User Feedback :: How do you run DSL ?



Just bought an old Dell Latitude laptop (for 50euros) and installed DSL on HD. No problems and it's fast as HE**!!  :D  I've been testing DSL on my work laptop with live cd for a year now. I bought this machine for home use, mainly internet browsing and DSL on HD is the way to go for me.

Stance
Helsinki, Finland
How come there's no toram in the selections above? I chose other. I load mine toram and just leave her running. I even delete the /boot folder for more space since you don't really need that in ram.
I do USB thumbdrive with backup/restore.....since my BIOS doesn't see it as a USB-HDD...but works great done the less....wish there was a larger repository of myDSL extensions to choose from, but one can't have everything I suppose  :D




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ggordon
Keep in mind that DSL has a very small number of available libraries and other support files.  Many packages you'd find for other much larger distros would be a huge task to build for DSL, which would need to include a ridiculous number of extra files, or require a huge number of dependencies (something that is contrary to the load-and-run behaviour that mydsl is so good at).  I'm not saying it can't be done, but it seems that many people who make mydsl packages, myself included, don't want to be bothered to create 30mb packages for 2mb applications, or have them depend on loading a series of other packges in sequence in order to run an application.  As a result, the selection of applications are mostly smaller ones, which do not have all the glitter or perhaps even the features of many applications you'd find in *.deb or *.rpm format.  Another result is unfortunately that some types of applications are not available, but i blame most of that on so many software developers who for some reason feel that their apps must use a pile of Qt libs or some other fat dependency.

There are several apps that I would have built into myDSL packages if it were not for the fact that their size exploded due to dependencies I'd consider unnecessary.  Until more developers build console apps that can use a variety of gui types (which will never happen), this might continue to be a problem for myDSL. In the meantime I have 2 other distros that i use when i want to run the fat apps.
Wow thread was long I have so many things I'd like to say, but by the I get to the end I forget most of them.

I just moved my desktop from a livecd persistant home to backup/restore.  I figure this works very well (untill I lose power when backing up or something...  oh well)  I suppose I'll go back to persistant home if I get to where my data is too big to comfertably wait on to compress.  I can always move my data out of /home too, just mount a partition and go.

DSL documentation is rather sparce.  I often find information, but not usually where its intuitive to find it.  Due to the name websearches are an excersize in futility. (What do you know.... yet another article about setting up PPPOE in Red Hat 9...) I think a concentrated effort to move information from the forums to the wiki might help things greatly, as well as an effort to more fully explain things which DSL guru's take for granted as common knowledge.  Trust me, you guys are ahead of the curve.  I'm no slouch myself but find myself sometimes feeling quite overwhelmed.  :O

While I understand the POV of the developers regarding hd installs, I have a different view.  While I fully embrace the developers vision off tiny ro systems with loadable extensions etc...  I also see the value in a robust hd installation system.  Sometimes its the better way.  I see no reason why one would poo-poo on the ability to install the worlds smallest debian system off of a tiny 50MB CD or USB key.  I myself would like to see a how-to describing the steps neccisary to convert DSL to Debian simply so I can install linux from my pocket, just to say I did.  I have a hard time accepting any reasoning against the added versitility that brings.  It sounds to me like people saying we shouldn't try to make red cars because they already come in black.  To bring it back OT(ish) I don't see anything abnormal about the amount of HDinstallers.  Not to mention HD reads faster then CD and your no longer dealing with compression (Not everybody can toram) and bottom feeders like myself with P1 16M atticware laptops and such.
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