The popular Linux distribution Ubuntu will enable TRIM support for SSDs by default in its upcoming Ubuntu 14.04 Long Term Support (LTS) release. For those unfamiliar with what TRIM is, it is a command the OS instructs to the drive to wipe invalid flash blocks when they are no longer needed.
At present, when the OS deletes a file, only the file allocation table is updated to flag the space formerly used by the file as “unused”. The problem here is that when this space is later overwritten, the SSD must first erase the blocks before it can write new data to them, which causes write performance to decrease. With TRIM support by the OS and drive, previously used empty space would no longer need to be erased before being written to.
The feature will also be included in Ubuntu touch, a mobile version of the operating system.
TRIM is already supported by the Linux kernel for most file systems for several years, but until now it has to be manually enabled but will work out of the box from version 14.04 LTS and onwards.
