iB::Topic::Why do I still do regular HD installs of DSL?

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Topic: Why do I still do regular HD installs of DSL?, learning and educating

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Trog Dog

Group: Members
Posts: 21
Joined: Feb. 2006

Posted: Jan. 14 2007,10:23

Quote (roberts @ Jan. 13 2007,11:50)

That's exactly what we do call it, "Traditional Debian HD Install" And that, my friend, is not the focus of DSL. It is supported, but not the focus.

You can read my design decisions for DSL here.

Everyone does hard drive installs, why would I want to do the same thing. When I was at the Linux World Show, I was told the following by one of the major vendors ... "every distro is just another re-hash collection of FOSS put togther, assembled, by you and everyone else, What makes you thing that you are any different".

Well, we are.. And I am still having fun doing it!

As far as documentation goes, we are not thousands, or hundreds, or even tens of developers. We have no commercial backing. But, what we do have is a great community, that actively helps support and contribute to DSL, by answering questions in the forums, creating mydsl extensions, and having very great discussions on technical areas of DSL.

The traditional HD install may not be the focus of DSL, but it does fill an important niche, and it will be a sad day when DSL fails to support it.

It is one of the few distros that supports old and marginal hardware because it is soo damn small.

I did try frugal once, only because of the push in these boards that "it's the best way", and it didn't work - ie. the software that I'd installed didn't remain after a reboot. I'd already carried out many traditional installs so I went back to that method.

I don't mean this as a criticism, but DSL works as a traditional HD install, and I've yet to find another distro that will do the same on the hardware that I run, and gives me the flexibility that DSL does.

roberts

Group: Members
Posts: 4983
Joined: Oct. 2003

Posted: Jan. 14 2007,13:06

I have no plans to drop Traditional Hard Drive Installations.
Fact is, in the last few releases, I have improved support for TDHI. See the change log for specifics.

Quote

I did try frugal once, only because of the push in these boards that "it's the best way", and it didn't work - ie. the software that I'd installed didn't remain after a reboot.

True, additional software need to be "packaged" into extensions for frugal/live CD, either as a .dsl, uci, or unc and of course stored on persistent storage. In fact the newest, unc style, really helps the less capable machines run these mydsl packages when .dsl are not possible. Because of unc type extensions, several of my low end machines and now able to run alsa, cups, and Xfree86, whereas before it was not possible.

DSL does not limit your choices in how you run your system. Fact is DSL keeps pushing the envelope limited only by your creativity in how you decide to use these tools. That is what makes DSL interesting. At least that is why I am still here developing core.

dwk

Group: Members
Posts: 8
Joined: Jan. 2007

Posted: Jan. 14 2007,14:11

Quote (roberts @ Jan. 13 2007,11:50)

Everyone does hard drive installs, why would I want to do the same thing. When I was at the Linux World Show, I was told the following by one of the major vendors ... "every distro is just another re-hash collection of FOSS put togther, assembled, by you and everyone else, What makes you thing that you are any different".

You have something great going here. Good. But my point was, perhaps the "install" boot menu should be edited to properly express Frugal as the "Recommended" option for installing to HD - otherwise people will just assume, as the word "frugal" suggests, that its not a full-featured install - or perhaps just an install for ultra low end systems. Maybe you would have read and memorised the docs first, but unfortunately >50% of humans don't have that much time or patience (I didn't have to read the docs to do a traditional install, why should frugal be different?). It would be a shame if a distro which, imho ought to be more popular than Ubuntu, remained unknown because the message wasn't shouted loudly enough.

mr sparks

Group: Members
Posts: 5
Joined: Feb. 2007

Posted: Feb. 07 2007,14:10

I 'm a Linux newbie ,still on CD ,
No vote made as " Have cd drive back was not a vote option! "

I would like the harddrive instal option :
a) So I can have my CD rom drive back
b) If it came with a speed gain
c) If it made my data a little safer during a power loss
d) If I did not fear smashing my memory stick into little pieces

I also love not having a harddrive gathering bits of dross,
not encoaraging programmers to let their software get so fat it chews my electricity bill

I currently Love the product as is ,
Small , Fast , Self cleaning , Auto saving

and not requiring a regular format to clear out other peoples bad habits
Patches/Updates/Mistakes ( using a ramdrive does all this.)

I did love DOS , and enjoy my hardware getting the task done
without being held to ransom .
apologies for outpouring

eeek

Group: Members
Posts: 11
Joined: Dec. 2006

Posted: Feb. 07 2007,16:51

First off, I appreciate all those who put so much effort into this without charging us users.

I was raised on Windows. The laptop I use is very slow (64 mb RAM, 366 mhz Celeron, 4gb hdd, etc). I basically don't have internet at home (dial-up doesn't count). The laptop itself doesn't have an internet connection, either.

Based on these limitations, I chose the regular HD install. I noticed the Frugal install option. But I didn't know what it was (the wiki doesn't exactly clear it up - earlier posts on this thread do, though) so I didn't choose it. I answered 5-6 questions, and 5 minutes later, I had DSL installed on my hard drive and running. When a quick and easy solution is found, that's the one I'll go with first. If I could figure out how to install myDSL stuff without an internet connection, I'd probably never change the installation.

Without going into it, I'd probably side with most of dwk's comments (but I think I have considerably less experience).

To summarize, I chose the HD install because it was the easiest solution for me, based on my limitations.

I have really enjoyed learning DSL and appreciate the help this forum provides.

92 replies since May 16 2005,16:25

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