Palapeli regularly saves the state of the puzzle to the hard drive (every 2 seconds IIRC). This means you do not lose all your work if there is a crash or a power failure.

Could this be what keeps your HD ticking over?

Of course Palapeli uses RAM to hold the pieces, images and positions! They are (non-persistent) objects in C++ code.

Created attachment 135683 [details]
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Two seconds? Why? Do you think saving every two seconds is good? FOR A
GAME? Or even thirty seconds?
If it stays at two seconds, I will be ejecting it, and I'll find a
different game. DON'T waste my HDD to save progress every two seconds or
even every minute!!

On Sat, Feb 13, 2021 at 8:04 PM Ian Wadham <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=432909
>
> Ian Wadham <iandw.au@gmail.com> changed:
>
>            What    |Removed                     |Added
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                  CC|                            |iandw.au@gmail.com
>
> --- Comment #1 from Ian Wadham <iandw.au@gmail.com> ---
> Palapeli regularly saves the state of the puzzle to the hard drive (every 2
> seconds IIRC). This means you do not lose all your work if there is a
> crash or
> a power failure.
>
> Could this be what keeps your HD ticking over?
>
> Of course Palapeli uses RAM to hold the pieces, images and positions! They
> are
> (non-persistent) objects in C++ code.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You reported the bug.

Honest question, Mr. the Geek, do you think we care if you play this game or not?

Tone down your messages and be civil.

Created attachment 135689 [details]
attachment-26361-0.html

No, I don't think you care if I play your game, but I'll bet you miss the
money I would have sent you!
I did programming back probably before you were born and I am very critical
of half-ass programmers. I would have never turned out shit like that. Have
a nice life!

On Sun, Feb 14, 2021 at 6:24 PM Albert Astals Cid <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org>
wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=432909
>
> Albert Astals Cid <aacid@kde.org> changed:
>
>            What    |Removed                     |Added
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                  CC|                            |aacid@kde.org
>
> --- Comment #3 from Albert Astals Cid <aacid@kde.org> ---
> Honest question, Mr. the Geek, do you think we care if you play this game
> or
> not?
>
> Tone down your messages and be civil.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You reported the bug.

Lee, if you are as experienced as you say you are, I am surprised that you did not check up on a few things before going off at half-cock.

Firstly, Palapeli is part of the KDE Community software, which is all free and Open Source, so nobody is asking for your money. Should you enjoy any other KDE Community software, it is possible to contribute in a general way, to support general activities of its world-wide membership, such as conferences and travel.

Secondly, I have had a look at the source code and I was wrong when I said the rate of saving of Palapeli games is every two seconds. It is actually twice per second! I must say I cannot observe that because it has been some years since I had a "hard disk" that rotates and even longer since I had one with a flashing light. My main disk is a solid-state drive.

Thirdly, Albert is not an author or maintainer of Palapeli, but he is a very experienced software engineer in a pan-European software company, as well as being moderator of KDE Games and a KDE Release Manager. So it is disrespectful and uninformed of you to call him half-arsed and a producer of shit.

Fourthly, it is a mistake to presume anybody's age or experience on the Internet when you cannot see them or meet them. You might be old enough to have been programming before Albert was born --- you would have to be at least sixty. However, you would have had to be an exact contemporary of Alan Turing to have started programming before I did. That would make you over 100 years old now. I also resent your implication that I, along with Albert, am half-arsed and a writer of shit. I am proud of my programming work over the last 57 years and have had more than one world-class achievement to my credit.

Despite that, I am not the author of the few lines of code (out of thousands in Palapeli) that give you offence. In fact I have many times been grateful that they exist and have saved me losing hours of work on a large puzzle with hundreds of pieces.

It would NOT be difficult to make the save-interval a configuration item (in seconds, with a default of about 5 seconds and 0 meaning "no saves until Palapeli quits normally"), but I have retired from KDE work and am no longer in a position to make that change.

Perhaps you yourself would like to have a go at making the change, if you feel that strongly about the matter.

