Roderick W. Smith discusses how to resize and defrag the Linux filesystems.
Resizing and Defragmenting Linux Filesystems
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Eugenia Loli
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reading this made me break out into a cold sweat, command line hell, followed by even scarier things that might seriously screw up my drive if it typed something wrong.
This is why linux is a geek os and windows is (sadly) number 1.
Too damn obscure, too damn complex and just too damn scary.
The article mentioned the old tool defrag for linux, but now it’s not included because the ext2 and ext3 filesystem is a little more resistant to defragmentation. I would assume that it will happen despise the filesystem as files are being installed and removed
But I thought I read that ext2 and ext3 pretty much defrag themselves while the system is idle for a period of time, can anyone confirm that ?
“command line hell, followed by even scarier things that might seriously screw up my drive if it typed something wrong. ”
Same thing with DOS Fdisk, there are GUI tools for all splitting partitions, QTpart comes to mind, looks just like partition magic.
“This is why linux is a geek os and windows is (sadly) number 1.”
I got my sister using linux, she is no geek, just tired of the BSOD. Use what works best for you, if you can get more done with Windows, use it..personally I would get a Mac if I had $2000 to spare
ext2/3 don’t “Automatically Defrag” as in, run a defrag in the background, they do a pretty intelligent allocation function that looks for spaces big enough to take the entire file, so there’s no fragments unless the fs gets really full.
If you’re hell-bent, the only to defrag is to backup, format, and restore the filesystem.
I think the differance is Fdisk is insanely simple and straightforward to use. You see whats going on and don’t worry. The same can not be said for other such apps.
Fdisk, simple? Obviously you’ve never seen a newbie try to use it.
I should add that some distros come with their own partition tools. Mandrake, for example, has Diskdrake, which has come a long way in usability and user-friendliness (as much as any disk partition tool can be user-friendly…)
“””reading this made me break out into a cold sweat, command line hell, followed by even scarier things that might seriously screw up my drive if it typed something wrong.”””
This has got to be a joke!!!!
To the comment about Linux being scary to newcomers etc… umm, if they are looking at defragging the filesystem, they prolly aren’t exactly idiots… For people who don’t care about things, they likely don’t even get to a command line, and here is no need for them to do such things. KDE and Gnome can perform almost any task without this need.
Linux is for everyone, if you are a geek, use a distro that puts you in control, use tools that do what you want. For inexperienced users, stick to X and you don’t even have to think. Different strokes for different folks, Windows doesn’t allow you to be a geek though, they don’t allow you to play with anything interesting. Windows is nowhere near as easy to use as Gnome, its nowhere near as feature rich as KDE… Linux has something for everyone, Windows has one thing, and everyone has to live with it.
Choice is too much for some people, but these people just leave the OS they were given at the store on there computer.
“Linux is for everyone, if you are a geek, use a distro that puts you in control, use tools that do what you want.”
Well, as newbie, you can also leave the sysadminnin’ and ‘miring to another person. Say you live together with 8 friends. 2 of them know Linux very well, the other 6 are very good with other things. Why not combine strengths and help each other?
Same could be true for other situations, with other numbers.
(yes some ppl live in such collectives)
Is that a 404 or a joke?
I agree with you totally, but lets be honest: the reason is because 99.9% of human beings on Earth are too lazy to read and understand things.
Let’s be honest- not everyone cares. What you see as “too lazy” is in reality apathy. I’m sorry you can’t imagine even ONE scenario where a person would not want to read documentation (if it even exists) besides laziness.
I’ll give you some hints:
How about a full time college student? 23 credits this semester. Do you think I’m going to fiddle with, and compare QTParted, GNU Parted, and fdisk? Do you think, as I power up my computer to write my essays and do my programming assignments, that I want to fiddle with configuration files and the CLI? Guess what? NO! I have work to do- I use my computer to be productive. I do not have enough seconds in the day to finish my work, and I work from 8:00am to 8:00pm.
So, please try to POSSIBLY consider that someone else may be in a different situation though. I know you probably live in an insulated enivornment, but the world does not revolve around you, and you are a fountain of insight.
TIA.
I you don’t want to mess with config files and the CLI then don’t!! Nobody is forcing you to use the CLI! If you buy a computer with Linux preinstalled, everything is already preconfigured for you, just like a computer with Windows preinstalled. No need to mess with config files, no need to mess with anything. It just works!
If you are one of those people who complain about “CLI hell” then it’s entirely your own fault since you don’t have to mess with the CLI, but you still do, only to be able to whine and bitch on sites like OSNews!
The question becomes how many essay’s can one write if your computer randomly crashes on you. I use windows, linux, and Mac OS X. Windows is the worst, then Mac, then Linux. I use the windows machine for gaming, the powerbook for writing, and occasionally surfing, with the linux box acting as a file storage and occasionly web browser. KDE 3.2 is pretty much alpha and is at least as stable as explorer.exe
My only problem with linux is actually with reiser FS. I have a log file then tends to eat a large amount of disk space(think gigs) Resier tends to take a while to release the space, after I delete the file. But linux doesn’t crash, it just can’t write anything to disk and gives errors.
AS for the Command Line I prefer it to launch programs. Wget, curl both operate about 15% faster in downloading objects off the web in both windows(windows dos implation no cygwin)and linux.
I discovered long ago I can type faster than any ocmputer can completely respond. so I can launch ten apps, in the time it takes you to move your hand to the mouse, move the mouse around the screen, and start apps.
I think the question is, what is wrong with your computer and/or Windows installation? I can and do write every single one of my papers in Windows, as well as designing, debugging, and compiling every one of my programs. I did switch to Linux for a while, and my printer randomly spewed garbage when I tried to print (very randomly), seemed permanently stuck in “draft mode,” and KWord crashed _very_ frequently. Do I blame these problems on Linux? No, I moved on to a solution that works, Windows.