From: dingelde@igd.fhg.de (Dennis Dingeldein)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
Subject: Summary: Some Novice Questions
Date: 12 Nov 92 11:05:34 GMT

Hi!
Here is my summary to the bunch of questions I asked last week.
Those questions are not answered in the FAQ (yet).

The Questions were :

1) Would you state that Linux is good enough to buy a PC just to run
   Linux/X11 on it ?

2) Is a 15'' Monitor (1024x768ni, >80Hz) "good" enough to read the X11
   default fonts of X11 ? Or is 15'' a pain ?

3) Does Linux support Local Bus Architectures ?

4) There is a S3 X Server 0.0. Is it a good idea to buy a S3 card 
   or will this server work only with some (a few) S3 cards, but not with
   the most/all cards ? (the low speed of 0.0 would be no problem, I believe
   that will change in the next months)

5) Is it a good idea to use one singe efs-partition of lets say 200 MB
   for all the Linux stuff ? Are there disadvantages for this efs solution
   (efs=extended file system) compared to a set of "usual fs" partitions ?

6) I noticed that mkefs failed ("not enough memory") to make a 160MByte
   efs on a 486 with 4MB memory. Is there a work around (besides using
   another partition as swap partition...). 140MB worked well (as I 
   remember)

The following people sent me some interesting stuff:
	andre <andre@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
	Daniel Russell <russed@rpi.edu>
	Ceri Hopkins <C.A.Hopkins@computer-science.birmingham.ac.uk>
	Jan Nicolai Langfeldt <janl@ifi.uio.no>
	Matt Welsh <mdw@TC.Cornell.EDU>
	bboerner@igd.fhg.de (Brendan B. Boerner)
	Krishna Balasubramanian <balasub@cis.ohio-state.edu>
	Kolja Kaehler <kk@cs.tu-berlin.de>
	nobody@Kodak.COM (Brian K. Talley)
	johnsonm@stolaf.edu (Michael K Johnson)
	Fazal Majid <majid@inf.enst.fr>
	voeckler@ipc1.rrzn.uni-hannover.de (Jens-S. Voeckler)
	okir@monad.swb.de (Olaf Kirch)
Thanks to you!

Here are the "summarized" answers.

Q 1) Nearly all answers were like:
[andre@dcs.gla.ac.uk]: "That is what I did. My DOS partition is used only 
for games". As I noticed, many people bought a PC even if they don't like 
DOS or Windows to run Linux. The point of missing games was mentioned two
times. 

Q 2) [andre@dcs.gla.ac.uk]: "Well, I use a 15'' monitor and I like the
font size. I think it is quite similar to the size one gets in a
Sparcstation screen, but (in my Gateway monitor) not as sharp as the
Sun's." [russed@rpi.edu]: It works for me ... though it doesn't
compare to a Sun :-( it's definitely bearable."
[balasub@cis.ohio-state.edu]: " 15" is small for any windowing system
... If you find it adequate with windows then its fine with X too.
The fonts can always be chosen large enough."
Two germans (translated by me) gave opposite answers: 
[voeckler@rvs.uni-hannover.dbp.de] : "1024x768 on a 15'' will kill
your eyes. I am sitting in front of a Sun with 17'', and I use an
extra large font just to recognize something" (Jens, I don't share that
opinion about SUNs 17'') 
[okir@mathematik.th-darmstadt.de]: "I run X in 800x600 on 14'', my eyes
can't stand a higher resolution". 
But nearly all encouraged me to spend more money if I have it and buy
a 16'' or even larger. Ok, I haven't the money :-(

Q 3) [andre@dcs.gla.ac.uk]: "Probably it will not make any difference if
your video card etc. is in a local bus or not (except for the speed
improvement!)." [balasub@cis.ohio-state.edu]: "Local bus should be
transparent to the systems software." [johnsonm@stolaf.edu] : "Yes,
but most people suggest /not/ putting you hard drive on it, only 
your monitor, if you will be running a true multitasking system like
linux." [majid@inf.enst.fr]: "Some video and IDE cards are supported,
not all" .

Q 4) There were few responses to this question. S3 is not used by many
linuxers, I believe.
[balasub@cis.ohio-state.edu]: "Dont know how good S3 will be ...
Diamond S3'3 are not supported and may not be unless Diamond changes
their policy."  [nobody@Kodak.COM] (har har, what a login ;-)) : "This
support probably isn't far off, though."  [johnsonm@stolaf.edu] : "The
only one I know of which doesn't work is the Diamond Stealth." 

