Bob George wrote: > > SWAP: The recommendation I've seen (and use) for size of > the swap space is 2 X RAM.
I'm with Bob on this on. A system with 8meg RAM should have 16meg swap (maybe 24). However, for systems with a very small HD, there is a trade-off. With 8meg RAM and only a 40meg HD, you probably can't afford to sacrifice 16meg to swap -- I'd use 8meg swap in this case. > LINUX FILESYSTEM: You COULD put everything else on one large > Linux (ext2) partition. I think this is best for single-user systems. > If you have a lot of space on a drive and just want to > keep things simple, this works fine. On the contrary, it's when you have very little space on the drive that one large Linux partition is needed. > The problem is when you fill up various parts of the filesystem, > odd and unwonderful things begin happening. Filling up root (/), > in particular, is a bad idea. Indeed. And the chances of filling a partition are higher when you have multiple partitions. With just one partition, all the free space is available to any of the directories. So, if any directory swells unexpectedly, it has access to all the space available. However, if you have pre-assigned space to /var, and pre-assigned space to /tmp, and pre-assigned space to /usr, then any free space in those directories will be unavailable to the root filesystem. So root can be filled to the bursting point while multi-megabytes are sitting empty on the other partitions. Systems with small harddrives can not afford to have slack space sitting unused in extra partitions. Moreover, the very act of laying down extra partitions eats up HD space. > Yeah, that's why I'd STRONGLY suggest reading up on the hardware > you're considering BEFORE undertaking a Linux install. Some CAN > work with some effort, and some simply WON'T. And this is why I encourage people to start with the CLI. The Linux CLI is *much* less fussy about hardware than the GUI. Once a user has developed some CLI skills, he is better able to weather the trials-and-tribulations of GUI installation. > If there's an active Linux User's Group (LUG) in your area, > do the advanced users there tend to lean to one distribution > or another? Does your favorite nephew who's a Linux bithead > have a preference? This is very good advice. Local support is invaluable. Go with the flow and use what your support base uses. Cheers, Steven To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
