MX Linux Forum

Cool, I will try this, thanks for the video.

I know Pupy was using this frugal install, but since I don't quite understand the point of frugal install and since I saw in your video, that there are tons of different frugal install, which one do you recommend for beginner? Or which one would be most suitable for the most of the users?

Buck Fankers wrote:[...] but since I don't quite understand the point of frugal install and since I saw in your video, that there are tons of different frugal install, which one do you recommend for beginner? Or which one would be most suitable for the most of the users?

A frugal install goes onto an existing partition and can co-exist with other frugal installs, with installed Linux or installed Windows. The major benefit is you get to take advantage of the speed and size of an internal drive. A friend of mine who has been using an MX-live-usb as his main system for years, recently did a frugal install and now his live-remasters are literally ten times faster! This was because he didn't have any usb-3 ports. If you are starting out with a usb-3 live-usb in a usb-3 port then the speedup will be less dramatic. If you are starting with a live-dvd then prepare to have your mind blown.

For most users I recommend using frugal_static. For the sizes of the persistence files, with static persistence then 10 GiB each should be more than ample. If you use the Live-usb-storage/ directories (which don't even require persistence) for storing big things then 1 GiB home should be fine. The size of the root persistence depends on how much you want to be able to add to the system before you do a remaster. When you remaster, the root persistence gets combined into the compressed linuxfs file so the amount of root persistence used gets reset to close to zero.

Are you familiar with the "toram" option? It makes usb-2 live-usbs and live-dvds much much faster by copying everything to RAM. Think of a frugal install as a to-internal-drive option that makes things much faster by copying them to an internal drive. This has an added benefit that you only have to do the copy once. With toram you have to do the copy on every boot.

I use 32 GB usb-3 sticks for my live-usbs. This is plenty fast enough and plenty big enough for my modest needs. I did a frugal install to a partition on an internal ssd and it got faster, but maybe not quite twice as fast. The time it took to do the frugal install and to boot was less than 30 seconds. I usually measure speed by how fast it boots. With antiX frugal on the ssd, I was getting to Bash in the virtual consoles in about 5-6 seconds and to the X desktop in maybe 12 seconds or so.

BitJam wrote: For most users I recommend using frugal_static

Thank you, I will try it out!

I will also check into other things you wrote. Thank you for your time explaining so many new things to me. I understand now 'frugal' thingies ;-) I'm not doing any live USB and remastering for now but I will watch few move Dolphin's video and try those techniques also.

Maybe we should add some of my post above to the documentation. The MX manual points to this page:

https://mxlinux.org/wiki/system/frugal-installation

In my nerd-like way, the nitty-gritty details are there but a general overview is a bit lacking.

Added parts and rewrote a bit.

I'm thinking to steer my wife away from Windows and this Frugal install just may be the way ;-) How frugal install works with windows 8? I read old post (2012 or 2013) that frugal works on fat32/ntfs but ext4 is preferred. Any changes now, 2018? If I do frugal install on windows8, will windows boot manager pick it up automatically at boot?

Jerry3904 wrote:Added parts and rewrote a bit.

You guys totally rock!

Buck Fankers wrote:I'm thinking to steer my wife away from Windows

Good man/person!

and this Frugal install just may be the way ;-) How frugal install works with windows 8? I read old post (2012 or 2013) that frugal works on fat32/ntfs but ext4 is preferred. Any changes now, 2018?

It works fine *except* the demo user's Live-usb-storage/ directory (which stores files directly on the existing partition) is broken. I've fixed it but I don't think the change made it into MX-17.1. I can show you how to fix this with live-kernel-updater either before or after the frugal install (before only if you are using a live-usb).

If I do frugal install on windows8, will windows boot manager pick it up automatically at boot?

No. You can either boot into frugal from the live media or you can boot from a Linux bootloader on the machine.

TLDR: Have your wife test-drive a live-usb with only home persistence (semi-kiosk mode). You can save system changes with a remaster. This makes it hard for her to break the system *and* it will be plenty fast even with usb-2. If you have enough RAM then using "toram" will make it extremely fast.


How much RAM is on the machine? I suggest you try before you buy (install). I always use the small usb sticks that are the size of a small dongle. I use 32-GB Samsung Fit flash drives which are also usb-3. DO NOT USE the SanDisk Ultra-Fit because it has problems that cause it not to work on some hardware. I think these are related to it getting way too darn hot.

Enable persistence on the live-usb. See if static persistence is fast enough. If not, go back to normal (dynamic) persistence via the bootloader menu. Nothing needs to get rebuilt. It is just a boot option that you are free to change on every boot. On the machine, you can select to boot the live-usb from the BIOS boot menu. You can also make it the default in BIOS. This is cool because you can boot to Windows by just removing the stick.

Customize the live-usb for your wife (if needed) and have her test drive it for a while without us having to touch Windows. If she wants to switch then either just let her keep using the live-usb or do a frugal install. To do a frugal install, first do a remaster (saving home) and then reboot first. This will make sure all of your changes transfer over.

Since you don't have a Linux bootloader on the machine then the best way to boot frugal is from the live-usb so it will need to be plugged in anyway (although you are free to removed it as soon as the boot *starts* when using frugal). So it might be easier to just keep using the live-usb and not touch Windows. You don't even have to make that decision now. Start with the live-usb with persistence, and then depending on how it goes, you might want to frugal install, or maybe the live-usb will be fine, or maybe you wife decides to stick with Windows.

If you have a fast usb-3 stick and a usb-3 port then using the live-usb should be fine. If you only have usb-2 then you will see a significant performance boost with frugal. One way to go is to only use home persistence and don't let the wife update the system or packages. You can do that yourself with a remaster after you make changes. This is a semi-kiosk mode. Even with usb-2, this should be fine performance-wise for your wife. If you have enough RAM, you can use the "toram" option. This slows the boot process (as the entire linuxfs file get copied to ram) but it will then be blinding fast. Much faster than a frugal install which is already faster than a normal install. In semi-kiosk mode or with static root persistence, the shutdowns will be fast.

Jerry3904 wrote:
Added parts and rewrote a bit.

You guys totally rock!

Vastly easier to do it right away than to try to remember later...

FWIW,

I updated mx-iso-template last nite with the ntfs fixes BitJam mentioned. That way, any snapshots will be able to be used in frugal mode on an NTFS partition. I tried it Friday with a old Windows Xp install and this morning with a Windows 7 partition, it seemed to work OK.