Q 5) The answers here were quite consistent, no one recomment a single
200MB+ partition for all the linux stuff... ok people, I will make 
a more sophisticated approach on my HD ;-)
[andre@dcs.gla.ac.uk]: "I think it is OK to do this. I myself have 3
partitions (one efs, efs wasn't stable enough when I started...) but a
single efs partition is probably good enough. But as efs will
eventually change to a more efficient implementation (the author said
this a long time ago) I would keep a (say) 40Mb minix partition for
root etc. and the rest as a efs, so that if any changes are needed it
is easy to mkefs again on the efs."  [russed@rpi.edu]: "I'd say no,
for a couple of reasons: 1) efs isn't that bug-free yet.  2) if you
have multiple partitions and decide to get another drive, it's easy to
just move the whole partition over instead of worrying about moving
specific directories.  Also, many partitions is better for flexibility
when you have multiple OSes (DOS, OS/2 and Linux)." 
[janl@ifi.uio.no]: 
"It is _never_ a good idea to have one single partition. If it gets
trashed you'll loose _all_ your files and restoring the system from
the bottom up is not too easy. It's recomended to have at least two
partitions, one /usr partition where you keep the (rather large) /usr
subdirectories, and one root partition where you keep everything else
(i.e. just enough to boot the system and start restoring it). If you
have space enough it's also recomended to have a separate /tmp
partition (and have /usr/tmp linked to it) because files are created
and deleted a lot there, thus a separate /tmp will reduce the
fragemtnation of your other partitions. And of course it's recomened
to have a swap partition...

This is what LXS on irc has to say about partitioning:
---
This is just a recomendation on how to partition the HD(s).  You
are welcome to do your own combinations or variations.
Usually you would want to keep a small partition just for the
root filesystem.  The root filesystems contains utilites that are
indispensable for the operation of the system.  Usually this
include the kernel, mount commands, fsck, etc.  You would like to
keep as many non indispensable utilites of the root partition,

include the kernel, mount commands, fsck, etc.  You would like to
keep as many non indispensable utilites of the root partition,
because you do not want to use the /root partition during normal
operation, to avoid the chances of failure or data corruption.
3-4MB are common /root partition sizes, but as with anything with
computers, more is better.
Most people also prefer using /swap partitions (as opposed to
swap files).  Swap partitions are usually faster than swap files.
Usually, the swap partition is 2x the size of your real RAM size.
So if you have 2MB RAM, a 4MB partition is recomended.  But you
should change that according to your preferences.  Also, even for
a 8MB RAM system, more than 8MB of swap are usually unnecessary.

After the root and the swap partitions, the next important
partition is the /usr partition. (See Linux partitions 1)
The /usr partition usually contains all the programs and
utilities need for normal (multiuser) operation of Linux.  You
will have to make this partition large enough so that all the
programs that you would like to run will fit in here.  A
recomended size would be 20-30MB.  Again, more is better.
Optionally, you would like to have a /home partition for user
files.  The idea behind the /home partition is that when you do
backups, you only really need to back up regularly the /home
partition since it contains the user files (the ones that most
likely will change regularly) While the /usr partition contains
mostly programs, will seldom be changing.  (No need to back up
that often)

Also, it is a good idea to have the /tmp and /usr/tmp directories
a different partiotion.  /tmp and /usr/tmp (often linked to
point to the same filesystem) are used to create temporary files.
This files are usually created and erased rapidly increasing file
fragmentation thus decreasing system performance.  By keeping
them isolated, by simply removing all files in that filesystems,
the file fragmentation will be fixed.
For TWO HD setups, it is usually a good idea to keep the swap
and/or tmp partitions in a different HD than the /usr and/or
/home partitions.  This will improve (SLIGHTLY) performance as
the HDs doesn't need to seek as much from going from, for
example, the /usr partition to the /swap partition.
----"
[kk@cs.tu-berlin.de]: "linux doesn't currently support partitions
>64mb (please correct me if I'm wrong!)  performance of the efs is
lower than the 'traditional' fs, but it's reliable (as far as I'm
concerned)"

Q 6) Only two responses here:
[andre@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk] : "I remember something about this. I am not
sure, but again if you start with a (small) minix partition you can
set up swap space and mkefs would go OK for an arbitrarily large
partition, as the problem is the amount of memory it needs to allocate
when creating a partition is proportional to the size of the
partition." [kk@cs.tu-berlin.de] : "uh ? that would be great ! If
you're sure you have a 140mb partition (which is completely
accessible) please tell me !" (Kolja, there are no hints up to now
that it would be *not* completely accessible) 


Dennis
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