Created attachment 135698 [details]
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1. My boot drive is an SSD, and the effect is the same. I can't understand
your computer not having a light for the drive, hard or soft. Even my
laptop and netbook have drive lights. SSDs also have failures which are
almost entirely based upon read/write cycles.
2. I am experienced enough with hardware to know that there are only so
many acts on any piece of hardware before it breaks. It's man-made, so it
WILL break! The only question is when and why.
3. I mentioned money because I believe in giving back to my community which
is primarily made up of geeks and supergeeks. I have been doing so for
years!
4. I am actually 68 years old which means I *was* programming when Albert
was barely out of high school!
5. In fact, I was repairing computer hardware in 1971! AN/APX-72
Transponders.
6. In order to rewrite the software, I'd have to learn a completely new
language, since my programming days were with Zilog Z80 and TMS9900
assembly code augmented with BASIC on both of those plus Extended BASIC on
the TI. I took an introductory course in 'Advanced Microprocessors' which
dealt with ASSM on the 80186 as a HeathZenith trainer, but after the
course, I barely used it. On the TI, I disassembled every line of the first
half (4K) of the OS by hand into a spiral bound notebook and made comments
on nearly every line.
7. I have tried numerous times to learn C, C+, C++, and/or C#, but it just
doesn't excite me any more. I've even spent some time learning the Arduino
and RasPi systems, but what I have managed so far is a sampling of Linux
BASH.
8. I have even written MS Word BASIC macros, but with the volatility of
Microshaft, they broke and required repairs every time I upgraded Winduhs
or MS Word, so I gave up on that, too.
9. My regular daytime jobs almost always involved repairs to electronics
hardware and I took a position repairing computers of all sorts in 1991
including Commodores, Ataris, TIs, and Apples on which I repaired
everything hardware or soft.
10. I am not current in disassemble/rewrite/reassemble, but I am
experienced.
11. If you know already where the tweak is, why didn't you fix it instead
of offering excuses and ignoring serious hardware destruction? RAM sticks
are far less expensive than hard or soft drives!
12. Having said all of that, I could fix it, but it would take me months
and I can't justify the time.

On Mon, Feb 15, 2021 at 12:48 AM Ian Wadham <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org>
wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=432909
>
> --- Comment #5 from Ian Wadham <iandw.au@gmail.com> ---
> Lee, if you are as experienced as you say you are, I am surprised that you
> did
> not check up on a few things before going off at half-cock.
>
> Firstly, Palapeli is part of the KDE Community software, which is all free
> and
> Open Source, so nobody is asking for your money. Should you enjoy any
> other KDE
> Community software, it is possible to contribute in a general way, to
> support
> general activities of its world-wide membership, such as conferences and
> travel.
>
> Secondly, I have had a look at the source code and I was wrong when I said
> the
> rate of saving of Palapeli games is every two seconds. It is actually
> twice per
> second! I must say I cannot observe that because it has been some years
> since I
> had a "hard disk" that rotates and even longer since I had one with a
> flashing
> light. My main disk is a solid-state drive.
>
> Thirdly, Albert is not an author or maintainer of Palapeli, but he is a
> very
> experienced software engineer in a pan-European software company, as well
> as
> being moderator of KDE Games and a KDE Release Manager. So it is
> disrespectful
> and uninformed of you to call him half-arsed and a producer of shit.
>
> Fourthly, it is a mistake to presume anybody's age or experience on the
> Internet when you cannot see them or meet them. You might be old enough to
> have
> been programming before Albert was born --- you would have to be at least
> sixty. However, you would have had to be an exact contemporary of Alan
> Turing
> to have started programming before I did. That would make you over 100
> years
> old now. I also resent your implication that I, along with Albert, am
> half-arsed and a writer of shit. I am proud of my programming work over the
> last 57 years and have had more than one world-class achievement to my
> credit.
>
> Despite that, I am not the author of the few lines of code (out of
> thousands in
> Palapeli) that give you offence. In fact I have many times been grateful
> that
> they exist and have saved me losing hours of work on a large puzzle with
> hundreds of pieces.
>
> It would NOT be difficult to make the save-interval a configuration item
> (in
> seconds, with a default of about 5 seconds and 0 meaning "no saves until
> Palapeli quits normally"), but I have retired from KDE work and am no
> longer in
> a position to make that change.
>
> Perhaps you yourself would like to have a go at making the change, if you
> feel
> that strongly about the matter.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You reported the bug.

