>> From: Rick Hohensee <humbubba@raptor.cqi.com>
>> Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1998 16:40:11 -0500 (EST)
>> Subject: why umsdos?
>>
>> There have been a couple posts questioning the usefulness of umsdos.
>> If you already use Linux umsdos is pretty lame. There are some 200
million
>> PC users out there that don't already use Linux. Most of them have DOS
FAT
>> partitions of some flavor, and a umsdos distribution in most cases
doesn't
>> install, it merely unpacks. umsdos is an important bridge. The contest
>> between M$ and the rest of the world will hinge largely on how fast Linux
>> becomes easier to use, IMO. On the desktop anyway. This seems to be a
>> common view, although I have a very different take on what constitutes
>> user-friendly than the big distros do.
>>
>> That's why my cLIeNUX mini-distro is umsdos. umsdos allows the curious a
>> taste of excellence without re-partitioning. A small umsdos mini-distro
>> can be moved to an ext2 partition in minutes. Think of umsdos as an
>> install utility for a real Linux. And a crucial piece of Linux outreach.
>>
>> As Linux use continues to explode, get smug with the UDI types perhaps,
>> other unices perhaps, the press perhaps. Please do not get smug with
those
>> 200 million innocent victims.
>>
>> untfs wouldn't be bad either. Meanwhile, I wait eagerly for a umsdos boot
>> to work on my PS2 with 2.1.
>
>I don't like umsdos personally. Have you considered using a file on the
>msdos filesystem with an ext2 filesystem on it instead? I have a machine
>with its root filesystem mounted on /dev/loop0. A little playing with
>initrd makes this quite easy. This means you have no need for a untfs
>(and in my case, no need for a uadfs).
>
Ok let me see if I understand you correctly you want to replace UMSDOS,
which works rather transparently and well, with an ext2 filesystem image on
a FAT system? Quicky reasons against this:
1. Increases risk to wipeing out the Linux system exponentially as by
deletely one file accidently (the image file) on the DOS system would wipe
out the Linux system.
2. No speed improvement, most likely there would be a speed decrease.
file system request -> UMSDOS -> FATFS -> drive
vs.
file system request -> EXT2 -> loop device driver -> FATFS -> drive
3. No gain in feature except perhaps the cluster space problem on large
drives (Not applicable if UMSDOS now works on FAT32 as I have hear)
4. Much wasted space as the image would be a set size (and probably not at
100% usage) while UMSDOS stores the files as files on the FAT filesystem
resulting in the free space on the drive being share amoung both systems.
>--
>Matthew Wilcox <willy@bofh.ai>
>"I decry the current tendency to seek patents on algorithms. There are
>better ways to earn a living than to prevent other people from making use
of
>one's contributions to computer science." -- Donald E. Knuth, TAoCP vol 3
>
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