Partitions and frugal vs. full installation

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Partitions and frugal vs. full installation
started by: jhsu

Posted by jhsu on April 02 2007,17:54

What is the difference between the frugal and full installation? What does the frugal installation exclude that the full installation includes?

Also, what partitions do I need? (This will be a single-boot, not a dual-boot, and it will be a fresh install.) I understand that there are several necessary partitions. One is the swap partition, which I understand must be type 0x82. Since I have 256 MB of RAM, I'm allocating 512 MB to it. From what I've read, I can make this a primary or logical partition. Under what circumstances should this be a primary partition, and under what circumstances should this be a logical partition? I understand that the swap partition can be anywhere on the disk but certain locations are more optimal (for speed) than others.

I understand that another partition I need is a boot partition. I understand that all boot partitions must be within the first 1024 sectors of the hard drive and a primary partition. I understand that for Linux, the type must be 0x83. But what size should a boot partition be? Is it supposed to occupy the rest of the hard drive?

Do I need additional partitions? If so, where should they be located, should they be primary or logical, and what size should they be?

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on April 02 2007,19:03

See wiki/docs, or even other forum posts for more info.

This might help you get started if you don't have a DSL yet (its the first popup, in dillo): < http://damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Local_Startup_Documentation >

As to most of your questions, its really a matter of preference.
Typically using the 'ends' of a typical hard disk yields slightly better speeds, though it's pretty much negligible to the end user.
You also really only need 1 primary partition to boot from.

Posted by curaga on April 03 2007,09:33

The difference is that frugal kinda emulates the livecd, the filesystem is readonly and packed (the ~50mb KNOPPIX file) and in full harddrive install everything is unpacked, writable and takes about 200 mb of space. Hd install is a little faster, because of no need to unpack, but it isn't as easily upgradable as frugal.