996
Anon updates GNU/linux
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
996 points (100.0% liked)
Greentext
6919 readers
618 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Its not 'special kind'. Flash memory is a type of nvram. It was a test to see if you would catch on. Theres also neat things like phase change RAM, aka DVD-RAM.
Well it's special in the sense that opposed to the most common kind of RAM, DRAM and SRAM, it has non volatile storage. Which is why it's referred to as NVRAM instead of simply RAM. Saying RAM usually implies volatile storage in a PC, certainly does in the context of an OS install on a HDD and SSD, and in that context a SSD isn't RAM. Yes there are minutiae to the terminology, but I don't see how that's relevant here.
Its relevant because its primary use doesnt change how the memory is accessed. The only reason NVRAM doesnt see use as primary system ram is that they are much slower and many types have limited write cycles making them unsuitable for the job.
In the context of setting up a PC a SSD is a drive, not RAM. You couldn't pull out your RAM DIMMs and just run on your NVME/SATA SSD as RAM instead (unless your CPU/MB support that which to my knowledge isn't common). I'm not saying that flash memory isn't random access memory in the general sense of the word, I'm saying that when talking about a PC specifically RAM refers to special memory the motherboard makes directly available to the CPU, and a SSD isn't that.
Next you're going to tell me Apple Macs are not PCs.
No I'm going to tell you that is still irrelevant. The OP said:
It seems the student thought a SSD is RAM in the sense of "volatile CPU storage" and thus unfit for an OS install. And a SSD is not RAM in that sense of the word.