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Debian

New Debian Installer Coming Soon 295

Posted by michael from the missing-link dept.
gnuman99 writes "Debian just released the 4th beta of the new debian-installer, this time for 9 architectures. Some of the improvements include experimental support for the 2.6 kernel, on i386 only. The 2.4 kernel remains the default and recommended kernel for most hardware. Detection of existing operating systems. The following operating systems can be detected and will be added to the boot menu of the installed system: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, GNU Hurd, DOS. Note that by experimental support for 2.6.x kernel simply means that it is experimental in the installer, NOT the actual OS. Debian supported 2.6.x in the Sarge/Sid before 2.6.x was even officially released."
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New Debian Installer Coming Soon More

New Debian Installer Coming Soon

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  • The debian installer is now pretty damn good (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:06AM (#9033012)
    The biggest complaint leveled at debian is how hard it is to install. Having recently installed sarge on both my laptop and desktop I feel qualified to say that the installer is at least on par with any of the commercial distros. Don't sweat the fact that it's still text based - It's still very easy to use. And it works on 9 architectures.

  • Geez (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:12AM (#9033027)
    What's wrong with:

    tar xvfz package
    cd package
    configure
    make
    make install
    ldconfig

    Are users getting lazy

    • Re:Geez (Score:3, Funny)

      by mattjb0010 ( 724744 )
      What's wrong with:

      tar xvfz package
      cd package
      configure
      make
      make install
      ldconfig

      You forgot the "./" at the front of "./configure", because like any good Unix user you don't have "." in your path. Then it should work for you.

      • Re:Geez (Score:5, Funny)

        by Amoeba ( 55277 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:51AM (#9033170)
        What's wrong with:

        tar xvfz package
        cd package
        configure
        make
        make install
        ldconfig

        You forgot the "./" at the front of "./configure", because like any good Unix user you don't have "." in your path. Then it should work for you.

        Then again, it appears he is running as root all the time. Must be a Windows convert.

        *blink*

    • Re:Geez (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CTachyon ( 412849 ) <`chronos' `at' `chronos-tachyon.net'> on Sunday May 02, 2004 @11:40AM (#9033819) Homepage

      I used that technique myself. For 3 years. I would install things into neat little /usr/pkg/<packagename> directories, then use a Perl script I wrote that installed the package to /usr using symlinks. However, you forgot some stuff...

      wget http://some.random.server/~foouser/some/inane/depe ndency.tar.gz
      wget http://another.random.server.in.cn/with/1k/downloa dspeed.tar.gz
      lynx http://www.google.com/search\?q=where+the+hell+is+ THAT+at\?
      http://somewhere.you.would.never.guess/ THAT.tar.Z
      tar vxzf dependency.tar.gz
      cd dependency-1.0.0
      ...
      uncompress -c THAT.tar.Z | tar vxf -
      ^C
      uncompress -c THAT.tar.Z | tar tf - | xargs rm -fv
      mkdir THAT
      cd THAT
      uncompress -c ../THAT.tar.Z | tar vxf -
      ls -l
      vim Makefile
      vim wrong-makefile-fragment.mak
      vim some/arcane/config/dir/fragment.mak
      vim README
      lynx obscure/path/to/documentation.html
      vim path/you/would/never/guess/unintuitive.h

      Once upon a time, my computer ran Slackware, but I can't say that with a straight face anymore. I don't even remember which version. Half my C++ programs don't work quite right anymore, inbetween the C++ compiler (dragged kicking and screaming from egcs-2.91) and the C library (I *think* glibc-2.0ish) getting upgraded to modern times. I won't even touch on multimedia dependencies.

      Needless to say, as soon as I get a test box to copy everything over to, the server is getting Debian and apt-get shoved up its disk.

  • Knoppix (Score:5, Informative)

    by hak1du ( 761835 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:13AM (#9033030) Journal
    Actually, there is an excellent Debian installer out, and it's been out for a while. It's called Knoppix [knoppix.net]. You can test compatibility at the store by booting into it, get a live preview of everything, and install a complete system with a recent set of packages with one command. While it uses KDE by default, it's easy to switch to Gnome.

    • Re:Knoppix (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:17AM (#9033052)
      Knoppix, as with other installers such as Progeny's PGI and Redhat's Anaconda fail to meet Debian's strict standards. The installer must operate on all of Debian's supported architectures.

      If i386 with a CD drive is what you've got then Knoppix is for you. But don't ever think that it can be the installer for Debian. It just isn't up for the challenge.

