[plug] New to list - file system

[Greg Mildenhall]

On Thu, 3 Feb 2000, Christian wrote:
> "Mike Massen, Network Power Systems" wrote:
> > mmm OK - I take it then that even with a larger drive its either not
> > possible or not appropriate to have the DOS 6.2 file system to base linux
> > on. ?
> Linux does need a Unix-based filesystem, featureless filesystems like
> FAT are relatively useless.

Fortunately, there is a thing called "UMSDOS", which uses various dodgy
mechanisms to simulate a real filesystem on top of a FAT filesystem. It is
nothing like as fast or efficient as the standard Linux filesystem, but
you won't have to repartition and can just use a directory of your
existing DOS filesystem.

A UMSDOS install is slightly harder than a normal install (or at least it
used to be - i haven't tried for three years) but is a good option if you
don't want to create a linux-only partition. Note that you will also take
a performance hit if you use a swap file rather than a dedicated swap
partition.

Hope this helps a little,

-Greg