TuxCentre

As we all know the size of flash-based solid-state drives( SSD’s ) are increasing day by day and their prices are decreasing at the same rate. Will this cause a pain for the companies making conventional hard disks?? well to some extent its causing a level of worry but not much as big players like Seagate and Western Digital (WDC) have already grabbed many patents which wont let SSD’s replace hard drives easily. But don’t u think if u can get better performance for such low cost isn’t it better??

The advantages of SSD’s are —

• Faster startup – as no spin-up is required.
• Typically near-instantaneous random access – since there is no read/write head to move.
• Extremely low read and write latency times – SSDs seek times are orders of magnitude smaller than the best current hard disk drives.
• Lower power consumption and heat production – at least for small SSDs. High-end SSDs and SSDs larger than 64GB may have a much higher power consumption.
• No noise – Lack of moving parts makes the SSD completely silent, although high-end SSDs and large SSDs may include cooling fans.
• High mechanical reliability – Lack of moving parts almost eliminates the risk of mechanical failure.
• Better able to endure extreme shock, high altitude, vibration and temperatures – SSDs are tougher than traditional hard drives.These features are useful for laptops, mobile computers, and devices that operate in extreme conditions.
• Relatively deterministic performance – unlike hard disk drives, performance of SSDs is almost constant and deterministic across the entire storage. This is because seek time can be constant, so file fragmentation has less impact on performance than on physical drives.
• For low-capacity SSDs, lower weight and size – size and weight per unit storage are still better for traditional hard drives, and microdrives allow up to 20 GB storage in a CompactFlash 42.8×36.4×5 mm (1.7×1.4×.2 in) form factor. Up to 64GB, SSDs are lighter than hard drives for the same size.

So the question is should the upcoming technology of SSDs be prometed and speeded up or not??

When i first used compiz fusion with kde the way to enable was using the command “compiz ccp” (which is also there even now) but another way introduced was the compiz fusion icon which have many advantages as will be discussed further…

Previously compiz was enabled automatically but making an executable text document containg the command “compiz ccp &” in the bin folder of the user you use to log in. The compiz fusion icon which came in fedora from the start only, can be started  in the same manner by making an executable text file in the bin folder of the user you log-in into and adding the text “fusion icon &”.

Revison of the steps to do so :–>

1. Open the bin folder in the folder of the user u log into (eg: for root user open “/root/bin” for other users use “/home/user_name/bin”).

2.Create a text file in it.

3.Open the file and write in it “fusion-icon &”.

4.Save and Exit.

5.Right click on the file and in open properties for the file.

6.Under the permissions tab check is executable.

Restart and u will see the compiz fusion icon in system stray.

The greatest advantage of the fusion icon i think is that whenever compiz crashes (which happens many a times due to unstable versions) u can simply reload it by right clicking on the fusion icon and clicking on the reload window manager. Secondly you can Switch between various window decorators installed on your system (again by right clicking on the fusion icon). Thirdly you can change the window manager whenever you want (like when you are doing some serious work and the effects are irritating you). Fourthly you can also access the settings manager from it….

Please note the you need to have fusion icon installed on your system.In openSuse its available in the XGL repository.