Pros and Cons of Full Hard Drive Install

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Pros and Cons of Full Hard Drive Install
started by: newOldUser

Posted by newOldUser on April 14 2006,12:32

I've noticed a lot of new users on this board and it seems that many of them are installing DSL as a full hard drive install.

I did the same thing when I first started to use DSL. The Live CD was neat and it got me looking at DSL but I didn't understand how to save files and the cd drive on that older machine was real slooooow. So I did a hard drive install. It worked OK but DSL really isn't meant to be your fathers OS. It's different. A lot of the add-ons are expecting things to be setup like a Live CD or frugal install.

The developers of DSL are so good and fast that they're moved way ahead of the documentation of DSL. You can learn more about the different kinds of installs by searching this forum or looking at the www.knoppix.com site (knoppix is sort of the grand daddy of DSL). If someone would like to write up a short newbie explanation of all the install options I know I'd like to see it. If there already is one, please post a link.

Here's my suggestion to newbies... Try a frugal install before you do a full hard drive install. If you have the space make persistent home and opt directories and I think you'll find you have everything you wanted in a full hard drive install but with less hassle when it comes to updates down the road. If it isn't what you like then you can always do the hard drive install and wipe it out.

I've opened this topic so that other users on this board (not me) can chime in with their opinons.

I think a good starting point is to take a little read of < the History of DSL >

Good luck.

Posted by mikshaw on April 14 2006,12:38

Didn't you post in the "Why do I still do regular HD installs of DSL" thread? I think that basically covers, in a slightly slanted way, many of the differences between frugal and the old-fashioned way.

Posted by newOldUser on April 14 2006,23:50

why yes I did, back in May 2005... Neat thread < Here Is The Link >

Posted by roberts on April 15 2006,00:50

The typical mindset is to install to hard drive.
How many users have heard of or been exposed to the various DSL ways?
All of my efforts have been to extend the concept of being more than just another liveCD. To explore the possibilites of running compressed images, be it the OS, or mountable extensions. I find this far more interesting than just another liveCD or another typical hard drive installation.

Posted by desnotes on April 15 2006,02:40

I agree with roberts. There are many ways to utilize a DSL frugal-type install and I think it has the potential to be ground-breaking. Using the frugal install can make updates easier and can make it difficult, if not impossible, for a virus to get a foot hold in the OS.

My current focus is the embedded version because I think it could become a great tool for people to carry around not only their important data but their own personal configured desktop. I also think it would be a great tool for conferences.

As an example, how many of us have been to a meeting where someone attempted to patch their own laptop (with their presentation) into a projector only to mess with it for hours and finally give up. Popping in an embedded DSL USB with the presentation app and data would boot within a minute and run with no problems.

This is just one example...I know ther are many more.

desNotes

Posted by clivesay on April 15 2006,12:44

Over a year ago I decided to carry the torch for 'Frugal Awareness' in the forums, including polls, pdf howto's etc.... Personally, I have NEVER ran DSL as a hard drive installed distro and I run DSL or remasters of DSL as everyday desktop, servers, etc with multiple users for things like ftp and such. I refurbish old computers with as little as 32mb ram running a custom OS based on DSL with no issues either.

I would be willing to expand my PDF Howto to help people get a better understanding of frugal and it's benefits to help Robert and John educate the userbase. Post suggestions in the 'Why Do I Still Do Regular HD Installs' thread or PM me your questions/suggestions and I'll work more on the PDF howto. Please make sure you have READ the document before making suggestions.

Chris

Posted by urwatuis on April 15 2006,18:01

I want to run DSL on my old laptop (IBM 300MHz PII) and if I run the live CD then the 1 cd rom drive on the computer is occupied. So I want to do a hard drive install. Will frugal install give me all the applications and flexability I need? Basicly that means word processor, spreadsheet, jpg's, mp3's, pdf's....ect. Advice or comments please.

Thanks....Mike

Posted by mikshaw on April 15 2006,19:47

Frugal gives you what the liveCD gives you, with some minor differences. Whatever apps can be loaded in a liveCD can be loaded into frugal. It runs from the harddrive, which means it loads applications faster and doesn't need to be copied into ram to allow access to the cd drive. It also typically uses a different bootloader, which gives you a little more flexibility.

Posted by pr0f3550r on April 16 2006,10:17

Nobody feels like defending hd installs, so I'll do it.

It's nice to have an option to install a minimal Debian-like system.

Even the Debian base system is bigger than 50 MB and it's quite unusable and you need tons of network bandwidth tpo complete the install. Debian developers are big brains but they mostly work at Universities, they don't pay for bandwidth.

Some years ago I installed an usable Debian system from the Knoppix installer and I had better results than the standard Debian disk (it was Potato, then), not to mention Ubuntu, I have been trying to boot the installation disk since last November...

Posted by clivesay on April 16 2006,11:41

No need to defend HD installs. We just want to educate people on what truly makes DSL a unique distro. You can get a small debian install....from debian. Using DSL as Debian will get many people in trouble unless they really understand what they are doing with apt and lib deps and such.

No harm in doing them if that's what you're comfortable with

. Some of us, including roberts, would just like people to think out of the box a little and see what you can do. Remember, you can't take your HD install with you. Once you understand frugal and mydsl, you can have the EXACT SAME system on your HD, USB stick and CDrom AND you can update all three types of installs in a matter of minutes by unpacking the iso and copying a couple of files and folders.

Why wouldn't we want to shout something like this from the mountaintops :cool:

Posted by outofnicks on April 17 2006,08:36

I'm running DSL in Qemu on Ubuntu, and I did a HD install because I figured it would be faster than the live CD, and also wanted to keep the CD drive open for other purposes.
Then I discovered I can run it from an ISO image on the hard drive, so that freed the CD drive. But I couldn't figure out how to have a writable disk for adding programs and files to the ISO image, so I did the HD iinstall.
I'm a newbie just geeking around, still learning basic Linux stuff and having lots of fun. Quite thrilled to be able to zip back and forth between multiple systems without rebooting, and have something like Qemu to make experimenting so easy and fun.
I'll certainly look into the frugal install deal (embedded in Qemu), and hope that it's better than what I'm doing now.

Posted by Pea Soup on April 17 2006,11:54

Hey everyone

I've been using DSL for a while, but I'm new to these forums.

Anyway, I've managed to do a GRUB frugal install from my USB stick onto my old 233MHz laptop, and it works perfectly....except for one annoying thing.

Whenever I suspend the laptop (by closing the lid, for example), it fires back an "Input/Output" error as soon as it wakes up. The title bars and the on-screen statistics disappear too.

Did I do something wrong?

P.Soup.

P.S. You have every right to RTFM me if I posted in the wrong place

Posted by doobit on April 17 2006,15:11

You posted in the wrong place... :;):

There is a forum for USB installs. However, to help answer your question, the problem could have something to do with the power management of the laptop. (I'm guessing a little here, but anyway, that's where your problem starts) Try booting with the bootline commands dsl apm=off noapm. I'm not exactly sure, with USB installs, what happens to the information in memory when you suspend. I would think it would just stay there. I have not had this problem with my laptop, or my mini-itx box. They both come back cleanly into the previous state after suspending. I have set noapm on them and I also use the toram option so the entire OS is in RAM. Maybe you should also try that?

Posted by Pea Soup on April 17 2006,16:00

Sorry about the wrong posting place. N00b's fault : laugh :

I'll try the noapm boot option.

The only thing is, my laptop has only 64M of RAM on it, so I can't toram DSL. :angry:

Meh.

P.Soup.