So you are a hardware geek. Fine. I respect that.

C++ is only the first of several hurdles to conquer before you could make a change to Palapeli. Software development has become a lot more formal and controlled since the old days of PEEK and POKE and is based on vast amounts of shared software.

It sounds as though you have an SSD and an external rotating hard drive and you have your personal (login) files on the external drive. KDE Games and other apps (including Palapeli) save user files in a special directory in your login area. You might be able to work around your problem by moving that directory to your SSD and using a link or shortcut. Please email me privately if you wish to find out more, because Bugzilla is a bug-reporting database, not a forum.

I am 82 years old and fading fast, so am no longer developing or maintaining software. I work on an Apple MacBook Pro, so no flashing lights. On my previous MacBook I did months of development work on Palapeli for handling large puzzles (300-10,000 pieces). The graphics processor died but not the rotating hard drive... ;-)

On my current machine I ran a check and O/S processes generate much more disk activity than Palapeli. Who knows why... but I don't really care any more.

Created attachment 135766 [details]
attachment-15725-0.html

What I have exhibiting this symptom is one computer with 4 different Linux
installation bootups. Two are on an HDD being Linux Mint 19.3, and the
other two are on an SSD being another 19.3 and a 20.1 Mint. I have an older
laptop with 19.3 and sometimes pieces on it won't move at all for up to two
seconds with only 150 pieces so I don't play it on that one at all. I have
completely done away with Winduhs, unless I install XP or 7 as a virtual
machine. (There are only two old Winduhs programs I still like to use and
one will work under WINE.)
I leave files installed where Linux installs them except that I change the
locations of the personal folders for Documents, Pictures, Downloads,
Music, Videos, etc.
The issue of which I speak, read/write drive cycles, ONLY occurs when I am
MOVING pieces. For some reason, the software is ultimately buffering the
location of each individual piece on the drive where it should be using RAM.
PS. I have been playing at 200 pieces for awhile, and I do know, after many
years of computers, how it feels to lose tons of work because I have put
off backups. At any rate, I cannot imagine saving a game more often than
about 2 minutes or so.
At any rate, I am familiar enough with tweaking this and that from my days
of hacking/tweaking back in the days of DOS and now back into Linux that if
I only need to change a number or two in a .sh or a .conf file, I can do
that! If you told me in a DOS .com or .exe what byte, word, doubleword to
change, I could also do that and have done so even to the point of tweaking
to match a checksum or two.
I regularly tweak a few items in Linux with each new installation and one
of the items I add is the graphical dconf editor.
PS., In many instances, I actually prefer the CLI for tweaking since that
is where I started computing. I have written my own script using sudo
apt-get to install the 25 or so extra programs I always prefer.
All I need is a pointer for where to look and what to change. Maybe?

On Tue, Feb 16, 2021 at 7:07 PM Ian Wadham <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote:

> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=432909
>
> --- Comment #7 from Ian Wadham <iandw.au@gmail.com> ---
> So you are a hardware geek. Fine. I respect that.
>
> C++ is only the first of several hurdles to conquer before you could make a
> change to Palapeli. Software development has become a lot more formal and
> controlled since the old days of PEEK and POKE and is based on vast
> amounts of
> shared software.
>
> It sounds as though you have an SSD and an external rotating hard drive
> and you
> have your personal (login) files on the external drive. KDE Games and other
> apps (including Palapeli) save user files in a special directory in your
> login
> area. You might be able to work around your problem by moving that
> directory to
> your SSD and using a link or shortcut. Please email me privately if you
> wish to
> find out more, because Bugzilla is a bug-reporting database, not a forum.
>
> I am 82 years old and fading fast, so am no longer developing or
> maintaining
> software. I work on an Apple MacBook Pro, so no flashing lights. On my
> previous
> MacBook I did months of development work on Palapeli for handling large
> puzzles
> (300-10,000 pieces). The graphics processor died but not the rotating hard
> drive... ;-)
>
> On my current machine I ran a check and O/S processes generate much more
> disk
> activity than Palapeli. Who knows why... but I don't really care any more.
>
> --
> You are receiving this mail because:
> You reported the bug.