Download Anaconda for Debian 208
hsoom writes "Debian Planet is reporting that unofficial sarge-based ISOs using the Anaconda installer can be downloaded from here. The features developed so far include '...changed the code that installs software to use APT instead of RPM, removed Red Hat-specific configuration hooks, and written a new tool called picax that builds Anaconda-based installation CDs from a Debian repository'. However there are features that are not yet working and it is not recommended for use in a production environment."
This is good news. (Score:5, Insightful)
Give it some time.
Knoppix is right now probably the easiest way to install Debian, via knx-hdinstall.
Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:1, Insightful)
It might have something to do with the fact that its developers all use emacs, and that little flaw has worked its way into dselect.
I've found dselect is largely broken and will futz up your dependencies, etc. fairly quickly. Straight apt-get for me.
Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm amazed that more people don't know this. I used dselect for about a day, then quickly discovered apt+tasksel, then aptitude. Dselect is awful.
Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:5, Insightful)
Knoppix is becoming Debians default installer on x86 hardware. Its not just more fun than the conventional approach, but it feels safer, since you can SEE it working on your computer before installing for real.
Foolproof installer? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it can be argued that the Debian installer asks many questions that may not be easy to answer for a Linux newbie.
But, as you say, there is hope: I remember someone saying, a few years ago, that a RedHat had formatted their drives without clearly mentioning that it would be destructive (oops!). Today, Mandrake can be installed after just a few minutes worth of clicking "OK". It generally makes the right choices for the user, clearly shows what partitions will be created, and warns if it's about to blank an existing windows partition. If it finds some unsupported hardware, it mentions what it knows about it, so that the user can simply ask their local guru for help.
I think it's no exaggeration to say that someone who already installed Windows can safely install e.g. a Mandrake.
Bittorrent link needed. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is good news. (Score:5, Insightful)
> and this will be a move in the right direction.
And of course, the "standard answer" to this is "you only install Debian one time on any one machine". People who have not used it have a hard time believing this, but it's true barring hard disk failure or some other catastrophe like that. Even major updates happen via "apt-get upgrade", and 99.9% of the time it Just Works(TM) if you're running stable. (Take that down to about 97% for unstable/testing.)
I have a machine that started out around Debian 1.1, as a 486 and has been hardware upgraded several times (to a Pentium Pro and now a 1GHz C3) and apt-get upgraded routinely since those days. I had to reboot due to the recent linux security issue, prior to that this machine had an uptime of 172 days. It's running Debian/stable plus I've done some backporting out of unstable for a few key bits.
Anyways, between Knoppix, anaconda, and the new debian-installer work going on within Debian, hopefully the "it's hard to install" issue is just about a moot point. Enough proselytizing for this morning
Re:This is good news. (Score:1, Insightful)
Sure, it's text-based. However, it's got dialog boxes and other widgets familiar from GUIs. The only thing lacking really is support for a mouse.
I stand corrected (Score:2, Insightful)
anaconda-debian, apt-redhat (Score:5, Insightful)
(Review of The Art of UNIX Programming [dannyreviews.com])
Danny.
Re:Are you an IT specialist or a user? (Score:5, Insightful)
But I cringe when I hear that from a fellow computer person. I mean honestly, just because it's not using framebuffer and a mouse on install?
Well, dselect could be friendlier: it's not so much that it's text based, but that the interface itself is alien to most people. It's a good interface, like vi is a good interface: but it's not quick and easy to pick up, and if you skip past the instructions, you're in trouble.
But that's not the worst thing about the Debian install. It's been proved that auto-detecting hardware can be done in Linux, yet to install Woody I needed to manually specify an Ethernet driver and select an appropriate X server. That's really not good enough, and would scupper a lot of people, computer professionals or not.
This may be fixed in Sarge: someone reply and tell me.
Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:2, Insightful)
You hit the nail on the head with your last line. The problem is that Debian supports many architectures (I think it's even more architectures than XFree supports!), so there is a lot of work to be done to build an installer.
There's a new installer in the works right now (it's in Beta). Don't know much about it though.
Re:This is good news. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Are you an IT specialist or a user? (Score:3, Insightful)
That seems like a serious problem in itself to me!
Re:This is good news. (Score:3, Insightful)
> the kernels in the install images would help a lot.
This is definitely the area where I've had the most issues too. I've had to install PCI ethernet cards in cases where a new motherboard's onboard ethernet isn't supported, and occasionally I've built my own install disks with custom kernels.
