🚀 go-pugleaf

bywateri@ee.cit.ac.nz (Richard Bywater) writes:

> I just recently installed Linux onto my Pentium from the August 1995
> Slackware CD from InfoMagic.  Everything went alright (using a UMSDOS
> installation) until I happened to look how much hard disk space I had
> left.  Before the install I had 1Gb left but have, I only had 580Mb
> left!
>
> So I set about looking to see what was going on.  What I figured out
> was that although DOS was reporting that Linux was only taking up
> 120Mb, it didn't seem to appear that way with the disk space free.  I
> then deleted the installation and, yes, the free space went back up.

> Anyway, does anyone know what is going on here?  I really want to install 
> Linux but not have to create a new partition.

>I have a Pentium, 16mb with a Conner 1.2Gb hard disk...Any ideas?


What did you expect?

You're installing linux on a crappy FAT filesystem.  FAT is totally
inadequate for large modern disks - unless you partition the disk to
have numerous tiny partitions, any file (even if it's only 1 byte in
size) will take up 8k, 16k, or 32k of disk space.  This is true in DOS,
and it's true in linux, and it's true in any OS which can use the FAT
fs.

FAT's fine for floppies and 20 or 30MB disks (how many of those do you
see these days?).  It's NOT fine for anything bigger than that.

UMSDOS is OK to have a preview look at linux but is not, IMO, good
enough for serious use.  Too much disk space wasted, and you're slowing
down linux by forcing it to use a crappy, obsolete, dos file system.

Repartition your disk (look for FIPS which *may* be able to repartition
your drive without loss of data if you de-fragment the drive first) to
have: 1 FAT partition for dos, 1 swap partition for linux (there are
ways to share this swap partition with windows if you want to) and 1
e2fs linux partition.

rule of thumb: swap partition should be at least twice the size of
your real memory.  If you've got two physical drives, put the swap
partition on a different drive - this helps to avoid disk thrashing
while swapping...this trick works for windoze too.

linux needs between 10-50mb + swap for a basic (minimum usable) install
- don't expect to be able to do much though.  150mb + swap is enough for
just about everything including some room for your data files.

BTW, avoid slackware.  It's broken.  Use a decent distribution like
Debian or RedHat.

Craig