      • that is exactly why I posted the message (Score:5, Interesting)

        by hak1du ( 761835 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @09:03AM (#9033207) Journal
        fail to meet Debian's strict standards. The installer must operate on all of Debian's supported architectures.

        Yes, Debian has some strict standards. Yes, it is good if they work on a universal installer that conforms to strict standards.

        None of that makes Knoppix any less of an excellent installer for Debian. The Debian project should be announcing Knoppix and other live CDs prominently on their home page, rather than creating the impression that there are no finished installers.

        If i386 with a CD drive is what you've got then Knoppix is for you.

        Yes, like 95% of Debian users.

        But don't ever think that it can be the installer for Debian. It just isn't up for the challenge.

        The notion that there should be "the installer" is itself flawed. Many different people need many different kinds of installers.

        • Re:that is exactly why I posted the message (Score:5, Interesting)

          by bfree ( 113420 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @09:59AM (#9033378)
          The notion that there should be "the installer" is itself flawed. Many different people need many different kinds of installers.

          And this is exactly the issue that debian-installer wants to address, by creating a modular framework to be used for installing debian. One of the original promises was that a gui would be slapped on around it and one of the obvious benfits of the new method is that it seems to be far easier to shape the installation (so a corporation could create their own tweaked installer internally which always does X,Y,Z). Debian-installer is not "the installer" it is "the installer framework", this doesn't stop others from creating their own independant installers, but it seems like a far more questionable occupation when you can just tweak d-i (and possibly hit 9+ platforms). I wouldn't be at all surprised if d-i is relatively ignored (except for the fact that reviews will start saying "new installer just works, simply") until a while after it reaches version 1 (sarge release?), but then I wonder if all the other OS's mightn't start asking "Anaconda, why? why not just use d-i?". The bottom line is horses for courses and debian are trying to train a horse decathlete!

        • Re:that is exactly why I posted the message (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @10:18AM (#9033459) Homepage
          If i386 with a CD drive is what you've got then Knoppix is for you.

          Yes, like 95% of Debian users.
          Are there numbers to back that up? If you said 95% of Linux users, I think you'd be correct. But my impression is very many non-x86 users choose Debian because it's the only one supporting their platform properly...

          Kjella
          • The Debian popularity contest [debian.org] project is an attempt to measure which configurations of hardware and packages are most common among Debian users. One use for the data is figuring out which packages belong on the install CD since everybody uses them. Less popular packages go on the supplemental CDs. If one ignores the large chunk (over a quarter) of machines flagged unknown architecture, about 4% of popcon users are on non-i386 machines.
      • And what objections are against SuSes YAST?
      • Plus it's not super duper really really Free

    • Re:Knoppix (Score:5, Insightful)

      by djupdal ( 629381 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:21AM (#9033068) Homepage
      Except it does not install a clean version of debian (stable, testing or unstable). I have seen someone doing a knoppix hd install only to get lots of package dependency problems because (I think) some important packages are not standard debian packages. Better use some time on the real debian installer.
      • I have seen someone doing a knoppix hd install only to get lots of package dependency problems because (I think) some important packages are not standard debian packages. Better use some time on the real debian installer.

        I have not seen any serious problems. There are some small differences, but they don't seem to hurt anything, at least not after dist-upgrading the machine. Overall, Knoppix-based installs have been much less work than "real" Debian installs in my experience, and that's ultimately what

      • Re:Knoppix (Score:4, Interesting)

        by luwain ( 66565 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @10:27AM (#9033496)
        I used Knoppix to install Debian and it was so easy compared to the installation of ANY operating system that it makes up for any drawbacks installing this way may have. First of all, you can run Knoppix first, and know that all of your hardware works, your internet works, and the applications work before installing. So you know exactly what you're going to get when you do install. The install takes less than 20 minutes!

        I haven't experienced many package dependency problems, but even if I had, the strength of Debian is it's package managing system, so it's rather easy to resolve dependencies.

        Also, after installing Knoppix, I can just use my Debian CDs to install any of the 8710 packages that I want.

        Debian is now one of my favorite distros. I would have never bothered with it (why suffer through an excruciating install, when there are solid distros that are easy to install) if I couldn't get up and running so easily.

        I've converted more people to Linux using Knoppix, than with any other distro. And usually, after they've been hooked using the live CD, they do the hard disk install and they end up upgrading to the latest version of Debian, or continue using Knoppix the way it is.

