PC & OS (Linux) : lighter, faster, smaller, more portable and versatile
For a while know I have been searching for a way to have a computer that is much lighter to travel with that the one I have now.
What I have now is a laptop of about 3.9Kg (charger included) and that's too much when you like to have a luggage of ~10Kg for hand luggage, which normally is my only luggage.
I thought about using a mini-PC or a TV-Box as CPU and my tablet as monitor. TV-Box option was too weak on cpu power and small RAM. The mini-PC was giving a similar or higher cpu power in a much smaller size/weight than the laptop, at a higher price than the laptop. I don't like paying twice for the same thing.
Then I thought that I could strip down the laptop (as I had to do with an older laptop with dying components) removing the CD/DVD unit and the HD. Yes, the HD too.
The HD not only for its weight, and maybe its power consumption, but mainly because I need more speed and having a bit better CPU will not help much, but running the OS entirely from RAM ... oh yes, that's speed.
So, my OS would boot from a usb stick to RAM and in another partition on the same stick/sdcard I would place my personal files in an encrypted container.
The files that are going to be used many times (browsers' configuration stuff) would be copied to RAM and be used from there, syncing back at regular intervals and before shutdown, which rarely happens, as I tend to run for weeks and even months by suspending the laptop when not in use (tool: profile-sync-daemon).
Very large files like Virtual Machines (VMs) would be stored on the usb stick/sdcard or additional storage..
Mount options and serviceshave been configured for minimum wear of the storage.
Laptop without CD-ROM and HD : 3.4 -> 2.8 Kg (charger not included)
OS: Kanotix on USB. Loads entirely on RAM using 1.4 GB of it. There is a partition for "persistence" that is not loaded into RAM. It saves the changes like software added to the base distro.
The USB memory is actually a micro SD card of 16GB. Everything fits perfectly on it.
I have been running for more than a week with this configuration and I don't think I will go back. It's quiet, fast, lighter. I haven't missed anything of what was on the HD (500GB). I can still run Virtual Machines using Virtual Box.
I even tried to run another Kanotix-on-USB on a VM (reading from a real usb stick) and that worked perfectly. Actually I used it because I needed to compile some modifications and I didn't want to 'dirty' my base installation, so I did all the dirty work over a clone in a VM and then save the result out and power off (= all changes are forgotten).
It feels like using a very large tablet, with the power of a PC and huge RAM (12GB).What I have now is a laptop of about 3.9Kg (charger included) and that's too much when you like to have a luggage of ~10Kg for hand luggage, which normally is my only luggage.
I thought about using a mini-PC or a TV-Box as CPU and my tablet as monitor. TV-Box option was too weak on cpu power and small RAM. The mini-PC was giving a similar or higher cpu power in a much smaller size/weight than the laptop, at a higher price than the laptop. I don't like paying twice for the same thing.
Then I thought that I could strip down the laptop (as I had to do with an older laptop with dying components) removing the CD/DVD unit and the HD. Yes, the HD too.
The HD not only for its weight, and maybe its power consumption, but mainly because I need more speed and having a bit better CPU will not help much, but running the OS entirely from RAM ... oh yes, that's speed.
So, my OS would boot from a usb stick to RAM and in another partition on the same stick/sdcard I would place my personal files in an encrypted container.
The files that are going to be used many times (browsers' configuration stuff) would be copied to RAM and be used from there, syncing back at regular intervals and before shutdown, which rarely happens, as I tend to run for weeks and even months by suspending the laptop when not in use (tool: profile-sync-daemon).
Very large files like Virtual Machines (VMs) would be stored on the usb stick/sdcard or additional storage..
Mount options and serviceshave been configured for minimum wear of the storage.
Laptop without CD-ROM and HD : 3.4 -> 2.8 Kg (charger not included)
OS: Kanotix on USB. Loads entirely on RAM using 1.4 GB of it. There is a partition for "persistence" that is not loaded into RAM. It saves the changes like software added to the base distro.
The USB memory is actually a micro SD card of 16GB. Everything fits perfectly on it.
I have been running for more than a week with this configuration and I don't think I will go back. It's quiet, fast, lighter. I haven't missed anything of what was on the HD (500GB). I can still run Virtual Machines using Virtual Box.
I even tried to run another Kanotix-on-USB on a VM (reading from a real usb stick) and that worked perfectly. Actually I used it because I needed to compile some modifications and I didn't want to 'dirty' my base installation, so I did all the dirty work over a clone in a VM and then save the result out and power off (= all changes are forgotten).
posted by Ruben }:o) at 11:43
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2 Comments:
I'd like to give some more details about this configuration:
OS: Kanotix-Steelfire-2017 (64bit)
Compressed OS is about 1.4GB which can load entirely to ram with the bootoption "toram".
Whatever modification you do go into the persistence partition which is created in this way:
1. Boot live
2. On the Desktop you will see an icon about creating persistence. Click on it and follow instructions
3. Reboot
4. Grub menu will have a new entry allowing you to boot with persistence.
At boot you can choose whether to boot live or persistence. Live is good for doing risky tests.
After installing and creating persistence, I use gparted (booting from another stick) to resize the persistence partition and create another partition for whatever you want to have (home in an encrypted container). Do it ext4, as soon or later you will need journal.
At boot, using the console (without login any user on graphical mode), I mount (as root) the extra partition and open the encrypted container as the home folder of my user. I tried some other 'graphical' options for this step but they were not very consistent and gave problems.
Then I log in as my normal user.
So I have:
A- OS: 1.4GB
B- Persistence: ~4GB
C- Encrypted home: X GB
Everything fits well on a 16GB (32GB with extra VMs)
To backup the whole thing I only copy the last 2 parts (B+C) onto another USB stick where I performed the installation and partition resizing like mentioned before.
So at any time I have 2 sticks with my whole OS+DATA.
I even have virtual machines there to run in parallel.
The stick is really a card reader like this
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1110/0362/products/1007308_smallest_card_reader_1_large.JPG?v=1518143041
Extra details:
- I configured fstab to check & repair filesystem on each boot (sometimes I removed the usb when the laptop was on standby and forgot to insert it before waking it up, so cleanup was needed).
- /tmp is in RAM, which is very useful when downloading large files without bothering the sdcard/usb and achieving maximum speed.
I wrote the starting article on 25-January.
Now, 23-April, I can say that running an OS like this, from an sdcard on a tiny usb card reader is not feasible.
Four card readers died on me while doing their job. After a few weeks of daily use each one. I guess they are not designed or tested for the kind of work I was giving to them.
Now I am on an internal SSD (really light).
It funny, but I got used to have all in a 32GB card and now a 120GB SSD disk is mostly underutilized (in 2018!).
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