On Sun, 24 May 2015 20:31:40 -0700 Patrick Bartek <nemommxiv@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sun, 24 May 2015, Paul E Condon wrote: > > > > [BIG snip] > > Two comments: > > > > 1) I saw a few days ago, an NewEgg.com advert. for a specialized > > HD/SSD combo. from Western Digital. It is a drop-in replacement for > > a SATA HD that combines in the same SATA physical outline, a 120GB > > SSD and a 1TB backing store on HD. This for just over $100 on > > Memorial Day sale. They must have figured out how to deal with > > UEFI. If they can figure it out, surely open/libre people can copy > > the WD approach. > > I've seen similar hybrid drives on laptops as the default drives. > Don't know how they are configured, but I'm assuming that the SSD > holds the OS and apps for fast response times, and the spinning drive > holds all data and/or backup and recovery partitions. Sort of. From what I understand, the SSD is a sort of cache for the spinning drive. You only "see" the spinning drive, but things that are frequently accessed go through the SSD. There is software that sets up something similar for Linux, but I can't remember what it's called - I'm using my SSDs as / and /home, and that gives me performance where and when I want it. > > 2) Who among us would be willing to download and install software > > from the NSA that says it will protect you from Microsoft? Who > > doubts that NSA has the technology to break Microsoft's UEFI? > > A lot of people already use NSA software: SELinux. I'm not one. For > servers, it's great for security; but for a user system, it's a waste > of CPU cycles. I always turned it off when I ran Fedora. It was > impossible to uninstall or seemed so. > > UEFI isn't the problem. Most all Linux distros support and can use > it. It's Secure Boot which requires a Microsoft key that's the > problem. If you can't turn it off, you can't install another OS. For now. As mentioned earlier, there are approaches underway to solve this. See my other mail on this. Petter -- "I'm ionized" "Are you sure?" "I'm positive."
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