        There's probably a live CD distro out by now that does install a "clean" install of Debian. It probably is trivial to create one. Also,the biggest problem I usually have when installing a new OS is hardware detection. Knoppix probably has the best hardware detection of any distro, and certainly does a better job of it than the Debian installers.

    • Re:Knoppix (Score:4, Informative)

      by anarxia ( 651289 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:25AM (#9033085)
      The problem with Knoppix is that it doesnt fit the "Universal Operating System" style of Debian.

      I installed Debian (with the beta3 installer) on a box for file serving/backup. Very few packages (5 or 6) in the default install were unnecessary and I only needed to: apt-get nfs-kernel server.

      With Knoppix it would take me a lot of time just to uninstall packages I wouldn't use. Knoppix is great for desktops but it's not the best for everyone.

      • The problem with Knoppix is that it doesnt fit the "Universal Operating System" style of Debian.

        And what does that mean? Does that make Knoppix any less of an excellent installer?

        With Knoppix it would take me a lot of time just to uninstall packages I wouldn't use.

        As with many other Linux desktop installations. However, with apt, it's easy to get rid of large chunks of functionality at once; for example, to remove KDE, just get rid of Qt. To get rid of the GUI, get rid of xlib and the X server.

        Kn

    • Re:Knoppix (Score:4, Informative)

      by Telex4 ( 265980 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @11:27AM (#9033746) Homepage
      Knoppix is great, until you start updating packages. It's not a normal clean Debian install, so you get all kinds of crazy dependency hell, with packages suddenly becoming horribly broken.

      Add to that the time you have to spend after transferring Knoppix to disc cleaning it up, removing unwanted packages, installing needed packages, fixing configuration problems (especially, in my experience, with languages and gettext in the command line), and it's not worth it, given that it only takes an hour or so of time actually sitting at the keyboard to get a fully functional Debian system.

      About 3 months after I did a Knoppix install on my parents' machine, I had to wipe it and do a from-scratch Debian install, because an apt-get update destroyed the init system.

  • great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:15AM (#9033040)
    it's good to see my state of the art hardware will be detected along with my DOS and hurd installations... now if only we can get nvidia to release drivers for DOS and the hurd, my audigy and RAID setup... those old DOS games without the speed limiters will trully fly on a 3gighz pentium... they'll have to put epilepsy warnings on them though...

    On a side note, can anyone tell me why debian is still i386 compiled rather than i586? I heard one argument saying that although it was i386 they were optimized internally for the higher processors. Not trolling deb, just interested. Can any gurus give us a definitive answer?

    • Re:great! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, I'd like to see an i686 compiled version.

      Most of the recent binary distros are i686 compiled. Not a huge speed difference but it does appear to make the system a little more snappy.

      (currently running the i386 Debian)

    • Re:great! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:42AM (#9033141)
      It's probably compiled with -march=i386 -mcpu=i686.
      This means you could still run it on 386, but it's optimized for PII, K6 and PIII.

    • Re:great! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Amoeba ( 55277 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:48AM (#9033156)
      On a side note, can anyone tell me why debian is still i386 compiled rather than i586? I heard one argument saying that although it was i386 they were optimized internally for the higher processors. Not trolling deb, just interested. Can any gurus give us a definitive answer?

      Because it's not only the software packages that are 2 years behind in the stable release, it's the hardware too!

      (This was meant to be funny ha-ha... but dammit it might even be true. *sigh* If I could come up with a funny pun about "definitive answer" and the number differences I'd be rolling in karma. Some days I don't know why I even bother to ever post.)

    • Re:great! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Crazy Eight ( 673088 )
      I'm not a guru, but I am pretty sure that i586 optimized code runs slower (or even poorly) on anything that isn't a 586. The whole foo-i586.rpm thing was a kind of marketing gimmick of Mandrake's back when they were packaging pgc and the K6-3 was considered a fast processor. The notion of "optimizing" builds like that has been brought up on the Debian mailing lists before but dismissed as being not worth the effort. After all, Debian has a huge amount of software to keep in the repository. If one starts sub

    • Re:great! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Daniel ( 1678 ) <dburrows@[ ]ian.org ['deb' in gap]> on Sunday May 02, 2004 @02:22PM (#9034746)
      There is discussion from time to time about optimizing for a more recent version of the x86 processors. So far no-one has presented convincing (ie, non-anecdotal; not subject to placebo effects) evidence that this actually makes things significantly faster for most packages. In addition, the more optimizations you do for one particular CPU variant, the more likelihood that you actually make things slower on others. For instance, targetting i586 is a terrible idea (according to common wisdom, anyway) because it actually decreases the performance of code on more recent x86 processors.

