dpark on Jan 13, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: What Really Happened with Vista: An Insider's Retr... Who buys a laptop with only 30 GB of storage? I didn’t even know that was possible these days.
| | dpark on Jan 13, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: What Really Happened with Vista: An Insider's Retr... Who buys a laptop with only 30 GB of storage? I didn’t even know that was possible these days. You should honestly tell your client to return it and buy something else. For reference, absolute minimum requirements are 16 GB for 32 bit and 20 GB for 64 bit [1]. So in theory your client’s laptop should work, but it’d probably be a poor experience. (Likely also a bad experience with modern Linux on 30 GB.) Given that your client’s Windows 10 laptop has an “old OS” on it, I think there’s some info missing in this story. A fresh laptop shouldn’t have an old OS install on it. (Or maybe this is OEM recovery gunk?) I just checked my laptop and the Windows folder is 18.7 GB. Did your client's laptop have a Windows.old folder taking a bunch of space? Large updates to Windows will create these. You can whack this if you need. [2] (Should also get deleted automatically after 10 days automatically.) Disclosure: Microsoft employee [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-specifica... [2] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4028075/windows-del... |  | | jancsika on Jan 13, 2018 | next [–] > (Likely also a bad experience with modern Linux on 30 GB.) Literally just typed "raspbian minimum card size" in Google and Google dug up this as the top result: "/Pi Hardware /SD Cards.The minimum size SD card you can use for Rasbian is 2GB, but it is recommended to get a 4GB SD card or above. Card Speed. A Class 4 card, which is the minimum recommended has an average read/write speed of 4 MB/sec." The default packages include things like webkit and libre office, so it looks to be a fully functional Linux install on a popular piece of hardware. Now, 4GB still seems dangerously small. But if all a client wanted was office plus web, I bet someone like OP could make a workable system within that size limit without Raspbian filling the emptied space with updates. [1] http://www.raspberry-projects.com/pi/pi-hardware/sd-cards | |  | | pletnes on Jan 13, 2018 | parent | next [–] I have a 30 GB OS partition on my ubuntu box. That works nicely. Obviously you won’t be doing big data analyses, but everything runs fine, and with lots of apps installed. Raspbian runs on 128 MB RAM or whatever. | |  | | Decade on Jan 13, 2018 | prev | next [–] > Who buys a laptop with only 30 GB of storage? I didn’t even know that was possible these days. Ultra-cheap computers with MMC flash drives with pathetic read-write speeds. And pathetic other parts. Such as this charmer from Walmart. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Teqnio-ELL1103T-11-6-Laptop-Touch... | |  | | CydeWeys on Jan 13, 2018 | parent | next [–] I don't understand the thought process behind cheaping out as much as possible on a terrible PC, then paying for many hours of work from a tech to try to get a pathetic machine to be usable. The correct course of action is to return the faulty machine and buy a better one, rather than throwing away the money on a tech who can really only do so much with such inferior hardware. It also boggles my mind how, still to this day, it's so hard to get a lower cost desktop or laptop that ships with an SSD, despite the fact that SSDs offer up such a performance improvement that many people consider them mandatory. The average consumer will have a much better experience with a computer that ships with a 128 GB SSD than a 1 TB HDD, yet every manufacturer is offering plenty of the latter (at 5400 rpm no less) and none of the former at sane price points. The two components even have similar costs now. In this era of streaming everything, the average person really isn't using much hard drive space. I know that my non-technical family members certainly aren't. I just got my mom a $450 refurbished 2012 Dell workstation for common desktop use (mostly email and word processing). She loves it. It's night-and-day faster than the machine it replaced. And the single biggest performance improvement in it comes from, you guessed it, the SSD. A $450 five-year-old used workstation is trouncing any modern desktop in the sub-$1,000 range in practical performance. I would've gotten her a new one, but couldn't find anything in the price range that has an SSD, and the kinds of computers that do ship with SSDs also tend to have unnecessarily upgraded (and costly) processors and graphics cards, which are only useful for gaming. (Oh, and the used workstation has a Core i7 in it too, so it's not exactly a slouch along any dimension except for 3D graphics performance.) | |  | | user5994461 on Jan 13, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] I don't think that people understand what they are buying. There is an expectation that Walmart wouldn't sell something that cannot work at all, but they do. Don't buy 5 years old hardware second hands, it's poor investment and I speak from experience. Hardware has a limited lifespan then it just dies. The hard drive, the motherboard or the screen fail without notice and you're screwed. | |  | | CydeWeys on Jan 13, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] You're right that people don't understand what they're buying. $200 new, modern Windows laptop is a market segment that cannot exist -- it's like a $5K new automobile in the US. Except there are standards in the automotive market in the US, so no one is allowed to sell the kind of trash that would be a $5K car. You can buy such a thing in, e.g., India, but it's exactly as bad as you'd think it would be, with terrible emissions and crash performance. As for hardware endurance, I don't think you're giving quality hardware enough credit. I've owned a lot of computing hardware in my lifetime, and the only failures I've ever experienced have been fans going bad (which is easy to fix) and spinning hard drives crapping out. Oh, and I dropped a laptop really badly one time and broke it that way, but that's not really the hardware's fault. Solid state components last quite a long time. | |  | | user5994461 on Jan 13, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] It's funny you say that because I was already writing that there are cars in Indian selling for much less than $5k before finishing to read your first sentence. Entry cars in Europe are in the range $5k to $10k. Not sure closer to which ends. They are certified for regulations and safety. I