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dsl is a versitile live linux cd, if you have 128 meg ram and a computer that boots from cd, just pop the cd in the drive and let it run.

You only need 128 megs RAM if you run with the dsl toram cheat code...I'm running my media box with 32 megs of RAM...
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Or choose install to hd

You will need to know to what drive and partition to install to.ie: hda1.
for a basic desktop
say no to multi users
say no to ext3 file sys.
Read and Follow the prompts carefully..
Say yes to boot loader and choose g for grub.. or l for lilo.
when the computer reboots it will ask for boot and root passwords. remember them for later.

Frugal is way better than standard harddrive install because if there turns out to be a corruption of the hard-drive, all you need to do is recopy the livedisk .
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you will need a swap partion to run dsl 2

No you don't.

Good try...and I'm sure you're coming from a good place, but getting linux noobs to format their harddrives, and do all this other stuff is just plain misguided.
sorry.. post removed
Yes. It is true.

I run dsl on a 32MB laptop with no hard drive using a 64MB CF/IDE frugal install with no swap with pcmcia wireless net access and print to an hp 4050 laser printer and backup to a pendrive and/or the web with the webdata tool. This could be running just from the cdrom, but it is too slow.

You do not need to do a traditional hard drive install. I don't even recommend it.

The benefits of frugal type installs has been discussed here so many times. A smaller footprint, bulletproof OS that is easily upgraded.

Of course with 32MB of ram you are very limited in additional apps (mydsl extensions)  that can be run. You are mostly forced to use very small .tar.gz or uci type apps. Of course you cannot run firefox and the larger apps. You can run Opera. Trying to load .dsl type apps witll quickly overwhem the machine's inodes and appear to be out of memory.

Installing to hard drive is so overly complicated for the new user and them come the gripes about upgrades and removal of extensions.. Doing such a traditional hard drive install means you should be using Debian for package management. With that small of machine most debian fetched applications will also quickly overwhelm its resources caused by  the dictates of its dependencies.

We give you the choice. You can always choose to do as you wish. Your choice or requirements of extra apps may leave you no other choice.  But I still do not recommend it. It just means grief later when you want to upgrade. I hear it all the time.

Roberts:
I may be way off base here, and please set me straight if I am.  I tried a frugal install but then could not get my boot options set so I had to type them in each time I booted.  I was given information about how to change menu.lst, but try as I might I could not make any changes.  In desperation I went to a hd install and then it was easy to go set my options in menu.lst.  

My point being, with the frugal install you are very limited to the files that you can change due to everything running in ram.  

Time for an old man's memories:  Back in 1981 I began teaching at Texas A&M Extension Service.  We had no computers so we built two Heathkits.  I had heard about UNIX but could no afford the software much less a computer to run it on.  No, in 2006, I can install a FREE copy of dsl on my old Armada 1750 laptop and do anything I ever wanted to do.  Thanks for dsl and keep up the development work.

I am putting in my bid for a striped down version with the option being of downloading the extensions I might want.  I have discovered that the little word processor, spreadsheet program, etc. that comes with dsl is fine for most of what I am doing.  I hope to populate my classroom computers with dsl. (Yes, I am still teaching!)
--Ted
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