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2020-11-07, 23:51
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#1 |
"Mike"
Aug 2002
5×7×227 Posts |
$220
We had an immediate need for a computer due to an "emergency".
We also didn't want to spend a lot of money. So we ended up with this: https://support.hp.com/sk-en/document/c06655542 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-stre...?skuId=6413689 Why this computer? It has enough juice to run a modern (GUI) Linux distro easily. We are using Debian 10 right now, from this very computer. It is fanless so it is totally silent. It uses a VLP CPU so the battery lasts all day! It suspends and resumes without complaining. It actually looks nice! The hotkeys for the screen brightness and volume work. The touchpad works. It allows right, left and middle clicks! It has a USB C port (!) and two USB A ports, which are more than enough for us. The screen is just wide enough (1366×768) to not feel cramped. The BIOS (amazingly) allows for CSM AKA non-UEFI booting, which greatly simplifies partitioning. The service manual is freely available and you can actually fix the computer if it breaks. We have attached the service manual to this post. It is quite slim and lightweight. It probably isn't super strong but we don't plan to go whitewater rafting or parachuting with it. The price is really reasonable! 64GB of eMMC storage is plenty. We installed a pile of stuff and we are only using a fraction of that space. Some people worry that eMMC storage doesn't have the durability to survive constant writes. User jvang has been abusing a similar Dell laptop with half the storage for months without problems, and he typically has 50-100 browser tabs open and the swap file churning. There is no option for a SSD inside but for $220 we can accept this limitation. We do try to limit our swapping, just to be safe. There is a memory card slot so we are thinking of putting the swap on a SD card. Notes: We use the EXT4 filesystem and a swap file instead of a swap partition. The wireless adapter built in isn't recognized by the Debian installer but after (hours) of messing around we found that after installing the system without a network configured we were able to install (dpkg -i) a non-free .deb firmware file and rmmod r8822be && modprobe r8822be the device driver and the wireless started working. It also works persistently across reboots. We installed the x86 (32-bit) version of Debian because the program binaries are much smaller. The x86 kernel is PAE so the full 4GB of memory is available. We used the 10.0.0 ISO because we wanted to create a reproducible build. After the first reboot just run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and then the system is current. If you have any questions please ask!  Code:
$ lsblk NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT mmcblk0 179:0 0 58.2G 0 disk └─mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 58.2G 0 part / mmcblk0boot0 179:256 0 4M 1 disk mmcblk0boot1 179:512 0 4M 1 disk Code:
$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on udev 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev tmpfs 378M 11M 367M 3% /run /dev/mmcblk0p1 58G 11G 44G 19% / tmpfs 1.9G 20M 1.9G 2% /dev/shm tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock tmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs 378M 4.9M 373M 2% /run/user/1000 Code:
$ lscpu Architecture: i686 CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit Byte Order: Little Endian Address sizes: 39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual CPU(s): 2 On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1 Thread(s) per core: 1 Core(s) per socket: 2 Socket(s): 1 Vendor ID: GenuineIntel CPU family: 6 Model: 122 Model name: Intel(R) Celeron(R) N4020 CPU @ 1.10GHz Stepping: 8 CPU MHz: 961.521 CPU max MHz: 2800.0000 CPU min MHz: 800.0000 BogoMIPS: 2188.80 Virtualization: VT-x L1d cache: 24K L1i cache: 32K L2 cache: 4096K Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc art arch_perfmon pebs bts xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave rdrand lahf_lm 3dnowprefetch cpuid_fault cat_l2 cdp_l2 ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp ibrs_enhanced tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid ept_ad fsgsbase tsc_adjust smep erms mpx rdt_a rdseed smap clflushopt intel_pt sha_ni xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves dtherm ida arat pln pts umip rdpid md_clear arch_capabilities Code:
$ uname -a Linux m 4.19.0-5-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 4.19.37-5 (2019-06-19) i686 GNU/Linux Code:
$ top -n1
top - 17:34:39 up 5:04, 1 user, load average: 0.79, 0.60, 0.72
Tasks: 158 total, 1 running, 157 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu0 : 17.6 us, 11.8 sy, 0.0 ni, 70.6 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
%Cpu1 : 5.9 us, 0.0 sy, 0.0 ni, 94.1 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 3774.9 total, 1552.7 free, 725.7 used, 1496.6 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 3774.9 total, 3700.9 free, 74.0 used. 2514.5 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
837 m 20 0 956.9m 124.8m 62.2m S 0.0 3.3 11:07.58 /usr/bin/gnome-shell
880 m 9 -11 1986.9m 19.7m 12.3m S 6.2 0.5 10:35.66 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no
863 m 20 0 153.7m 40.0m 28.3m S 0.0 1.1 3:01.94 /usr/bin/Xwayland :0 -rootless -terminate -accessx -core -listen 4 -listen 5 -d+
20113 m 20 0 1042.2m 299.7m 152.5m S 6.2 7.9 1:30.50 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr
20232 m 20 0 546.1m 158.3m 124.6m S 6.2 4.2 1:08.14 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 3 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
1198 m 20 0 94.9m 37.2m 27.6m S 0.0 1.0 1:04.97 /usr/lib/gnome-terminal/gnome-terminal-server
10978 m 30 10 10.4m 3.7m 3.1m S 0.0 0.1 0:43.19 top
1 root 20 0 35.6m 8.2m 6.9m S 0.0 0.2 0:24.08 /sbin/init
120 root -51 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m S 0.0 0.0 0:12.49 [irq/68-ELAN0704]
10 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:09.12 [rcu_sched]
20202 m 20 0 559.0m 138.4m 81.2m S 0.0 3.7 0:07.38 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 2 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
145 root -2 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m S 0.0 0.0 0:06.73 [i915/signal:0]
1082 m 20 0 212.9m 72.6m 27.2m S 0.0 1.9 0:06.26 /usr/bin/gnome-software --gapplication-service
342 message+ 20 0 7.9m 4.5m 3.2m S 0.0 0.1 0:05.38 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system --address=systemd: --nofork --nopidfile --systemd+
427 root 0 -20 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:05.16 [kworker/1:3H-kblockd]
17 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m S 0.0 0.0 0:04.66 [ksoftirqd/1]
8052 root 0 -20 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:04.38 [kworker/0:2H-kblockd]
351 root 20 0 72.8m 11.2m 10.0m S 0.0 0.3 0:04.32 /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon
876 m 20 0 30.6m 6.3m 3.8m S 0.0 0.2 0:02.27 /usr/lib/at-spi2-core/at-spi2-registryd --use-gnome-session
19924 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:01.95 [kworker/0:1-events]
940 m 20 0 64.7m 7.9m 7.2m S 0.0 0.2 0:01.92 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gsd-sharing
36 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m S 0.0 0.0 0:01.91 [kswapd0]
179 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m S 0.0 0.0 0:01.76 [jbd2/mmcblk0p1-]
802 m 20 0 7.7m 4.6m 3.3m S 0.0 0.1 0:01.70 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --session --address=systemd: --nofork --nopidfile --system+
434 root 20 0 44.1m 9.3m 5.3m S 0.0 0.2 0:01.61 /usr/lib/policykit-1/polkitd --no-debug
19585 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:01.39 [kworker/u8:2-phy0]
19869 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:01.35 [kworker/u8:3-i915]
954 m 20 0 99.0m 22.8m 19.4m S 0.0 0.6 0:01.23 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gsd-xsettings
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2020-11-08, 01:43
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#2 | |
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"Mike"
Aug 2002
174118 Posts |
Here is our plan for swap memory on a $10 SD card.
Our understanding is that flash memory is consumed in a round-robin manner. IOW, you are not hitting the same "sector" over and over. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling Quote:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Endur...dp/B07B98GXQT/ This 32GB model is rated for 17,520 continuous hours, or two complete years! Having 32GB of swap on a 4GB system sounds ridiculous but all that capacity will be used just for longevity. Review: https://www.storagereview.com/review...d-review-128gb Or, it will catch on fire and die.
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2020-11-08, 06:39
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#3 |
"/X\(‘-‘)/X\"
Jan 2013
29×101 Posts |
SD cards don't do wear leveling, so you may it out quickly if you actually use swap.You might want to try using F2FS on it, and put a swapfile on it instead. You'll need at least Linux 5.3 to do that.
I'd also consider running the 64 bit version, even with the larger binaries, because 32 bit x86 isn't well test at this point: things will be broken in the kernel and no one will notice for a long time, because very few people are using 32 bit. That being said, I'm running 32 bit Debian 10 on a 15 year old laptop. |
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2020-11-08, 06:46
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#4 |
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Undefined
"The unspeakable one"
Jun 2006
My evil lair
5·1,201 Posts |
I use 0kB swap files. I find I never need to swap. I think it is a "solution" looking for a problem when the system has plenty of RAM.
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2020-11-08, 15:18
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#5 | |
Feb 2005
Colorado
3·193 Posts |
Quote:
EDIT: Well, I retract that. It has "Intel 64", a special designation which only a few processors have, and that made me think it might be only masquerading as a 64-bit processor. Last fiddled with by PhilF on 2020-11-08 at 16:05 |
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2020-11-09, 05:10
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#6 | |
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"/X\(‘-‘)/X\"
Jan 2013
29·101 Posts |
Quote:
A lot of these low end processors did ship in systems equipped with 32-bit Windows, which could be the source of confusion. |
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2020-11-10, 02:06
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#7 |
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"Mike"
Aug 2002
5×7×227 Posts |
We got the SD card today. It was easy to install and set up. We were worried that the interface might not be "set up" in time to enable the swap during boot but it appears to work fine. We did use the "UUID" name method in /etc/fstab since /dev/sda could change depending on whether or not other USB-ish devices are plugged in.
