On Sun, Dec 08, 2002 at 04:30:10PM +0100, Emile van Bergen wrote: > Another idea: why not support an installation in an ext2 filesystem > which is really a big file on a Windows VFAT partition, mounted using a > loopback device? That would do away with all the partitioning; that > would only be needed when the user wants to get rid of the relatively > minor performance penalty of the extra FS layer.
Are VFAT partitions still common? I thought Windows 2000 and XP both used NTFS by default. And last time I tried (about a year ago, I think) mounting NTFS read-write on Linux was still flaky. I also question whether the performance penalty would be "relatively minor", especially if you treat the swap device the same way. But that can be measured. If it's significant, then I think this option should not be encouraged, because it would give Linux an undeserved bad name among precisely the people we hope to convert. Richard Braakman
