[conspire] (forw) Re: Linux install help? (For an old CoffeeNet regular?)

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 21:36:45 -0800, Rick Moen wrote:

> Quoting Daniel Gimpelevich (daniel at gimpelevich.san-francisco.ca.us):
> 
>> Unfortunately, the space saved by lightening the software load apparently
>> pales in comparison to the space saved by the non-allocation of certain
>> disk buffers when the bulk of the filesystem is a compressed iso9660
>> loopback device. It really makes a big usability difference on
>> less-equipped machines. 
> 
> Er, I was talking about actually _installing_ distros onto systems, not
> using live CDs on them.  You're certainly absolutely right that using a
> live CD on a low-RAM machine without utter necessity is a very bad idea.

Interestingly, that's almost the exact opposite of what I was trying to
say. Puppy, DSL, and other compact distros _install_ as a compressed
iso9660 loopback file, and otherwise run in a ramdisk. Although this ups
the RAM requirements of the machine from maybe 16MB to maybe 64MB, it
allows cramming much more stuff into the same machine without much
sacrifice. Firefox on DSL with 16MB RAM (without the cloop) was even
slower than Xubuntu with 128MB, and upping the RAM did not speed it up
that much, but with the cloop and 64MB, it was perfectly usable.