Code:
top - 20:05:43 up 9 min, 1 user, load average: 1.63, 1.55, 0.86
Tasks: 157 total, 1 running, 156 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu0 : 21.1 us, 15.8 sy, 0.0 ni, 63.2 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
%Cpu1 : 15.8 us, 5.3 sy, 0.0 ni, 36.8 id, 42.1 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 3775.0 total, 1350.2 free, 1522.2 used, 902.6 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 30527.0 total, 30527.0 free, 0.0 used. 1787.5 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1485 m 20 0 1041.6m 266.7m 125.5m S 6.2 7.1 1:31.09 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr
1901 m 20 0 635.8m 185.2m 133.7m S 12.5 4.9 0:37.26 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 9 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
883 m 20 0 918.9m 117.4m 73.9m S 12.5 3.1 0:33.98 /usr/bin/gnome-shell
1717 m 20 0 714.3m 245.6m 103.5m S 0.0 6.5 0:31.70 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 6 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
1657 m 20 0 720.9m 313.5m 101.9m S 0.0 8.3 0:23.49 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 4 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
1626 m 20 0 749.8m 299.8m 101.1m S 0.0 7.9 0:19.53 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 3 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
1689 m 20 0 596.6m 192.4m 101.2m S 0.0 5.1 0:16.70 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 5 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
910 m 20 0 142.5m 50.3m 39.3m S 0.0 1.3 0:10.55 /usr/bin/Xwayland :0 -rootless -terminate -accessx -core -listen 4 -listen 5 -d+
1581 m 20 0 575.1m 141.6m 81.0m S 0.0 3.8 0:10.36 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 2 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
1532 m 20 0 501.6m 144.2m 93.6m S 0.0 3.8 0:05.28 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 1 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
1 root 20 0 34.6m 8.6m 7.0m S 0.0 0.2 0:03.66 /sbin/init
1133 m 20 0 212.0m 80.7m 31.5m S 0.0 2.1 0:03.35 /usr/bin/gnome-software --gapplication-service
1230 m 20 0 92.6m 37.7m 28.8m S 6.2 1.0 0:02.43 /usr/lib/gnome-terminal/gnome-terminal-server
1934 m 20 0 451.2m 117.9m 89.1m S 0.0 3.1 0:01.69 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 10 -isForBrowser -prefsL+
453 message+ 20 0 7.9m 5.2m 3.8m S 0.0 0.1 0:01.25 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system --address=systemd: --nofork --nopidfile --systemd+
1874 m 20 0 436.9m 98.4m 82.3m S 0.0 2.6 0:00.96 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 8 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
486 root 20 0 39.6m 9.9m 5.9m S 0.0 0.3 0:00.93 /usr/lib/policykit-1/polkitd --no-debug
57 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:00.76 [kworker/0:2-events]
36 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:00.61 [kworker/1:2-events_long]
467 root 20 0 80.9m 14.3m 12.6m S 0.0 0.4 0:00.56 /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon
471 avahi 20 0 6.1m 3.3m 3.0m S 0.0 0.1 0:00.54 avahi-daemon: running [m.local]
480 root 0 -20 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:00.51 [kworker/0:4H-kblockd]
58 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:00.49 [kworker/u8:1-events_unbound]
10 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:00.47 [rcu_sched]
153 root 0 -20 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m D 0.0 0.0 0:00.44 [kworker/1:1H+kblockd]
7 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:00.43 [kworker/u8:0-events_unbound]
310 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:00.40 [kworker/u8:3-i915]
1128 m 20 0 225.3m 50.5m 39.6m S 0.0 1.3 0:00.40 /usr/lib/evolution/evolution-data-server/evolution-alarm-notify
142 root -2 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m S 0.0 0.0 0:00.33 [i915/signal:0]
155 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:00.31 [kworker/1:3-events_power_efficient]
127 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:00.29 [kworker/0:3-events_power_efficient]
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2020-11-10, 22:16
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#9 |
"Curtis"
Feb 2005
Riverside, CA
53×37 Posts |
Swap much? Yeesh.
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2020-11-10, 23:43
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#10 |
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"Mike"
Aug 2002
5×7×227 Posts |
It didn't hit the swap. The CPU is really slow and I have a 32-bit OS installed.
It is surprisingly snappy with Firefox and ordinary apps though! 