      Some packages that do see significant benefit (for instance, OpenSSL, libc, the kernel) are already compiled for all x86 variants.

      Daniel

  • The biggest problem (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:15AM (#9033041)
    with Debian is that the people who use it are way too nice. Brrr, that kind of thing just gives me the creeps.
    • heh...you obviously have never asked a simple config question in #debian!

      All kidding a side, I'd generally agree with that statement myself. I've met a few debian users who were very friendly and helpful, but there also are a few too many who act like they are l33t debian users and love to hit that 'RTFM' button.

      Out of curiousity, what are you insuating? Are slackware|red hat|suse|etc less friendly than debian users? Are we possibly on to something here? Maybe it's because debian users love playing and sh

  • 9 Architectures, 9 Binaries (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yes, the Debian installer working on nine different architectures is interesting, but it has a glaring flaw: It requires nine separate binaries, one for each architecture. That means making a big pile of bootable CDs to install on various platforms. Boo!

    Although it is admittedly difficult, it is in fact possible [google.com] to write a single piece of bootstrapping machine code that properly runs on ALL of those architectures, without faulting, that jumps to a separate section of the executable code based on the arc

    • Re:9 Architectures, 9 Binaries (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      While it is technically impressive and desirable to get things to work on as many architectures as possible. I don't think it is too much of a compromise of morals to offer different isos with better installers rather than a sub-par one across all.

      I have seen some screen shots of the new installer and it will go a long way towards debian adoption in my mind. As cool as gentoo is, it is just not practical for anyone but an enthusiast (of the performance or gnu type) - a community based all-GPL distro needs

    • Re:9 Architectures, 9 Binaries (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sholden ( 12227 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:26AM (#9033089) Homepage
      Since the binaries on the CD are architecture specific what does it matter if the boot system it too?

      Do you really want to be able to boot the x86 binary CD on Solaris? How would that help achieve anything? Other than making the boot system completely unintelligible to everyone.

  • good news (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Marsala ( 4168 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:17AM (#9033047) Homepage

    I used the new installer when I moved to Debian testing on my new workstation a few months ago. There were a couple of rough spots, but nothing a little command line prodding and correcting couldn't get around.

    The installer does a nice job of addressing the long-standing issues most people have had with the installer (namely, having to deal with dselect and the 4 trillion packages Debian has :), and breaks the install down into nice, manageable chunks.

    Now... if there's a way to script installs (and I believe there is, but haven't checked it out yet) like RH's kickstart so I deploy a couple hundred servers in the datacenter (yes, I know about FAI... doesn't compare to RH's kickstart), I'd be on easy street. :)

    Nice work, guys.

  • Tried installing Debian once (Score:5, Informative)

    by mindaktiviti ( 630001 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:19AM (#9033057)
    I tried installing debian once, here were my impressions:

    - X & video driver didn't install properly (but I fixed it).
    - USB scrolling mouse (logitech) didn't install properly (but I fixed it as well).
    - I couldn't get the sound card to work.
    - I couldn't get the network card to work (this one sucked because I had to keep switching back and forth in order to get suggestions and then to try them).
    - The people on irc.debian.org were very friendly and helpful.

    It was the first time trying linux (about a year and a half ago), and I haven't tried it again, however I'm waiting for a slightly nicer installer. Maybe I'll try it now (It's Sunday, nothing else to do).
    • I've installed Debian many times (it was my first distro - but not my current one), and my pet peeve is the glaring lack of software raid support. Pretty much every other installer can set up, partition and install onto software RAID (md device) - but Debian can't.
    • X & video driver didn't install properly (but I fixed it).
      That also happened to me when I installed RH6.0 for the first time.

      USB scrolling mouse (logitech) didn't install properly (but I fixed it as well).
      Interesting with Red Hat Linux 9 and Fedora Core 1 it has worked out of the box under X. But unfortunately it is completely broken under gpm. And by completely broken I mean it was so bad, that it would have been better if it had not worked at all. I have never heard about anybody who got it work

    • Re:Tried installing Debian once (Score:5, Informative)

      by nadaou ( 535365 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @09:01AM (#9033201) Homepage
      Installing Debian via Knoppix should solve most of those problems.

