rebhana: I have a microSD with an ext2 partition, and I do my development on it.

On the N800/N810, the SD partitions are much faster than image files.

But on the N900, I can't really tell the difference between image files and partitions, except maybe with a stopwatch. Even the dm-loop package doesn't seem to make any difference.

I like the "disposable" nature of image files, and the way I can keep several images side-by-side on the N900's internal 32GB.

If you do make a partition, leave a small token FAT partition. Ext2 or ext3 doesn't really matter, that I can tell. Make sure you indicate ext3 in your .chroot file if you use it.

There are good instructions for copying the filesystem from an image file to a partition. Basically, you mount the image and partition, then use a tar command to copy the files between the two. I'll see if I can find the instructions around here and link to them.