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2020-11-16, 16:17
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#11 |
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"Mike"
Aug 2002
5·7·227 Posts |
Here is our swap usage and stuff after almost a week of use. The laptop continues to have a surprisingly snappy response!
Code:
top - 10:14:42 up 6 days, 14:18, 1 user, load average: 2.11, 1.49, 1.26
Tasks: 169 total, 4 running, 165 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu0 : 23.5 us, 5.9 sy, 0.0 ni, 64.7 id, 5.9 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
%Cpu1 : 23.5 us, 17.6 sy, 0.0 ni, 58.8 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 3775.0 total, 503.5 free, 2427.9 used, 843.6 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 30527.0 total, 30171.7 free, 355.2 used. 876.4 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
13139 m 20 0 2018.3m 438.2m 116.9m R 18.8 11.6 316:00.06 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr
13299 m 20 0 1168.6m 350.4m 120.1m S 0.0 9.3 197:16.88 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 4 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
930 m 9 -11 2242.9m 10.7m 9.7m S 0.0 0.3 193:38.03 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --daemonize=no
16593 m 20 0 1067.3m 268.5m 99.6m S 0.0 7.1 82:05.84 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 52 -isForBrowser -prefsL+
883 m 20 0 957.4m 114.2m 52.8m S 6.2 3.0 74:19.74 /usr/bin/gnome-shell
16622 m 20 0 1373.5m 562.5m 105.6m S 0.0 14.9 69:48.68 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 53 -isForBrowser -prefsL+
26012 m 20 0 731.7m 191.8m 96.4m R 12.5 5.1 41:27.76 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 196 -isForBrowser -prefs+
10888 m 20 0 865.3m 197.3m 100.7m S 0.0 5.2 38:21.26 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 151 -isForBrowser -prefs+
16635 m 20 0 1148.8m 354.6m 99.8m S 0.0 9.4 35:34.04 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 54 -isForBrowser -prefsL+
910 m 20 0 155.9m 35.7m 28.0m S 6.2 0.9 32:11.17 /usr/bin/Xwayland :0 -rootless -terminate -accessx -core -listen 4 -listen 5 -d+
13235 m 20 0 753.5m 203.3m 68.4m S 0.0 5.4 20:22.73 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 2 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
1230 m 20 0 119.7m 31.5m 24.5m S 0.0 0.8 12:45.41 /usr/lib/gnome-terminal/gnome-terminal-server
13485 m 20 0 455.3m 80.1m 66.2m S 0.0 2.1 7:19.20 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 6 -isForBrowser -prefsLe+
471 avahi 20 0 6.4m 3.2m 2.8m S 0.0 0.1 2:37.74 avahi-daemon: running [m.local]
23232 m 20 0 212.2m 26.6m 21.7m S 0.0 0.7 2:32.75 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -parentBuildID 20201108181928 -pr+
467 root 20 0 81.0m 10.1m 8.9m S 0.0 0.3 2:14.70 /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon
1 root 20 0 35.6m 6.5m 5.2m S 0.0 0.2 2:12.48 /sbin/init
10 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 1:44.05 [rcu_sched]
453 message+ 20 0 7.9m 4.2m 3.2m S 0.0 0.1 1:33.23 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system --address=systemd: --nofork --nopidfile --systemd+
993 m 20 0 64.7m 7.0m 6.4m S 0.0 0.2 1:02.49 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gsd-sharing
142 root -2 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m S 0.0 0.0 0:56.26 [i915/signal:0]
5209 m 20 0 307.6m 6.0m 4.7m S 0.0 0.2 0:53.37 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_espeak-ng /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/+
5206 m 20 0 285.9m 4.1m 3.6m S 0.0 0.1 0:53.12 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_dummy /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/dumm+
5203 m 20 0 285.9m 4.1m 3.6m S 0.0 0.1 0:53.04 /usr/lib/speech-dispatcher-modules/sd_generic /etc/speech-dispatcher/modules/ge+
23550 root 0 -20 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m I 0.0 0.0 0:38.72 [kworker/0:0H-kblockd]
1133 m 20 0 236.0m 84.7m 21.2m S 0.0 2.2 0:32.14 /usr/bin/gnome-software --gapplication-service
458 root 20 0 13.4m 3.5m 3.2m S 0.0 0.1 0:27.35 /sbin/wpa_supplicant -u -s -O /run/wpa_supplicant
17 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m S 0.0 0.0 0:23.80 [ksoftirqd/1]
1142 m 20 0 864.4m 22.7m 8.1m S 0.0 0.6 0:23.44 /usr/lib/tracker/tracker-store
595 root 20 0 55.9m 8.7m 6.1m S 0.0 0.2 0:22.85 /usr/lib/upower/upowerd
183 root 20 0 0.0m 0.0m 0.0m S 0.0 0.0 0:21.08 [jbd2/mmcblk0p1-]
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