      Debian isn't really the most newbie-friendly distribution. It's really by, of, and for linux developers and professionals (which is why once you get your head around the way things are done, bolts of sunlight start to shine out of every ventilation hole of your Debian box, and life is good). You might have a much more satisfying experience at first by installing say Lycoris instead (Debian back-end with user-friendly front-end).
    • It was the first time trying linux (about a year and a half ago),

      So that means you are not talking about the new debian-installer but rather about the old boot-floppies. Everybody knows that they suck.

      Michael

  • What about *BSD? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Homology ( 639438 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:19AM (#9033059)
    The following operating systems can be detected and will be added to the boot menu of the installed system: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, GNU Hurd, DOS.

    They add detection for GNU Hurd, but not OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD. Funny, really.

    • If they didn't find it worth to implement but you do, then go ahead and do it. It's free software after all.

    • > They add detection for GNU Hurd, but not OpenBSD, FreeBSD and
      > NetBSD. Funny, really.

      Not funny but sad.

      Although I suppose they can't really add an installer for
      "real" FreeBSD and "real" NetBSD when Debian developers are
      working on GNU/FreeBSD [debian.org] and GNU/NetBSD [debian.org]
      even if they both have the same amount of users as GNU/Hurd
      ....about 3 at the last count....although to be fair I wasn't counting RMS :)

    • ...maybe that's because it's....well....DYING. ;)

    • Re:What about *BSD? (Score:3, Informative)

      by mbanck ( 230137 )
      They add detection for GNU Hurd, but not OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD.

      That's probably because Joey Hess managed to run a Debian GNU/Hurd image via Bochs. See his journals entries here [kitenet.net] and his installation report here [debian.org].

      Feel free to add support for BSD yourself, Joey is in no way a Hurd guy, he just did happen to have a BSD installation around or does not care.

      Michael

  • Hard part? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NickeB ( 763713 )
    Would anyone mind enlightening someone who hasn't ever used debian? What was the tricky part with the old installer?
    Gentoo doesn't really even have a real installer and most people appear to be fine with it.
    Slackware and FreeBSD have pretty straightforward installers, but they're not really difficult...

    • Re:Hard part? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BiggerIsBetter ( 682164 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:49AM (#9033161)
      The installer is pretty simple - if you know what you want. The other distros (Knoppix, Mandrake, SuSE, etc) make some assumptions based on hardware found and typical usage and set much of the system up for you, but Debian doesn't. Eg, many people won't know which modules they want to load, things like the parport module - obvious if you know, but the installer should detect a parallel port and decide to load it automagically. Imagine a new user doing that, and then hitting #linux with questions about why his printer doesn't work. That's probably the kind of thing that makes it hard for new users, especially users who haven't had much Linux experience.

    • Re:Hard part? (Score:5, Informative)

      by zonix ( 592337 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:57AM (#9033187) Journal
      What was the tricky part with the old installer?

      Numerous posts here on /. suggest that it's the missing hardware autodetection and lack of a graphical installer.

      You need to insert some kernel modules manually during install (for NIC, sound, etc.), which means you'd have to know what hardware you're running. Familiarity with the Linux kernel's 'make menuconfig' module selection is an advantage here too because the selections in the Debian installer are the same (ie. same groupings). The new installer detects hardware automatically, which is fine if it works - I've tried it twice, so far no problems.

      The point about the graphical installer is really non-essential, unless you can't navigate with a keyboard. The new installer is reworked and more modular as stated on the "About the Debian Installer" page, and as such it's should be easy to put a graphical installer ontop of it. Should make some people happy.

      I've always loved the Debian Installer! For me it was a more hands-on experience, and with the ability to select kernel modules during the install, I was able to make my old parallel port CD-burner work correctly without a fuss. But that's just me. One cool thing about the Debian installer is the fact that you can follow the standard sequential set of dialogs during the install process, like any other installer, but you can also get a list of all the tasks and jump to anyone on the fly, at any stage during the install. This is helpful if you suddenly find out that you mistyped your IP-address or forgot to create a partion, things like that. Both the old and the new installer support this.

      z

      • You need to insert some kernel modules manually during install (for NIC, sound, etc.), which means you'd have to know what hardware you're running. Familiarity with the Linux kernel's 'make menuconfig' module selection is an advantage here too because the selections in the Debian installer are the same (ie. same groupings).

        Contrast this with an OpenBSD install : If the hardware is supported, it's ready for use when the kernel is loaded. No messing around with loading the correct kernel modules, not to

    • Re:Hard part? (Score:2, Informative)

      by OmegaBlac ( 752432 )

      What was the tricky part with the old installer?

