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[jboeke]

Could someone (moocapiean) describe the pros and cons of using the compressed files method and the disk image method of installing Ubuntu?

The disk image method obviously takes up more space, but beyond that are there any performance differences?

What else am I missing?

Thanks for all your wonderful work!

[moocapiean]

Here are the comparisons I can think of:

Compressed files lets you specify the filesystem.  Want to use a Windows-readable filesystem or JFFS2?  You'll have to use compressed files.

Compressed files already has most of the files copied off of the XO so that part of the instructions is shorter.

The download and decompress times are about the same, but compressed files is a bit smaller.

The partitioning in the compressed files has a few advantages and disadvantages:
+ You have more control over the partition size for the Ubuntu installation.
+ If you already have it partitioned, you can skip that step (and save anything on other partitions, with the image approach, you lose everything on the drive)
+ You don't need a 1.5 GB or larger drive
- Using fdisk to partition your drive can be scary.

Compressed files requires only a download location and the USB/SD drive.  The image approach requires an additional decompress location that's at least 1.5 GB.

If you want to emulate the system before writing it to a drive, you'll have to go with the image.


Well, I think that's everything I could think of.

[jboeke]

Very useful info.  Thank you!

I first tried the disk image version and I started the download and decompression with my Thinkpad running Ubuntu. When playing with partitions, I ended up somehow breaking the Thinkpad and had to reinstall.  Happily, I had just gotten it and didn't have anything vital on it! 

I've really been jumping in head first into linux lately and I am learning a lot while I break stuff, too.  Good fun!  Thanks for all the support!

[Torokun]

Whoa... 

I know this is sort of a redundant request...  but do you think you canrepeat what you explained in a layman's term please/? 

If you do, I will make a comparison chart and  post it up.

[Datalore]

I think this is simplified terms of what moocapiean said:

Compressed files lets you specify the format.  Want to use a Windows-readable format for the USB Drive or a linux format?  You'll have to use compressed files.

Compressed files already has most of the files copied off of the XO so that part of the instructions is shorter.

The download and decompress times are about the same, but compressed files is a bit smaller.

The partitioning in the compressed files has a few advantages and disadvantages:
+ You have more control over the size of the sections of your USB/SD drive for the Ubuntu installation.
+ If you already have it made into sections, you can skip that step (and save anything on other sections, with the image approach, you lose everything on the drive)
+ You don't need a 1.5 GB or larger drive
- Using fdisk to make your drive into sections your drive can be scary.

Compressed files requires only a linux computer and the USB/SD drive.  The image approach requires an additional USB/SD drive that's at least 1.5 GB.

If you want to preview your linux installation before writing it to a drive, you'll have to go with the image.

Sorry if I didn't change too much / its still complicated >_>

[moocapiean]

That sounds good to me.

[JoeMac]

I can't speak with  experience regarding the image method but I found the compressed files method to be very straightforward and well thought out. I chose it primarily because there were fewer steps involved for someone like me (a complete Linux noobie) and because it the instructions work very well for people that have a computer in addition to the XO that can boot a nice, friendly GUI on top of Linux. 

I was fortunate enough to be running VMware Fusion on a MacBook Pro.  There are different VMware software packages that allow virtual machines to run more or less natively on different platforms (Fusion is for Intel Macs - other VMware versions are available for Win-tel and Linux boxes).  A few months ago I had downloaded a pre-packaged virtual machine that was a complete, functional Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon/Gnome install on the MacBook and play around with.  VMware has a number of different virtual machines that you can just download and open up (Suse, Redhat, FreeBSD, etc.).  I had it up and running well in Fusion in about 15 - 20 minutes.  I knew that I could hose the whole installation and still bring it back from the original download in a few minutes, so I didn't mind mucking around as root.  Fusion also lets you take "snapshots" of the virtual machine, so when if I did do something stupid, I could always get back to something that worked by shutting the virtual machine down and reverting to the saved image.  Being very new to Linux, I found that I had a much easier time partitioning and formatting the drive using GParted within a nice GUI like Gnome than I would have had doing it from a terminal in Sugar (I am in total awe of you guys that did all of this from a command line on the XO...).

Even when I opened a terminal in Gnome for doing some of moocapiean's steps like mounting the SD card, untarring the compressed files and renaming the card OLPCRoot, I had his instructions open in Firefox at the same time, highlighted his exact text, and dragged the text right over into the terminal window open in Gnome so that I could cut down on typo errors since probably more than half the time I had no clue what some of the commands and flags were for.  I could also look right into GParted and see the filesystem and the boot flag and know things were happy.  It was also easy to mount and unmount the card (typically just a right click in GParted or from the desktop).

Once I had an SD card that the XO was happy with, the compressed files method went very quickly and relatively painlessly.  Best of all, it turned my XO into something that I could really use and I could set it up to dual-boot Sugar so my 8-year old can still boot up the XO more or less like he always has since I took it out of the original cardboard box.  I set up olpc.fth on my SD card to default to Sugar on the internal flash unless a gamekey is pressed at boot, so my 8 year-old doesn't know or care that the SD is there.  By the way, the XO's Sugar GUI must be targetted pretty closely to the 7-11 year old set.  My son love's playing around in it.  He picked up the GUI more intuitively than I did, he was doing some simple object oriented programming within days of it being delivered, and that is why I left the internal nand flash drive completely alone other than loading the developer key.

So my noobie vote is for compressed files even if you have plenty of drive space on a second computer (my situation). 

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