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Debian

Debian Plans New Installer For Woody 104

Posted by timothy from the greater-ease,-puh-lease? dept.
msnomer writes: "Debian is planning to replace their installer for Woody, their next release. Plans are to have it be highly modular, using debian packages as the modules. The discussion is going on in the debian-boot mailing list; you can also read the design draft on the web site." This looks very interesting -- as a recent Debian recipient (victim?) at the hands of an expert, I must say the install is pretty intimidating. This sounds like a smart area to focus on, but what would an ideal installer consist of, anyhow? Give examples, double space;)
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Debian Plans New Installer For Woody More

Debian Plans New Installer For Woody

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  • Ideal installer wish list (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    - The installer itself should not be dependent on a monster scripting language being installed correctly. If someone installs perl or python by hand and screw it up, it shouldn't also take the installer with it.

    - Installer should be integrated with an integraty checker. The user should have the option to store in the installer database a number of different hashes to confirm the integraty of binaries against. The user should also have the option to be automatically prompted to sign/finger-print (public/private key style) the installer database itself after installing a package.

    - A library should be provided with the installer which make creating a "trusted" shell easier where the integraty of binaries is check on the fly against the installer database.

    - Installer should have hooks to automatically extend a full file system if the FS utilities allow for it and hard drive space is available to expand into (similar to AIX installp with JFS).

    - Installer should support using binaries diffs to reduce update package sizes. If a user already has IMAP-v1.1.dpkg on CD and needs to install IMAP-v1.2.dpkg which only changes 20 bytes in one file to address a buffer overflow then the installer when provided IMAP-v1.1.dpkg and IMAP-v1.1-to-v1.2.dpkgpatch should be able to create IMAP-v1.2.dpkg without having to download the entire new package.

  • what would an ideal installer consist of, anyhow? Give examples

    Very simple: a development platform (compiler, assembler, linker, headers, make), tar, gzip, and bash. If you must, include a script that chooses packages, decompresses them, builds, and installs. Keep it simple, keep it source. No mystery patches, no binaries. It should also offer to rebuild itself from either its own sources or other sources of your choosing. Think of the BSD ports system if that helps make it clearer.

  • Interesting, but isn't that consistent -- "...defending GPL purity..." and "...threatening to push away corporate newcomers..."?

    With all the nouveau Linux distros chasing the dollar, it's good that Debian can remind folks of the Open Source/Free Software ideals.


    -----
  • Yeah, I've been using Linux for about 3 years, and when I started installing with dselect, I obfuscated my whole system so badly I wiped the partitions cleaned (all data backed up) and re-did the Debian install a second time. I'm still not sure if I've got it right... god help me if I have to reinstall AGAIN.
  • I would put FreeBSD's install right on par with Debian's current one. Not really bad, but there's definite (and obvious) room for improvement.
  • I've only used Debian for a little under a year now after using Red Hat for about four years and basically the only complaint I have had was the installation. I personally think the Debian folks should take a look at Red Hat's 6.x installer. There is enough flexibility that there is all the power in it that the advanced user wants (well, almost.. the ability to configure the kernel during install is the only missing thing I can think of), but at the same time, is easy and quick enough for even a novice user to not break a sweat. This flexibility should be one of the top priorities for the new installer, as it it will draw more people to using Debian. After all, if you get frustrated and annoyed during the install, how likely are you to be patient and forgiving as you "learn" this new OS?
  • woody is already half a year in work,
    please freeze it now, so we can get it
    stable for april (optimistic: januar).

    a new instakller is sure a nice thing, but
    waiting for it to appear isnt a good thing.
    better do some releases without it, than do
    no release at all.
  • This would be a great thing, because a majority of Windows users don't know how Windows is set up. They don't know what their hardware is, or how their email is set up, or any of that. They set it up once, or had their kid set it up, and now they're helpless. Linux could go and find all that information. Installing Linux on top of Windows would be almost as easy and seamless as upgrading from Windows NT to Windows 2000.

    I think this idea (using windows driver and registry info for linux installs) sounds great. However, in my experience, the majority of Windows installs more than a week old are horribly broken. Drivers, software config, etc.. a "hardware manager" screen without "broken" devices is an unusual sight.

    Last time I checked it wasn't Linux' goal to be bug-for-bug compatible with Windows. If someone has a broken or kludgy windows system, what good is an equally broken linux install?

    Hopefully there is a middle ground -- maybe the windows info could be used as defaults or a starting point for autoprobing drivers. However I think basing an entire off of the windows registry is very dangerous.

