User Feedback :: Why do I still do regular HD installs of DSL?



It is a Compac Presario 1200 with 697 or so Mhz processor. Or, so it says when DSL boots at least.

-r
Sorry for my very newbish question, but what is a frugal install? Like what is the difference between frugal and ordinary harddrive install? What is better/worse about frugal? I currently have a harddrive install but if frugal is better i may switch. (only takes 5 minutes to hard drive install anyway)
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/damnsmall/current/pdfdocs/

read that, madcow.
I have but didnt get it the first time i read it. Read it again and now it makes sense :D . Should i delete my harddrive installation and do a frugal install? Which one is better? I will probally be using dsl as a server.
(I just read through an interesting thread on Frugal at Frugal Explanation).

With warmer weather here now, I haven't been playing with DSL very much lately, but this thread caught my eye because it asks a question that I've pondered in the past, so here goes...

Why have I always done regular hard drive installs of DSL?
Well, gee, isn't that the way every OS works?  :-)

All seriousness aside, the main reasons I became a DSL remastering "wiz" instead of doing Frugal installs primarily have to do with my concerns over the depth of Frugal's customizability.  How can I change things that reside deep within the bowels of the read-only compressed KNOPPIX image's directory tree and have those changes remain intact when Frugal is upgraded to a new DSL version?

For example:

A) One "annoyance" I've experienced with every version of DSL is that I always have to modify /usr/bin/pon to remove this patch of John's (line numbers included) so that running ppp to dial out to the Internet doesn't kill my ethernet connection:

 19  ## small add in by john to make it play nice with auto config
 20  /sbin/ifdown eth0 &>/dev/null &

I can't believe that I am the only user experiencing this problem, but I've never been able to find any mention of it in the DSL forums.  Can I substitute my own line-20-commented-out version of pon in Frugal installs and have it stick?

B) The next annoyance is that DSL never finds my serial mouse on bootup (a rather common issue brought up in the forums), so I always have to create a new /dev/mouse link that points to /dev/ttyS0.  Since this is done in /opt/bootlocal.sh, I'm guessing that persistent /opt solves this problem(?).  Same with configuring non-Plug-'n'-Pray ethernet cards using modprobe.

C) I've also added a custom script under /opt/ppp/ip-up.d called timesync which runs rdate to sync my system clock every time I dial the Internet.

D) Custom wallpaper and fluxbox menu modifications, like redirecting the shutdown and reboot commands to point to a script which plays a sound before executing those commands, all fall under /home/dsl, so persistent home probably takes care of this(?).

E) How about adding other computers on my LAN to /etc/hosts?

F) My understanding of .uci extensions is that they are compressed images of static files which are mounted under /opt/<appname>.  They are read-only and are not loaded into RAM, making them the best choice for DSL extensions.

G) When .dsl extensions are first loaded, though, either automatically on bootup or from the fluxbox menu, they are extracted onto the ramdisk, where they remain until DSL is rebooted.  This is done because some files need write access.  So .dsl extensions may not be a good choice if RAM is limited.

H) If an app I need doesn't exist as either a .uci or .dsl extension, can I download and install it with apt-get and have it still be functional after rebooting a Frugal setup or upgrading the KNOPPIX image?

I) What about Debian packages downloaded outside of apt-get?  As an example, one computer I had came with a built-in non-VESA-compliant Tseng Labs video adapter.  Neither the video drivers included with DSL nor the current version of XFree86 would work with it.  After scouring the Debian website, I discovered that I needed to install XFree86 version *3* along with xserver.w32 using the dpkg utility.  Granted, this was an unusual situation, but would anything like this have worked with a Frugal installation?

J) If I install the full gcc utilities, can I compile programs from source and have everything play well with Frugal?

K) What about Frugal with proprietary apps like Cedega, Crossover Office, Win4Lin, etc?


Granted, this may sound like a whole lot of questions about living with Frugal, but I'd like to get the dots between where I am now (regular HD installs) and where I'd like to be (Frugal installs) laid down close enough to each other so I follow the path without tripping over too many "gotchas" along the way.  This thread looked like a good opportunity to raise these issues.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.  :-)
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