      Installing Debian with the old installer is simple. There are countless tutorials on the net to help you in this endeavor. This article from OSNews works very well --> The Very Verbose Debian 3.0 Installation Walkthrough [osnews.com].

      I think people tend to trip over the selecting of modules they need to get certain devices to work. Also I guess newbies might have been intimidated when reaching the point to selecting packages with dselect or tasksel. I tend not t

  • More links (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:29AM (#9033097)
    If you're going to try the installer, don't forget to take a look at the errata [debian.org]. The installer also has a lot of untriaged active bug reports [debian.org] which Joey Hess has asked for help [debian.org] dealing with. Sure, file a report of something doesn't work, but make certain that it isn't a known issue first.

    Help triaging those bug reports would be a helpful task for anyone knows how to work [debian.org] their bug tracker.

  • Bootloaders (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Spy Hunter ( 317220 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:33AM (#9033107) Journal
    Why oh why hasn't someone come out with a bootloader that detects what OSes are installed _itself_? It can't be that hard. I mean, if there's an NTFS partition, it's not that hard to guess what OS is installed there and how to boot it. For Linux, it's a little more complex. But since GRUB can read Linux filesystems, it could at least look in the /boot directory for promising kernel-type files and put them in the menu for you. I don't know about other OSes, but even if the autoconfiguration only worked for Windows and Linux, it would be a huge step up bootloaders. Think how many newbies would be saved from making their computer unbootable (the scariest thing that can happen to a would-be Linux convert)!

    • Re:Bootloaders (Score:3, Informative)

      by MobyTurbo ( 537363 )
      if there's an NTFS partition, it's not that hard to guess what OS is installed there and how to boot it.
      No, the same partition identification for NTFS is also for OS/2. For this reason, unlike FAT partitions, NTFS partitions are configured manually in some distros.
      • swirling lights of the wayback machine.....

        I actually installed NT on a HPFS partition one time. 16-bit filesystems rock. Heh. Actually, IIRC, MS owned the design to HPFS and IBM really couldn't do anything with it to move it forward (although, JFS is probably a better choice anyway). HPFS got updated and became NTFS in NT 3.1. HPFS support in NT officially died with WinNT 3.51, although I think you could still read them by copying over some files in NT4 and Win2k

        Here [microsoft.com] is a good brief article from MS

    • Re:Bootloaders (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bcmm ( 768152 )
      Maybe not so good for day-to-day use, but that would make a pretty cool rescue disk...
    • That's great, and what about multiple kernel versions? /boot in a different partition that /? Etc. etc.
      • That's great, and what about multiple kernel versions? /boot in a different partition that /? Etc. etc.

        That is what 'expert' mode should be for - the folks who know the internals well enough can do grub or lilo by hand. There should be a next>next>next>finished option for those who are happy to live with a set of well thought out defaults.
        • Isn't that exactly what the installers already do for you? When I installed Fedora, it automatically detected by Windows partition and made a "DOS" entry for it.

  • And therefore new Debian stable Coming Soon (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rizzer ( 122184 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @08:48AM (#9033159)
    It's probably worth mentioning that development of the new installer has been the chief technical obstacle to the release of a new version of Debian stable. So with debian-installer nearing completion, this means the next version of Debian stable is also nearing completion.

    Rizzer (Drew Parsons)
    • You're forgetting that the recent decision to remove firmware and documentation that do not adhear to the social contract may push the next release out until 2005 [slashdot.org].
      That's not to say that there isn't a resolution [wolffelaar.nl] to try to reinterpret or create an exception for this release. In which case, you would be right, this installer has been key to the release.

  • Why libdetect for the installer ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phoxix ( 161744 ) on Sunday May 02, 2004 @09:29AM (#9033285)
    Last I checked, this was some old Mandrake code that Mandrake stopped working on.

    Any reason why they couldn't use Mandrake's newer hardware detection code (ldetect) ?

    Or juse use Knoppix's Kudzu derivative)

    Sunny Dubey
  • Hi.

    I want to install a minimal install of Linux on a compactflash card serving as a hard disk on an embedded system. The system will be on a higly-mobile robot, where anything but sold-state is bound to fail(though I'm testing the new Seagate drives).

    Anyway, I want a minimal install because the capacity is a mere 2GB, and I'm new to Linux & Debian.

    I'm working with a 1GHz PIII -- what type of iso should I get for the install? I see choices like "alpha," "hppa," "i386," and "powerPC".

    What do all these

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