HD Install :: Why Do an HD install ?



all right, it's been bugging me all week now, i'm curious, what is it with HD-install people ? is it really not enough ram? or is there something psychologically 'safe' about placing something permanantly on HD  ???
or maybe it's about shaving a few seconds off the boot process?
It is a known phenomenon that software versioning has a cancerous effect on all major operating systems. DSL has
has unique way of circumventing this. And yet.. (o.k I give up).

Government Health Warning:
Installing DSL to HD ;
makes you vulnerable to lung cancer, blindness, heart disease, harms unborn babies, is toxic, clogs your arteries,
can kill, and can harm others.
Yeah, I don't get it either. The only good reason I can think of (well, two) is for those who are doing developement specifically for DSL, and for those few cases where a Frugal just won't boot, and you don't have a floppy or CDROM drive that you can boot from.
The main advantage as far as I can see is for the users whose

RAM needs vs. RAM installed don't match up.

In their situation, a full HD install is better.
Just too many negatives for me. But it is the prevailing mindset.
It is the way, your father did it. It is the way the monopolist does it.

I see suggestions to do this for low ram systems, but then as soon as the user tries to add other software, then run into trouble anyway. Typically run of of room for the addtional apps that they are trying to add. Or they can't resist the temptation of using myDSL extensions which are not made for traditional hard drive installs. Or then they wish to do an 'upgrade'.

The 'gnu generation' needs to come to DSL's 'gnu way' of using an OS.  :D
I prefer to use a hard-disk install because I'm running DSL on a Gateway Connected Touchpad internet appliance (vintage 2001.)  It has a 400 MHz Transmeta Crusoe processor and I've upgraded the memory to a whopping 256 megabytes of PC100 DRAM.  It runs from a 1 gigabyte compact flash card.  I'm using this device for its touchscreen capability in my media room where its main requirements are: 1) wireless [thanks DSL for Atheros support!] 2) browsing [thanks DSL for Firefox!] and 3) Javascript [thanks DSL for the Java package!]

Once the configuration is working, I'd like to keep it fixed :cool: and static,  so I prefer the hard-disk install, where I can tweak to my heart's content while still maintaining the small footprint of DSL.  

Or can someone suggest a ??? better way?
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