What to think about when installing on an SSD?

The biggest issue which I've found with SSD is the huge cost for a much smaller drive than what you can get with a comparable price range in an IDE/PATA/SATA HDD.

The other (and even bigger issue for me) is that the SSD HDDs don't support all of the various RAID levels ( like the one I use, RAID 0+1 )

Another issue is that if you're BIOS doesn't support SSD, such as with an older system, that too can cause problems for you.

I've not had a ton of experience with the SSD HDDs, but I know that Linux has much better support for the older, more established formats (IDE/PATA/SATA) than it does for SSD. Over time, of course, this will improve and SSD HDD support will be better a year or two down the road from where it is now. I tend to go for stability, so I run 32-bit versions of Linux vs. 64-bit versions because the support for 32-bit is better now than it is for 64-bit. Again, this too will improve over time.

I prefer stability, so Ubuntu LTS over Ubuntu NON-LTS for me on desktops, Debian or CentOS on servers, 32-bit over 64-bit, and IDE/PATA/SATA over SSD when it comes to HDDs.

ALL of the above of course is my own personal opinion and experiences. I tend to be an idealist who prefers stability and shoots for "Best Practices" over what "just works, even if it isn't ideal or Best Practices".

Keep in mind that Linux Mint, Zorin OS, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu, all are based in Debian. Ubuntu LTS pulls initially pulls it's code from debian-testing and the NON-LTS versions of Ubuntu pull from debian-unstable (whereas Debain itself goes debian-unstable > debian-testing > debian-stable <-- which is where Debian releases come from) --- So as such, Ubuntu and it's forks aren't going to be as stable as just plain old Debian is. Then again, maybe people LIKE and WANT bleeding edge, and that's cool if they do, but then just run Gentoo, Slackware, Linux From Scratch and compile it yourself, or atleast run Arch (but know that Arch uses unsigned packages - which I would never trust or use on a production system... only a system for testing / developing on.)

Lastly, file systems..... ext3 is the way to go. It's old, stable, and Journals.

As for partitioning, if this is just a home system for desktop use, just toss everything on one drive and one / partition. You MAY want to pu8t /home on it's own hard drive if you distro hope because that way you can just unmount it, install, remount it and continue on with it as is.

If this is for a server setup, SSDD HDDs haven't proved themselves enough to me yet to use them in that capacity, but to answer your question on partitions...it depends on what kind of server it is. Some write to the hard drive(s) more than others do.

I also recommend a centralized /var/log server where all other servers point to it instead of the local /var/log directory path on each local system.

I don't claim to be an expert, but I've had no problems on my little SSD during the past 10 months.

There are lots of opinions about SSDs and some disagreements. Some believe that the following items are important to think about... - TRIM - alignment - disk activity - unused disk space - swap

An easy way to get TRIM going is to use the "discard" option on ext4 and kernel 2.6.33 or later. Ubuntu LTS default kernel is 2.6.32 and the forums do have some discussion and concern about using this kernel with SSDs.

Alignment parameters will vary depending upon the SSD model. Do some research and take your time to optimize performance.

Disk activity is a puzzle, or at least it was a puzzle for me the last time I tried to figure out what was happening. Popular Linux distros that use Gnome or KDE constantly write to the hard drive every few seconds. Here are two things that will decrease writes to your SSD.

• put /tmp in RAM (tmpfs)

• if you have a data drive, put /var on it.

I have /var partitions on my data drive, one for each distro that's installed on the SSD.

There is much discussion about journalizing and relatime and noatime. I lack the expertise to determine who is right, but there appears to be some validity to each opinion. You might go with journalizing and relatime unless you find a compelling reasons to abandon the advantages of these features.

There is a theory that unused disk space used for "wear leveling" will increase the life of an SSD materially. For example, if you have a 60GB drive, you would format maybe 50GB. Or you would format the entire drive but be sure that some significant portion remains unused.

If you can afford an SSD, you probably can afford some RAM. So, if you do have swap on your SSD, be sure that you have enough RAM such that swap is not constantly used. I put swap on a rotating data drive.

IMO, as SSD technology matures, things like TRIM, alignment, and unused space for wear leveling will be taken care of by the manufacturer/vendor. At this point, SSDs are for experts and for those who are willing to risk making mistakes.

I'm probably making mistakes that shorten the life of my SSD. But I store data on a rotating drive (and back it up constantly). The SSD is actually removable - used in a rack that fits inside a 3.5" bay, and I have another 2.5" boot drive (a rotating drive) that I throw in the rack and update occasionally in anticipation of a sudden problem with the SSD.

Actually, the second boot drive is a backup drive. It is used only for backing up files that reside on the data drive. A third boot drive (rotating drives are so cheap now!) is used occasionally for experimenting with different distros and doing all those things that an enthusiastic klutz will do.

The little SSD has been absolutely stable using PCLOS & Mint, and the responsive systems are fun to use.