Comment by cassepipe 6 days ago
I abandonned Windows 8 for linux because of an bug (?) where my HDD was showing it was 99% busy all the time. I had removed every startup program that could be and analysed thouroughly for any viruses, to no avail. Had no debugging skills at the time and wasn't sure the hardware could stand windows 10. That's how linux got me.
IME on Linux the only things that use random CPU while idle are web browsers. Otherwise, there's dbus and NetworkManager and bluez and oomd and stuff, but most processes have a fraction of a second used CPU over months. If they're not using CPU, they'll presumably swap out if needed, so they're using ~nothing.
This is one the reasons I love FreeBSD. You boot up a fresh install of FreeBSD and there are only a couple processes running and I know what each of them does / why they are there.
Why is this such a huge issue if it merely shows it's busy, but the performance of it indicates that it actually isn't? Switching to Linux can be a good choice for a lot of people, the reason just seems a bit odd here. Maybe it was simply the straw that broke the camel's back.
1. I expect that a HD that is actually doing things 100% of the time is going to have it's lifespan significantly reduce, and
2. If it isn't doing anything and it just lying to you... when there IS a problem, your tools to diagnose the problem are limited because you can't trust what they're telling you
Over the years I have used top and friends to profile machines and identify expensive bottlenecks. Once one comes to count on those tools, the idea of one being wrong, and actually really wrong! --is just a bad rub.
Fixing it would be gratifying and reassuring too.
Windows 8/8.1/10 had an issue for a while where when it was run on spinning rust HDD it would peg it out and slow the system to a crawl.
The only solution was to swap over to a SSD.
Recent Linux distributions are quickly catching up to Windows and macOS. Do a fresh install of your favorite distribution and then use 'ps' to look at what's running. Dozens of processes doing who knows what? They're probably not pegging your CPU at 100%, which is good, but it seems that gone are the days when you could turn on your computer and it was truly idle until you commanded it to actually do something. That's a special use case now, I suppose.