I am not quite ready to switch to a GNU/Linux yet, but I have live booted Linux Mint Xfce yesterday, with most things working, but much worse for launching times, etc. Would it be any different if I installed it on my eMMC drive? Since they are both based on NAND flash memory, I am clueless about it.

  • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
    131·
    3 days ago

    Probably depends on the speed of your usb pen and port. If you know for a fact that everything USB side is 3.1, USB will be faster. Otherwise eMMC will be faster. If everything is USB3.1 gen 2, USB looks to be around 3x as fast. Gen 1 is about 25% faster.

    What I found in a quick search:

    • eMMC: 400MB/s
    • USB 3.1 gen 1: 500MB/s
    • USB 3.1 gen 2: 1250MB/s

    If any part of the USB chain is 2 or lower, it’s slower.

    • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      14·
      3 days ago

      That’s still theoretical speeds, I doubt any drive will be that fast.

      Device ships with good emmc storage, it’s all pretty dire. The surface go my friend has got about 150MBps writes and 250 reads. That’s what I’d expect from a “good” emmc machine. I bought some $100 Walmart special a year ago and it gets like maybe 150 reads and 50 writes. Hard drives are fast than this.

      Some USB drives are actually pretty good. I have a drive that sustains over 350MBps reads and 150 writes, and bursts almost up to full 400MBps.

      That that drive is the exception, not the norm. Those micro center flash drives with white labels? You may get 1 gig of writes in before they crater to 20MBps or less. And the newer black ones? I’ve seen single digit MBps transfers. Putting an OS on there is suffering. Shit just writing the iso on there is bad.

      Emmc will be consistently mediocre. If OP had an EMMC laptop then I’m going to guess they didn’t pay extra for a fancy flash drive so the experience is going to be DIRE. If you want to play with the live environment it’s fine.

    • traceur201@piefed.socialEnglish
      41·
      3 days ago

      I suspect the usb storage has a much worse or at least much more variable latency profile. Control frames on usb3 are a whole .125ms apart

    • Classy Hatter@sopuli.xyz
      41·
      3 days ago

      And the easiest way to figure out the USB version is to look at the USB port and connector. If there is white or black plastic piece inside of them, it’s USB 1 and 2 respectively. If the plastic part is blue, red or some other color, it’s USB 3 or better.