Next time I run into this, I think I'll try a Knoppix install and see how that works. It seems to be updated often and have modern kernels.
Re:This is good news. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's just a stupid way to think IMO.
Re:This is good news. (Score:5, Insightful)
If he can do this on a Macintosh, why shouldn't he be able to do this on a GNU/Linux system?
Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Why do I have to hit Alt-F2? Why not a Menu option?
2. The fact that you don't know if it's Ctrl-Alt-F2 or Alt-F2 or if it changes shows a big usability problem right there.
3. Again, typing knx-hdinstall seems completely non-obvious. I'm sure I'd quickly figure it out by reading some docs or something, but why do I need to read some docs or google to figure that out?
Note: I've never used Knoppix, so maybe there are menu options, but those instructions aren't that easy, IMO.
Re:This is good news. (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you can't wait for debian to ship a modern installer and don't want to fork over $$$ for Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 you can always try White Box Linux (http://www.beau.org/~jmorris/linux/whitebox/), a free version of rhel3. It's at rc2 now and production release is probably only a month or two away. I notice the Dag apt repository (http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/) has rhel3 rpms, so it should be possible to stay up to date with apt.
Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:3, Insightful)
2. I've not used it for a while, which is why I forget which it was.
3. See Point 1.
Like I said though, Knoppix is pretty simple. A readme file on the desktop could handle this for now, at least.
Re:This is good news. (Score:3, Insightful)
You won't be disappointed by anaconda. My install times are generally < 5 minutes when I do a network based install.
but many are assuming a GUI interface is preferred.
This "assumption" is only true if 1) you install X, which you don't have to 2) you're installing locally, using CD's. If you're setting up servers, you're probably going to use kickstart to do a network based install. X is one of the most common interfaces to Unix systems. It's ridiculous to pretend that an installer that doesn't configure X is ready for mass consumption. Ready for use by network system admins, sure. That's about as far as it'd get...
And it's cross platform too!
So's anaconda.
There are advantages with this, but there are always disadvantages to a homogeneous environment.
Uh... generally when people talk about the disadvantages to a homogenous environment, they're talking about security issues that come up when all of the members of the environment have the same vulnerabilities. Can you name one disadvantage to a complete, easy to use installer that's consistant across hardware platforms and distributions? Nothing comes to my mind....
Re:Are you an IT specialist or a user? (Score:2, Insightful)
Testing/Sid isn't an option for production, since the Debian people won't commit to providing security fixes in any timely manner for those versions.
I think Red Hat used to have it right. A distro should be updated in a major way about once every year-18 months. Ideally you'd want to support the current version, and the immediate previous major version.
It worked great, I don't know why RH had to fuck it up.
Re:Foolproof installer? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the Mandrake and Redhat (8, 9) installs (to get up to a working system) are better than Windows at this point. As long as you have relatively common and supported hardware, it sets everything up for you. I used to think that it was dumb of all the distros to include so many other utilities and applications, but I've changed my views on that now.
Once you install Windows itself, you have to run windowsupdate somewhere between 3 and 8 times (rebooting each time) to get it to the point it won't get infected with a virus in the next few minutes (and always do this behind a firewall). Then you have to go download all the things that you need for day-to-day tasks: winzip, pdf reader.. install usually an office suite, mozilla/firebird/thunderbird (well, at least I do.. but I won't go into a rant about how lacking in features IE/OE are). It takes at least two hours to install a Windows system, and most of the time is spent waiting. (And not just hands-off waiting time, either... Windowsupdate .. wait to download.. click install.. wait to install.. click to reboot .. wait to reboot.. repeat)
Taking redhat as an example.. All the interaction is at the start, selecting paritions (formatted later), selecting what to install, etc. Then you wait for it to install, though you do have to change the CD's once or twice (unless you do a net-install, which is handy). Once it boots up, run up2date -u, probably reboot for the new kernel, and thats it. Everything is up to date and ready to go.
Re:This is good news. (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, everyone mentions apt as a reason for debian's power, but make-kpkg is also incredibly powerful. Having a tool that, given a kernel tarball and a
Re:Foolproof installer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most Windows users never install Windows.
They purchase their computer with the software pre-installed. If anything goes wrong with the system, they have to find someone else who can install it for them. That's only required if they forgot their ghost CD.
If Linux came shipped on the computers from Dell, Compaq, et al, then I think a lot of people would start thinking that Linux was easier to install then Windows. I'm pretty sure that something like Libranet today might be considered a ghost CD equivelant.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)