Linux and more on a "small" hard drive (was Re: Linux on netbooks)

[Brendan Kidwell]

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:38 PM, David Kramer <david-8uUts6sDVDvs2Lz0fTdYFQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Dan Ritter wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 04:58:11PM -0400, David Kramer wrote:
>>> The one last thing I would love feedback on is hard drive space.  Most
>>> of these units come with 160GB hard drives.  I am ASSUMING this would be
>>> cramped with both Win 7 Starter (plus Office, Firefox, etc and maybe a
>>> ripped movie or two) and Ubuntu Netbook Remix (plus OO, Firefox, and
>>> java/eclipse).
>
> I didn't think of
> looking at my very own laptop, which has dual boot with Ubuntu (with
> massive number of packages) and Vista (certainly bigger than Win7
> Starter).  All on a 160GB hard drive.  It will even fit Emacs!

Am I the only one perfectly happy on a 60GB hard drive?

I have been using a Thinkpad X41 Tablet and loving it, for years. It
came with a 60GB disk, and I'm currently running Ubuntu on it in a
SINGLE partition -- I don't see the point of dividing up such a small
space when I can always just dump it to another device and restore if
I really have a need to reformat it in the future. Inside my Ubuntu
system I have a Windows XP virtual machine I use for connecting to the
Cisco VPN at work (IT provides no support or clue as to any other way
to connect to it other than 'you must run this Windows package and
enter your username and current key fob key. That is all.')

It so happens that I'm taking a C#/ASP.NET course at Harvard and the
professor required us to upgrade to Visual Studio 2010 right when it
attained Release Candidate status -- a decision I am not very happy
with. Well this was the one thing that made me run out of space. I
went to MicroCenter and bought a fresh 300GB 2.5" disk and spent the
weekend transferring my Ubuntu system to it only to then be blocked by
discovering my Thinkpad takes 1.5" disks! Damn, you need to check
these things before you leap. So the 300GB disk stays in a USB dongle
for now, and any bigger 1.5" disk is probably not worth the price I'd
have to pay.

Anyway, with a home file server to contain all the bloated cruft I've
accumulated, I've been perfectly happy running Ubuntu plus Windows in
a VM on this laptop for years as long as I'm not required to do
something silly like run a Visual Studio release candidate with TONS
of ancillary tools that come with it.

What's everyone doing that makes them feel cramped in 160GB? :^)