One of the first things I did when logging into my account on the
Soviet was to run `quota -v` (some whitespace trimmed to be polite
to gopher clients):
Disk quotas for user luna (uid 2052):
Filesystem KBytes quota limit grace files quota limit grace
/home 8054 125000 150000 791 12500 15000
This is after moving some dotfiles to this machine, mostly vim
configuration and plugins. This is the Basic Disk Quota every
sundog has, and it is quite small compared to the comparably
infinite amount of storage I have locally. I was aware of this
quota when I requested an account, so I'm not surprised by it, and
I can't see it being a problem (though I am surprised that my
editor files use that much space, but more on that shortly).
Indeed, it is infinitely more than the storage of the first
computer I owned (a Commodore 64, with no fixed storage) and more
than twice the storage of my first computer with fixed storage (a
Zenith 386SX with 40 megabytes). Using that 386, I was so conscious
of the space used by every file I worked with. Those forty
megabytes were all I had, and this was the family computer. I
shared them with the operating system, with everyone in my family.
In a sense, these computers were the first timesharing systems I
used--though it was more spacesharing than timesharing, of course.
I learned to be fastidious, parsimonious even, with disk space.
This perspective slowly faded from my awareness as disk sizes grew
beyond comprehension. Growing up in the suburbs, though, my area
did not receive broadband service until after I had graduated high
school. At that point, disks had grown to the point that I could
reasonably store just about anything I wanted without worrying
about space, but downloading things still took so long. I was
careful not to delete things, because I had the space but
redownloading was a painful experience that sometimes took weeks
(I remember using download managers on Windows before switching to
Linux and FreeBSD and discovering the genius of tools like rsync).
Today, my home systems are much more powerful, with more storage
than I genuinely know what to do with, and a ridiculously fast
connection. Without even thinking about the storage requirements,
I copied my editor configs to the Soviet and was quite surprised
to see my vim plugins use 6 MB. Editor features are important,
certainly, on a system that focuses on text-based tools, but
that's still a significant percentage of my quota. Yet even so, I
do not think there will be a problem. Using one hundred megabytes
of mostly plain text will take quite a while, and I imagine I can
move some files off of the Soviet if I start to reach my quota. I
am also using nvi to write this instead of vim; perhaps I can be
comfortable without all of the powerful features of my vim
plugins. nvi is certainly sufficient for writing gopher documents.
I am thinking about disk usage again for the first time in many
years, and I find that being mindful about resources is fitting
with the philosophy of slower-paced, small pubnixes. Every action
is deliberate, considered, from many angles that one simply ignores
in so much of every day life. I imagine that the original pioneers
of Unix had similar thoughts, and indeed reading contemporary FAQs
for Usenet groups supports this theory. Many of them recommend
users think before posting, for the extremely limited systems of
the time simply could not handle thoughtlessness. New systems with
their greater capacities are certainly more accessible, but there's
always a cost. I am eager to see how the Soviet--and my experience
with it--reflect that balance.
