a two CD envelope of SuSE 5.3. No books,
> but the article pointed to SuSEhelp (a script that offered help), and to
> YaST (yast1), a program that permitted to do admin tasks easily.

I have 'Red Hat Linux Unleashed' from 1998 that had a CD for RHL 5.2. 
Counting the index it's over 1000 pages. It covers installation, building 
kernels, shell programming, gawk, setting up SMTP, and a little bit of C/
C++ and Python. 

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#92916

On 04/10/2026 22:08, Lars Poulsen wrote:
> A lot of the noise is "Ubuntu based distributions" and "Fedora based 
> distributions". In my opinion, those should not be distributions, they 
> should be packages to load on top of those mainstream distributions.
> In the cases that I am aware of, they are basically tweaks to the GUI to 
> suit a particular taste.
> 
It's a bit more than tweaks. MINT MATE is built over MINT which is built 
over Ubuntu which is built on IIRC Debian unstable.

BUT it has a load of stuff you simply wont find in Debian or Ubuntu, all 
compiled tested and ready to go in a single download

> Reducing the noise would help newbies understand the field much better.

Why should they need to?

Probably all they want is a desktop like XP used to be, that works and 
doesn't enslave them. And can handle a lot more RAM

Irrespective of my background and understanding, that's all I actually 
*want* or *need*.



-- 
"A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight 
and understanding".

Marshall McLuhan

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