Yes, Linux can operate smoothly on a hard drive.
Yes, Linux can operate smoothly on a hard drive.
Based on my observations, Linux generally performs better with mechanical hard drives compared to newer Windows versions. I'm using Linux Mint 20.3 on a 2012 iMac with a 21.5" internal HDD, which is noticeably slower at startup—over a minute from power-on to desktop—but it works fine once running.
the outcomes show consistency across platforms. i experience nearly identical startup times on both windows and linux, even with linux running on an hdd and full disk encryption. teams of skilled developers perform significantly better in this scenario.
It will run slowly at first, but it will eventually function. Many Linux desktops load a large number of essential services into memory, which helps things like file managers start up quickly compared to Windows.
It's a joke, right? !!! I could install Linux Mint completely, update it, add extra programs, and have the computer ready in just 20 minutes. On a decent machine with an SSD, boot time would be 20 to 30 seconds. With a slower hard drive, maybe 1 to 1.5 minutes. Consider using an SSD of around 250GB or less for Linux, and keep the hard drive for data storage. I own a laptop with 30GB, a portable device, and a handy tool for troubleshooting. Under 10GB for Linux, plenty of files elsewhere, and maybe about 5GB extra. This desktop setup has a 240GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive for everything.
It varies based on your desktop setup and hardware. On an Arch Linux system with XFCE running on an external IDE hard drive (Hitachi travelstar HTS421212H9AT00), getting a functional Firefox browser up from power-on typically takes about 2 minutes and 15 seconds on an I3 350M processor. In extreme cases, such as running 'ramroot,' it could take over an hour if the root filesystem is loaded into RAM.
I discussed how long it takes Windows to transition from the power button to a state where no part of the disk is being used.