I've been running Windows Vista Ultimate on my Acer Aspire One netbook (with 1.5GB of RAM, and a 30GB hard drive) for a while now, without any problems or performance issues. I have the full Aero Glass experience, and I didn't need to do any performance tweaking or fiddling with services. I even made a few very crappy videos to show it all off. Apparently, Steven Sinofsky thinks Vista - and therefore, Windows 7 - can run just fine on a netbook too, and that's why he demonstrated Windows 7 running on a netbook this morning during the Windows 7 keynote. In an interview with Ars he gave a little more details.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2008-10-23
Starcraft is the top of the platinum list in wine app db:
http://appdb.winehq.org/
It means that it runs flawlessly. Is there really a performance hit on your 900? There shouldn't. On my desktop at least, it runs just as fast or faster than on Windows.
Anyway, puppy linux does just what you describe. By default, it does commit your changes every half an hour to the pup_save file. You can have several pup_save files and use them to create several branches where you commit some different changes.
Edited 2008-10-29 09:58 UTC
Member since:2005-11-11
Yes, there is a performance hit. Each frame displayed has to be translated from the 8 bits (256 colors) it runs at to whatever bit depth your x server is using (16 or 24 most likely - unfortunately 8 bit doesn't work).
This is done on the GPU where possible, using shaders. Otherwise it's done on the CPU. This is slow. My old Athlon 1400 couldn't do it fast enough until I applied the DirectDrawRenderer opengl registry key which let it use the GPU. Unfortunately the eee's integrated intel decelerator can't do it, and the CPU can't do it fast enough.
That platinum rating means everything works, and it does (aside from some battlenet menu issues, which the platinum rater overlooked). Most modern computers will have either a sufficient GPU or CPU to get Starcraft running in wine with no slowdown, but the eee has neither. It's close but ~70% doesn't do it (it runs with no errors, just slow). Perhaps wine will implement a DIB engine someday and then it will work at full speed even on the eee. I'll keep checking.
***
Thanks for the info on Puppy Linux. That's close to what I want, but it is sort of missing the essential ingredient of not writing to the SSD at all unless I want. Unless the pup_save file can be stored on a tmpfs and the changes written to / when desired? I guess that could do it. I figured it was possible (someone must have done something like that) so thanks for the heads up. Next I'll want to know if it can be done with Debian 
Edited 2008-10-29 12:53 UTC
Member since:
2005-11-11
the faster SSDs in the 900 and 901 are not bad at all, at least with Xandros on them. Most MLC SSDs pretty much suck though.
and I don't know of any easy way to commit changes). Maybe one can do a unionfs with the fs where changes are recorded being a tmpfs? Again though, how to commit any changes if I decide they are beneficial?
I've also got Windows installed on an SDHC card to use with my 900*. Using EWF**, no changes are made to the SD card (until/unless I choose to commit all changes, they are stored in RAM) so any write penalties are thrown out the window. This could of course be done on the SSD too.
I think it's pretty neat. Don't like how a change has affected things? Reboot without commit. Satisfied with the current state? Commit and write it all out at once instead of in many speed sapping random writes.
I wish I could do this in Linux (maybe someone knows how). There's tmpfs of course (though AFAIK they start off emtpy, so it'd be hard to mount / as one
ANYWAY flash based works fine for me with Linux and Windows. None of the stuttering people can see with slower SSDs or no tweaks to prevent random writes all over the place. Out of 4 laptops in the house I've had to order 3 new hard drives in the last year and a half, so I rather appreciate not having a mechanical drive that can get banged around.
*For Starcraft, which can't quite run at full speed in wine on the 900
**Enhanced Write Filter: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/814257
***EDIT*** beaten by Thom
Edited 2008-10-29 08:56 UTC