I was just made aware of a rather serious bug that may kill the hard drive of any laptop using Linux (at least recent versions of Ubuntu). Here’s a rather dramatic account of the effects.
The bug especially affects laptops when they are used from battery. Luckily, I have not used my laptop on battery too much, and having checked the number of load cycles on my hard drive as per instructions in the bug report, I’m still in the clear, the bug hasn’t affected me, but nonetheless, it means that my trust in Linux on a laptop is all but gone (I had about 30 000 load cycles after 6 months of using my laptop, which puts the lifespan of the disk at about 6 years given the current rate of cycles and use, as most drives are made to last at least 300 000 load cycles).
It’s a shame, I’ve enjoyed using Ubuntu so far, but having the default settings potentially kill the lifespan of laptops is unacceptable. Yes, sure, there may be workarounds, but it doesn’t change the fact that the default settings may actually kill your hard drive.
If you are required to hack your default settings in order not to potentially destroy your hardware, Linux still has a lot of growing up to do for mobile users..
(thanks Matt for the tip)
October 31, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Why not try another distribution that uses the Gnome desktop? It sounds like you’re using the words Ubuntu and Linux interchangeably. They’re not interchangeable. Ubuntu is ‘a’ Linux. Linux is actually a kernel but to most people including me, it’s a family of distributions built around the Linux kernel. If this were a problem with the Kernel, we’d see it across the board on all distributions. But since it’s seems to be just showing up on Ubuntu, it’s a problem with that distribution, not the other distributions. This is why mono cultures are inherently unhealthy.
October 31, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Richard:
Yes, I know I am guilty of using them interchangeably, and it is semi on-purpose, as I am not sure whether the bug affects Linux in general, or just Ubuntu, but it sounds to me like other distros can be affected.
But to make one thing clear: I quite liked my experience with Ubuntu, but the risk of destroying my hard disk is a big no-go.
I will probably use Linux on another computer, as even if it is not my primary desktop, having access to it is useful, since I often deploy applications onto linux in my work.
November 1, 2007 at 5:58 am
The articles you reference are about two years old, and from which nothing of this nature has circulated outside a couple of personal blogs.
Not very scientific conclusions.
November 2, 2007 at 3:43 am
Yes, it appears I wasn’t paying enough attention to your plight. The hard drive issue is a deal breaker. I wouldn’t use an OS that was slowly killing my hard drive. But I am reasonably sure this is an Ubuntu issue, not a kernel issue. Au79 seems to think this is an old problem. If it is indeed 2 years old (a millennium in Linux development) then problem has been fixed.
I just Googled “Ubuntu drive bug” and at the very top of the results was this link https://launchpad.net/bug59695.html. It is dated 2006-09-09. The link you listed was dated November 24, 2005. You said that the bug hasn’t effected you [yet]. It never will. That bug is long gone, history. Now if this was a Microsoft OS we were talking about I would still be concerned.
November 19, 2007 at 10:39 pm
[...] following the comments around internet forums and blogs regarding the Ubuntu laptop related hard drive bug points to a very fatal flaw in the community, at least when it comes to it’s more vocal and [...]
June 27, 2008 at 2:30 pm
[...] I have had endless frustration with Windows Vista. I tried switching to Linux for a while, but when I found a few concerns about it cooking the harddrive on laptops, I duly uninstalled it (a problem that has still not been addressed by anything else but [...]
November 6, 2008 at 4:57 pm
I was noticing some frequent clicking coming from my laptop when using Ubuntu, even plugged in, probably the heads parking and unparking, every few seconds. I turned off the two power management services under “Services”, and no more clicking. I think there’s just one specifically that causes it but I haven’t tested enough to know.