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Quirky Xerus works well

March 23, 2016 — BarryK
There was a little hiccup with kernel framebuffer modules, solved it, now Quirky Xerus is working, and right now the "bugs list" is empty.

Everything that I have tried so far works.

I am running off my new USB3 SanDisk Ultra Fit 32GB Flash drive, and it sure is fast.

Running on my old workhorse laptop, haven't tried it on the new Asus E200HA netbook yet.

Next, I intend to have a bit of a look in this thread, see if there are any bugs that I can investigate:
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=101602&start=225

Regarding the Flash drive, I was pleased to discover that it does have an LED activity light. So tiny:
https://www.sandisk.com.au/home/usb-flash/ultra-fit-usb



I bought it for AU$18 on-sale at Harvey Norman.

Comments

Otto sent me an email, warning about the SanDisk Ultra Fit Flash stick:

Careful with those. They overheat due to the high speed/small size combination. They start loosing capacity, if they were 32gb next format they will be a little less. Worst scenario is they will kill your laptop USB port. Both things happened to me with Knoppix, but Quirky does much less writes and it uses f2fs, which Knoppix does not. Do a search, you will find many complaints about these problems.

To that warning, I will add another, my reply to Otto:

Otto,
Thanks for the advice.

Yes, I am getting worried about it.

Sometimes when I plug it in, it doesn't register, that is, is not
recognised as plugged in, and I have to replug it.

Get this on both my laptops.

This problem could be because of the way it is designed, with the electronics stuffed right under the plug.


I am going to put it aside, just use occasionally. Today, back to Harvey Norman and find a more conventional design.

Running Quirky Linux, I plug in the Ultra Fit, nothing happens.
Normally, the LED on the drive will flicker, and the drive icon will appear on the desktop. But, the drive simply isn't working.

Unplug, replug, and it works.

When I first noticed this problem, I took extra care to plug it in straight, and all the way in, but the problem still occurs.
This is on my Acer Aspire, my main workhorse laptop, USB3 socket.

In case you are thinking it could be a Linux software problem, read on...

Plugged into my new Asus E200HA laptop when power is off, USB3 socket, power-on, press ESC to bring up the UEFI-firmware -- hey, the Ultra Fit drive is not there.

Repeat the process, that is, power-down, replug the drive, power-on, and now it is there.

So, it is a problem, it seems highly likely, with the physical design of the Ultra Fit drive.
Or the electronics inside the drive.

Tags: quirky, linux