I'm a little confused about these choices.
The way I read the 'getting started' it would seem they suggest DSL be installed frugal (if at all*) and that the 'debian-style' install won't be as good or fast.
I would prefer not to leave a cd in but would be willing if it means superior speed AND space available AND is the overall best options AND so long as I can install apps like normal.
I plan to use DSL as my main on this laptop. I do plan to try and dual boot SlackWare because I wanna get back into learning linux and it's the only other one I feel this lappie can run well.
What does this dualboot mean for my DSL install? Should I just set it all up, change the boot order in bios to FDD>HDD>CDR and just leave the DSL cd in?
I have the space so can I copy the CD to the hdd but set 'toram' still?
I also haven't seen ANY note as to how much RAM I should have to run DSL 'toram'.

*cuz its designed as a live-cd

toshiba satellite pro 490xcdt
It doesn't sell for that much anymore

Great question. I too am curious what some experts have to say. I just started playing with DSL's "frugal" setup (though I have been using DSL for years) and it actually isn't that bad; but I wonder which way is better over the long haul on a low end laptop

I happen to be searching for various opinions as well -- and I have read the DSL Wiki, etc.

Here is a somewhat short but interesting blog post I found while googling (don't know the author and I am not connected to the site) that mentions this topic: http://aplawrence.com/Linux/damn_small_linux.html


Anyway, looking forward to responses to your question.

Cheers

Here's what I think I've figured out.
Frugal copies the disk to the hdd, but I can still set 'toram'.
Then I can copy/install everything to a usb drive/hdd/floppy and it will be there automatically everytime I restart. But if I do a frugal I cannot run some programs depending on how they were designed. Without the Debian install I may find that many programs that are not suited to be run with a live disc will be unavailable.
So if I plan to run DSL on this system all the time and I plan to install a bunch of things to it then my conclusion is the Debian install would be for me. I would use the frugal if I just wanted to add a few things.

Still, I wonder if there's a middle ground that makes use of copying the cd to a partition so I can run it 'toram' but still have the functionality of the Debian install.

I also noted somewhere I can set up ?certain distros? of linux to run remotely. I have a fairly quick machine lying around running XP as a print server, but I could probably set up linux to do that and then remote run from my DSL laptop. Has anyone seen a guide for this tho? I've been having trouble finding info on it, just finding people that suggest it or claim they do it.

thanks for the link 'linuxtester'

You could create a 64mb partition and do a frugal install there.

Then you could create a larger partition (they recommend at least 2gb) and do a full debian install there. I presume that you could save the mydsl folder and the backup.tar.gz file for your frugal install on the second partition. I believe you also need a third, swap partition (set at about 2 times your RAM) for the full Debian.

In your boot loader (I use grub) you'd have to create an option to boot from frugal and a second option to boot from the full Debian.

I have to ask though, if you're installing a full version of Debian anyway, why not forego using DSL and just install a full version of Debian? I do not see the benefit of using the "DSL" version of Debian when you could just use the regular Debian installer to do a minimal install on that second partition.

(Now, personally I only use the frugal install. The benefit being that if I ever screw something up royally, all I have to do it reboot without backing up and I get back to my previous state. I tend to screw things up royally with disturbing frequency. The other benefit is that I can always choose at boot-time to not load my settings and/or my MyDSL extensions, so I get the default DSL configuration. This is sometimes useful if the modifications I've made to my own setup are getting in the way of something I need to do with the computer. The third benefit is that when a new version of DSL comes out I simply replace the KNOPPIX file on my harddrive with the new one, and it doesn't make any changes to my saved settings.)