Thanks for this information. That's actually really helpful for me to know in my server administration dealings. I _hate_ disk IO and disk thrash. I was aware of kernel stuff but completed eluded me that I could modify it. I put it to 7200
Good point, but I was more talking about distros designed for a smooth day-to-day experience. A user would probably want something like SquashFS (to save space on the SD card) and ZRAM (to conserve RAM) since all their files would be living there.