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Topic: Frugal CF installation, Does speed matter?

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libretto

Group: Members
Posts: 336
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: July 13 2005,08:26

Hello,

I'm looking to put a Frugal install on a CF card inside a laptop using a 2.5" cf-ide adapter (the old hdd is quite noisy).

I have a few questions:

Does the speed of the compact flash (CF) card greatly affect how well DSL would run? i.e. is it worth the extra expense getting a type II 40x speed CF card?

Can I partition a CF like a HDD, before installing frugal (eg hda1,hda2)?

Is it alright to mix .dsl and .uci extensions? I'm looking to run cups and openoffice so that I can type reports, browse the web etc...

Comments welcome.

--------------
Small Radio, Small Laptop, DSL Linux

b1ackmai1er Offline

Group: Members
Posts: 115
Joined: June 2005

Posted: July 13 2005,19:17

Yes you can format you CF card into partitions the same way as with HD's

Use the included cfdisk program and then setup a filesytem on each partition. Don't forget to set a partition as boot.

Thats how i setup my frugal install

regards b1m1

dslfool

Group: Members
Posts: 105
Joined: April 2004

Posted: July 13 2005,22:18

I've been running DSL 1.1 from an older (i.e., slower) 256MB CF card on a Toshiba Portege w/ 600MHz PIII and 320MB RAM. Frugal mode from the card didn't originally seem too slow for me, but then I set DSL to run in "toram" mode and now (after a minute or so to load) it flies.

I load .DSLs, including OpenOffice, as I need them and don't load many at a time (e.g., not GIMP 2.2 and OO at the same time), nor do I run more than one OO component at a time, so my 320MB of RAM has been sufficient. Since I have only the CF card I don't have a swap file, however, so running out of RAM is a potential problem.

If you have the RAM, "toram" definitely offers a speed boost for slower hardware.

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Toshiba Portege 7200CTe notebook, 600MHz PIII, 8GB CF as HD, 320MB RAM
DSL 4.2.5 (frugal toram)
...and the picture is of Fuad Ramses from the film "Blood Feast".

libretto

Group: Members
Posts: 336
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: July 13 2005,22:44

Thanks for the info, after asking some people in the forums, I have settled on getting a Kingston 512MB TypeI CF card. The target laptop is an IBM 240 (celeron 300MHz) with 192MB ram. I will have to watch the RAM usuage.

dslfool, you said you were running OO (or parts of), how do you keep the settings so that you dont have to resetup say oowriter everytime you load it?