OK, apologies if everybody understands this but me, but this is a long thread and the answer to me seems unclear.

Why, exactly, would we want to do this?

Personally, extending the internal memory sounds like a good idea because I hate the idea that installing applications on the device will make the applications you already have run more poorly (because they have access to less memory). Some posts in this thead seem to suggest that this trick isn't really going to help you much in that regard, though. So what's the reason for it, again?

If I understand correctly, doing the steps described in this thread will result in:

1. An RS-MMC card where most of it is formatted ext2fs or some other Linux filesystem, meaning that when you plug it into a Windows PC the PC won't be able to access the card (i.e. you won't be able to get any files on or off it)

2. You'll end up with a portion of your root filesystem on the card, so you don't ever want to take the card out of the device or you risk crashing it.

Neither of these seems particularly desirable. Am I missing some obvious benefit? I understand the swap partition idea; I'm just strictly talking about the extended root filesystem now.