Some questions after preliminary debian installations

[Alan Eugene Davis <adavis@kuentos.guam.net>]

First, I want to thank members of this group for responding rapidly to
my problems and questions, and thoughtfully.  This group is in itself
a strong arguement in favor of uprading to Debian. 

I have now installed debian Linux three times, and would like to ask
some questions before proceeding further.  

1.  I want to upgrade to ELF.  Is the development stuff really that
bad?  What steps would I have to take on a new base system (with few
or no new packages installed) to avail myself of libc5, new binutils,
and gcc 2.7.2?  I tried installing the libraries, etc.; a
wild-goose-chase ensued, with each  package indicating a bunch of
binaries it depended upon.  In the end, ????    I haven't been able to
get the ELF stuff from the development area to run, at least not all
of it.

2.  Each time I have installed, I have had to make two passes at
installing disks 1-3.  The first pass is accompanied by messages warning
that bdflush is not running.  After the second pass, the system has
been running ok.

3. I have a 30MB partition in the lower 500 MB /1024 cylinders of the drive,
from which to boot Linux.  What is a good scheme for the directories?
I have called it root, and mounted the  larger, 300MB partition as
/usr.  I have already had to set up a /usr/root directory and make
/root a symbolic link to it.  Sorry.  I know this is in the FM, but I
don't remember where, I don't have the FM at hand easily.  I am now
searching for this.

4.  Related to #1: Is has been suggested that one install 0.93, then
upgrade piecemeal.  Is it really alot better to install the whole
0.93, everything, before upgrading piece by piece?  Does anyone have a
concrete working plan that has worked?  Most of the stuff I am using
is not being mentioned in the bug questions, as far as I know.  I have
had great success taking chances with BETA Linux stuff; is this debian
development (_ALPHA_) stuff that much worse?  (Repeating #1).

Thanks to many who have helped.

Alan Davis.