How hard disks work
Some computer users, even technically savvy ones, some times get confused about how hard disk performance is affected by the data it holds. Let me clarify: the more data you store on the hard drive, the slower it gets. It’s obvious when you think about it - each of those bytes of data adds extra weight on the disk platters which means it takes longer to spin-up and spin-down.
So, you may have thought that all those techies who keep going on about “bloat” were a crazy, but now you can see it makes total sense. Disk I/O is the biggest bottle-neck in most workstations and so reducing that is paramount. Don’t be fooled, software package size is the key factor in application performance, it’s nothing to do with poorly written algorithms, for example.
As we know, KDE is a poor performer because it comes bundled with lots of additional applications. Even though these applications are not loaded until requested, the sheer presence of them, as discussed earlier, will weigh down the hard drive. Functionality and ergonomics are not “real” metrics! Saving those micro-seconds is what keeps the world spinning around.
Continuing this, remember not to use a “bloated” OS, like Ubuntu or Arch Linux, as these OSes can occupy hundreds and hundreds of megabytes of disk space. Use muLinux or if you don’t mind the performance hit, Damn Small Linux. Don’t worry if you don’t have access to software that you want or are used to, at least the alternatives you get in these small Linux distros are also lightwight, and that’s all that matters.
September 5th, 2006 at 1:50 am
Uh… a joke right?
Hard drives dont slow down because they get ‘heavier’. Hard drive heads dont pick up and put down physical things for bytes. The hard drive head just changes the magnetic orientation of the surface of each bit. The weight of a platter remains constant.
By default in most linux distro’s, the hard drive is never spun down. I’m sure there are exceptions with more exotic hardware, but on Arch, unless you use hdparm to set a spindown time on a disk, the disk will keep spinning. So, there’s no loss of time from spinning it up again.
As for not using the software you’re comfortable with, that’s also silly. Chances are with software that you are used to using, you’re more efficient. You’ll save real time using an application that you’re more comfortable with, and is better designed — even if it is big. What’s the point using a small featureless program, when you are manually — and more slowly — imitate the features of another program. Sure, you save 0.5s on startup, but you waste 5minutes doing something the long way.
Improving usability is the best way to speed things up, not smaller programs.
September 5th, 2006 at 1:56 am
Nice tongue in cheeck article Roo.
:)
September 5th, 2006 at 5:22 am
i guess my sarcasm detector is broken