  • I'm installing a potato dist onto a spare machine over the 'net right now! Too bad the instructions aren't a little closer the the FreeBSD one ... or pezzy sure made that *look* easy :-).
  • As a follow-up to myself ...
    The 'hard' part as far as I'm concerned was trying to figure out what I needed to download and where I had to put it. I think you can do the 'net install with 5 floppies (but it wasn't clear from the instructions). I didn't know that so I got the drivers.tgz and the base2_2.tgz -- as this is a win9x box being upgraded all I had to do was make a new (temporary) partition that would hold the drivers and base (yuk) ... I didn't *need* to, but I didn't know that until I was about 1/2 into the install. The install itself is cake (similiar to the redhat character based installs) only easier than RedHat 5.x/6.x IMHO.
    Still a 1 floppy net install would be very nice...
  • Umm, if you re-read the *original* comment, this choice (installing off of window's defaults) would be one of many other's, none of which require installing Windows first. I.e., if you already had Windows installed, choosing that option would help keep things simple. If not, choose one of the others (including the interesting "I'm installing a devel environ and I want to have another install on this disk" option).

    hth,
  • ...must have something like jumpstart or kickstart, only better.

    I've been doing *a* *lot* of work with kickstart lately, and it's not very robust. it is, however, pretty flexible. If you've got an array of 40 or 80 or 200 machines backending your ISP services, then you need an absolutely painless way to install.

    yeah. or something.
  • Having just done a Debian install earlier on today. I can say a couple of things.
    1. I found it easy...
    2. I've been using UNIX a *long* time...
    to deal with some of the more specific complaints.

    1. the ability to install files from an ftp server, or an http server, or something like that. (looks like it's going to happen so far as the draft indicates)

    That seems to be done. I did an install today that was amazing. No monitor, no keyboard, no mouse, just a serial console and an ethernet port.
    what was even better was that I didn't have to hack the install at all! no kernel recompiles, no NFS mounting, no nothing, it just worked! and it had all the features you listed above.

    2. a little bit more flexability in kernel module selection. More modules in the list, more organization, more explanation, more indication of what info the module may need, etc. A really nice thing would be an index of what hardware uses what module - for example, turtle beach tropez plus uses the crystal audio sound driver, etc.

    I agree. They could have a (more) entry at the bottom of each of the lists for experts, however, this may be a tradeoff in usability.

    3. maybe a documentation disk - should contain some of the kernel docs, some walk through, etc.

    This is /definitely/ necessary! The one problem I had was figuring out how the install worked the first time, there should be more docs accompanying the install so you're not flipping screens (which a lot of newbies don't know about) reading the install manual

    4. maybe a utility disk that contains a few more utilities - a partition resizer, command line ftp, lynx, etc

    this is included in the base package.

    5. the ability to pause an install - maybe save it to a diskette?

    Neat, but I don't know if it's doable. It's better to make the install quicker so that you don't have to do this.

    6. better handling of bad media. it sucks to be installing the base system, and the last floppy is broken, and you've got to start all over again (see point 5)

    this is more to do with tar and gz I think. Maybe they could use a better archiving utility, but I don't know what that would be...

    7. default to security. dont install services by default, no matter what package group the person selects.

    I find one of my biggest problems is that I can't get into a debian install once I'm done. If you look at /etc/inetd.conf on a fresh install, practically nothing is enabled.

    8. the 'task' packages should be listed seperately - it sucks to have to scroll thru pages of package lists when you're not sure what sorts of things that you're interested in... maybe some sorta shortcuts/links to package catagories (ie games-nonfree or something)

    That's what apt-get is for :)

  • That's great until you hit a machine w/o windows.
    Whaddaya do then?
    "Sorry, please install Windows, and try again?"
    I've done One dual-boot install in my entire life. I imagine there are a lot more like me...
  • If you make a local mirror and have a lot of same hardware I think it would be easily done. Actually, if you have so much of the same hardware, I would recommend burning a CD with an image of your harddisk. ;)
  • actually there are debian people working on this little toy. It's called auto-apt. So that can mean, if you have something on CD, but a newer version is available on ftp, it will download the ftp .deb and install that and install anything else from CD and all that... imagine that ! :)
  • Debian packaging system is the reason, it's the best installer, but all those packages make it a really long list and this takes ages to check on old hardware.
  • This is also what I would like to see an easy/automated way of rebuilding packages from source so they are optimised, I don't know how hard this can be, after all there are already scrtips for it, I'm sure that's what they use on there build servers right now (all it needs is a way of giving it a gcc machine optimization option).

    PS Sorry, if I didn't find the script on the website or something, or if there already is a package or something to do that.
  • I agree on 2. also it definitly needs more documentation at module selction time (I've only done 2.1 to 2.2 upgrades, so I don't know if it got better atleast some after 2.1). 2. a partition resizer would be good yes, the rest no. Although maybe a list of ftp/http sites would be great to choose from (WITH path !), when installing from the net (maybe this is already available ?), because I don't see any other reason why you would need ftp and lynx.

