Re: Three questions

[Shimpei Yamashita <shimpei@example.com>]

On Tue, Feb 06, 2001 at 07:52:49PM +0900, Jim Breen wrote:
> (b) 	Q: If I get a system with a 10Gb HDD, what is a good partitioning
> strategy? I want to have a usable Windows (probably 98) partition, and I
> expect I'd need to give it about 2G. What would be appropriate for the
> rest? If it's a 128Mb system, what is the optimal swap size?

The traditional answer for Linux used to be "however much memory you expect to
use, minus however much RAM you have" (which really doesn't answer the
question at all, but anyway...); but kernel 2.4 appears to want at least as
much swap as the physical RAM, and probably more, for optimal performance. See
<URL:http://kt.linuxcare.com/kernel-traffic/kt20010126_104.epl#2>. So, to
prepare yourself for the future, I'd go with at least 256MB of swap.

FWIW, I have 256MB of swap against 96MB of physical memory on a box running
2.2.16. I haven't really seen any performance degredation due to swap,
although I also haven't done any control testing on this.

Partitioning the rest of the disk is a matter of taste, especially for
personal workstations. I'd recommend partitioning away /var, though, to keep
the root partition from being filled up. A separate /home may be a good
idea, too, especially if you're thinking about installing other distributions
in the future.

> (c) I think I'll start with RH6.2, mainly because I am most used to RH's
> funny little ways, and it's the one most used at Monash. I don't really
> want to put in the J version unless it's the only way to get kterm, etc.
> working.

Given what I've heard about the RHx.yJ offerings in the past (all versions),
this is probably a wise idea. However, be forewarned that making a
non-Japanese-supporting Linux system support Japanese can be a royal pain
in the butt....

> 	Q: where is a good place to obtain the CDs of RH6.2 (non-J) around
> 	here?

Plathome, maybe? I saw a bunch of random old distro boxes being sold there
last time I was there.

Shimpei.

-- 
Shimpei Yamashita                               http://www.shimpei.org/