certainly had some hardware and I've seen everything die sooner or later. My order would be rotating hard drive, then gaming GPU, then display, then motherboard. Never seen any computer reach 10 years without any replacement. You're significantly past half life when buying 5 years old. | |  | | CydeWeys on Jan 13, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] The cheapest car in Europe appears to be the Dacio Sandero, which works out to around USD 8,500. There's several problems with the base trim level that would render it unacceptable on the US market: No A/C, no radio, no automatic transmission, and a truly anemic engine that takes 13 seconds to go from 0-100 km/h. That engine might be acceptable on a city car in Europe, but most US drivers are going farther (and faster). But hey, at least it's certified for collisions and emissions; you can't say the same for the Indian cars we're referring to. I've seen plenty of computers last >10 years. So, we'll see how this one goes. Even if one component does need replacing at some point, it'll likely still have been the best choice. Nothing else offers that kind of performance at a remotely comparable price point unless you're willing to build a PC from scratch. | |  | | user5994461 on Jan 14, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] The low end Dacia are a demonstration of making affordable cars by abandoning options like motorized windows, A/C and radios. They are very successful. I think you can pay a bit more to have all options, which is still a good deal for a brand new car. Yes, Europeans generally speaking have smaller cars than Americans. All cars have manual transmission. Not 10 years with all original components. | |  | | dpark on Jan 13, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–] Ugh. That looks pretty miserable. Also, why is that running 64-bit with only 2 GB of RAM? | |  | | cesarb on Jan 13, 2018 | prev | next [–] > (Likely also a bad experience with modern Linux on 30gb.) I just did an install of modern Linux (the latest CentOS 7, with Gnome deskop), so I can check. The root partition is using at the moment 4.2G, plus a 2.0G swap partition and a 1.0G boot partition. So if this were a 30G disk, I'd have more than 20G left, even after installing a few applications. | |  | | dpark on Jan 13, 2018 | parent | next [–] That’s a fair bit smaller than I’d expect honestly. I’m surprised it’s not using more than that with the basic apps installed. | |  | | CydeWeys on Jan 13, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] There's plenty of serious Linux distros that still ship on a single CD. Arch Linux, for example, comes on a 522 MB ISO. That gets you a basic functional desktop environment, and anything else you might need can be installed from the Net. | |  | | majewsky on Jan 14, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] There is no desktop on the 522 MB Arch Linux ISO, or if there is, I've never seen it. It boots into a root shell on tty1, and is only supposed to be used for installation. I would be very surprised to even find an X server in there. EDIT: For a more realistic number, I just checked my Arch-Linux-based home server, which has a fairly small installation (including some multimedia and X11 stuff for PulseAudio, mpd and youtube-dl, though). Needs just over 2 GiB for the entire system and applications: df / -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sdc2 110G 2,2G 103G 3% / Of course, you should have some breathing room, but usually not more than 8 GiB on a server, and maybe 16 GiB on a desktop. | |  | | dpark on Jan 13, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–] Interestingly, Ubuntu requires 25 GB. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequire... So consumer-oriented distros don't seem to be nearly so much lighter than Windows. With the caveat that Ubuntu probably comes preloaded with more apps like Libre Office. | |  | | Izkata on Jan 14, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] That's probably more generous than necessary. I just installed Ubuntu 16.04 a month ago (new laptop), and with /home/ on its own partition, after installing everything I use regularly, root is only using 9.3G | |  | | vetinari on Jan 14, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–] That's probably just a CYA requirement. I have 17.10 in a VM and it takes 8,7 GB on the disk, with a few extra apps compared to default install. | |  | | CydeWeys on Jan 13, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–] A decent amount of that space ends up being on-disk swap for the RAM, for what it's worth. And note that, on that same page, Xubuntu and Lubuntu are offered up as alternatives for less performant computers. They only require 5 GB of space. Windows doesn't have a light version like that. | |  | | pletnes on Jan 13, 2018 | root | parent | prev | next [–] That still leaves plenty of space for additional apps and data. Also you can uninstall e.g. Libreoffice post-install to slim it down. | |  | | jenscow on Jan 13, 2018 | prev | next [–] > Who buys a laptop with only 30 GB of storage? Somebody who doesn't work in the IT industry - the target demographic of Windows. I'm also surprised it's possible - but if it cuts the price, then why not? I assume 10GB more than the minimum is enough to earn the Windows badge. But I don't think the crux of the issue was lack of disk space. | |  | | user5994461 on Jan 13, 2018 | parent | next [–] For reference, a 32GB SD card is $10 and a TB disk is $40. | |  | | estebank on Jan 14, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] When the entire laptop is $300, the difference between those two is 10% of the consumer facing cost. And somebody buying a $300 computer clearly doesn't think (or doesn't know) they need 1 TB of storage. | |  | | user5994461 on Jan 14, 2018 | root | parent | next [–] I gave example on a 1 TB because that's what I could find. Maybe the manufacturers could have 128GB disks for as little costs as the memory card. | |  | | kashprime on Jan 13, 2018 | prev | next [–] I fought this battle with a 64GB SSD, and gave up and cloned the drive onto a hybrid SSD/7200RPM drive (using EaseUS). I can't imagine what you went through to get it to fit on 30GB! | | |  | | dpark on Jan 13, 2018 | parent [–] Those are ChromeBooks, not Windows laptops. Also, I'd never heard of WIMBoot. Being a Microsoft employee doesn't make me a Windows expert. I don't work on Windows and don't own any systems that WIMBoot targets. Looking at WIMBoot, it doesn't seem relevant for the case discussed here, either, since this client clearly didn't have the small space usage WIMBoot enables. | | | |
