Seems like NVFS (non volatile filesystem) is currently the #1 source of problems for Palm users and this Palm user thought it would be nice to give users some background information why it’s causing all those problems and why Palm still decided to use it.
Why All the Trouble with NVFS?
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I had no idea such thing existed, but it was certainly interesting from an O/S point of view.
PalmOS actually needs a demand paging memory system, where the fastest storage (fast ram) is used as a sort of cache for slower storage (non-volatile ram in this case).
The problem is actually the same with operating systems for “normal” computers: the slower storage is the hard disk, and the main ram is just a fast cache.
Nvfs is already a year old. Yes it was a source of problems, but most of them are fixed. Nvfs is a slower ram where an app cannot be executed inplace, eg a harddisk. There is also the normal ram, which holds the dynamic heap and also the apps that are executed. Big plus: you don’t loose everything in ram, when the batery dies. Minus: old hacks might crash your device.
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…one of the better articles posted on OS News lately. Too bad I never have owned a PDA and know little about them.
But I am not sure why this ram that acts like a disk would be slower than a disk?