[PLUG] New computer working on old computer

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sat, 6 Sep 2014 15:56:50 -0700
Keith Lofstrom <keithl at gate.kl-ic.com> dijo:

>On Fri, Sep 05, 2014 at 01:04:19PM -0700, John Jason Jordan wrote:
>> here is the best part: I plugged it into the Thinkpad and booted to
>> it. Not only did it boot, but there was not even the slightest
>> hiccup. I expected the video at least to be messed up, but the
>> screen came up exactly as it looked on the Bonobo Extreme.

>Hijacking the thread back, yes, this is the way Linux works, and
>for those of us who migrate hourly between different models of
>laptops and desktops, The One True Way.  The display on the old
>Thinkpad X60 I am using now has lost sync three times in the last
>two months - I am about to swap drives to the spare X60, with
>the pesky nuisance of upgrading /etc/dhcpd.conf, perhaps 10 minutes
>of work total. 

So far I have had four Linux computers, and all have had nVidia
graphics. I suspect that I might have had more difficulty if one of the
two had used a different video chip. 

But one thing I have learned from this - from now on / and /home will
be on different partitions on an mSATA SSD drive. Not only does this
vastly improve the speed of the computer, but since I now have an mSATA
USB enclosure I can boot my computer anywhere there is a computer that
lets me boot to a USB drive.

>I don't know what format John's SSD drive takes, but you can run
>two SATA drives on the larger thinkpads, because you can put one
>in an Ultrabay.  An external USB case is OK, too, but USB2 is 
>kinda slow.  

Yes, the mSATA enclosure is USB 3.0, but the Thinkpad is only 2.0.
Interestingly, it seems a bit faster than when I ran Ubuntu 12.04 on
it. I know the hard drive on the Thinkpad is the fastest SATA-2 drive I
could get when I bought it, but Lenovo throttled the SATA-2 controller
on the T-61 to SATA-1 speeds. I don't know if there is a way to figure
out a real world comparison of an SSD drive via USB 2.0 vs. a SATA-1
drive. I say "real world" because it's not just straight throughput;
seek times, for example should be worlds faster on the SSD.