[someone who knows more than me, may want add there their story]
Yes, as far as I know "slices" can be both primary (dos incompatibile) or
be "fit" into a dos partition.
The first case is when you install *BSD standalone (ie as the only
OS on given computer).
Maybe it is possible to install Linux on top of bds-style paritions on an
PC, I just hadn't tried it. This or other way, it obviously will break if
you will want put Dos/Windows there as well, or anything for that matter
what does not know about bsd-partitions.
If you install Linux, (at least nowdays) you will go with dos-style
primary partitions which are limited to 3 (4 if no extended parition). It
is obviously too little for bsd which wants /,swap,/usr,/var,/home .. and you
want Linux along of it.
Yes, dos-style partitions are lame, but they are popular, so I think we
should try to use them to their best. And being Linux able to fit as many
sub-partitions of type we want on each parition certainly help here.
Someone else mentioned here Minix sub-partitions. I would suspect that
Solaris x86 has an similar approach fitting all its stuff into a
dos primary partition. Then there comes Mac stuff, about which I know nothing.
Raw disks.
What I'm trying to do is try to make Linux as flexible as possible.
After all large part of success was that it was taking what's best
and was embracing and extending it. It would not fuss like BSD that it is
non-unix and "not want it".
Comments? Suggestions? Corrections? Additions?
Adam
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