    About 6. I don't think there is much you can do ?? dpkg's/base install floppy's already have checksums ?

    My own addition to secure by default is openssh instead of telnet (or maybe ask questions about it). And automated download of them like OpenBSD has (it also gives you the choice non-us and US great !).

    One floppy (automated !?) network installs would be great or maybe a tool to make such floppy's (this probably already exists) for specific hardware and network setups ?

    I also agree tasks should have there own section (completly ?) in dselect for example.
  • Now maybe I hit return twice when I thought I hit it once, That most have been what you did, because it's definitly there.
  • but is it really slashdot worthy considering the next version of debian won't be released for at least another year unless we're really, really lucky? I don't think so.

    Because Woody is a current Debian distribution (although unstable) and has been available for months.

    That, and the current installer really sucks.
  • Setting up your fstab file during the install could be improved a great deal. If you go straight through the install you'll end up with one root partition and a swap partition.

    The other problem is that if you can't load a module for your ethernet card, the install wont go through the network setup for you.

    Not that these problems can't be easily fixed - if you have some idea of what you are doing. I know you can select an alternate menu option to initilaize another linux partition...but its not obvious for a Debian newbie.

    Same with with networking; I know its as easy as compiling a new kernel with ne2000 support (since the install modules have never liked any of my ethernet cards, yes I did specify io and irq's), adding one line to /etc/networking/interfaces (if I want to run dhcp, gets much more complex for static) and doing /etc/init.d/networking restart.

    I know this after several installs and looking at /etc files on a machine that was already running Debian. But I wonder how many new users will try to install it a couple of times and switch to Redhat because they can't get networking set up or because they spent 45 minutes selecting packages to install in dselect, only to have it die a few hours later when the downloading debs fill up your root partition because you don't have /var/cache mounted seperatly.
  • that, and Debian kicks much ass

    Oh, I never said Debian sucks, just the installer.

    My IM screen name is Debian Nazi. :-)
  • Sure, it's easy...

    Until, after the base system is installed and Phase 2(tm) begins,the X-server autoconfigurator decides that it wants to install the obsolete S3V driver for your even-more obsolete S3 VIrge card instead of the sane SVGA server, and gives you the choice to put it in or abort the installation.

    Completely.

    With no hint of how to restart it.

    The only reason I'm using Debian right now is because it had the only working FTP install I tried. (didn't try RedHat, but it sucks from previous experience) Stormix wouldn't download the packages saying, basically "An error occured", then proceeded to attempt to install ALL the non-existent .debs with no choice to abort!!!

    Mandrake just hung in the middle of downloading a package when somehow my Ethernet (cheap Realtek 8139 based) card stopped seeing the network :-( I had to use either the Big Red Switch or ctrl-alt-delete to exit the installer.

    SuSE doesn't have DHCP configuration as an install option, only bootp.

    And for some unknown reason Slackware STILL doesn't have FTP install at all!
  • I had a little trouble installing Debian 1.3 as an absolute unix newbie about 4 years ago, but only a little. And these days its a snap. In my opinion the only thing a Debian install lacks is dancing girls to bring my beer while i work. (Have to supply my own) I can install on one machine in a network, and then do the rest by nfs and downloading. Dselect also is a sweet and easy program to use, even easier combined with Apt

  • I agree. A lot of Debian people seem to think autodetect isn't necessray.

    I'm telling you it is. Windows 2000, *if* you have standard hardware, installs like cake: just start the installer, it doesn't ask questions it just installs everything. That's the way to do it.

    If you don't want to install everything, go with the "self healing" mode that Office 2000 does: when something is needed, it ask for the CD, it gets installed automagically.

    I know you guys HATE Microsoft, I hate 'em as much as the next guy, but they have the right idea for installing stuff.

  • What's wrong with Debian's install? It seems straight forward to me. I have installed Debian numerous times on different machines, and have never had a problem.

    Just grab root.bin, rescue.bin, driver-[1-3]; put `em on floppies; boot; setup networking; finish installing from net. Simple. Hell, with a CDROM of the dist., it's even easier.

    I just don't know what they could do to make it any easier.
  • I'd say automatic X configuration would be one of the most useful improvements. It's not even theoretically that hard nowadays - PCI IDs allow you to identify most modern graphics cards, you can obtain monitor specifications via DDC to avoid asking for frequency ranges, USB and PS/2 mice can be autodetected (as can many serial mice) and that's pretty much it. Ask the user if their mouse has three buttons or not and you're there. XFree 4 does a lot of this (X -configure) and should be shipping with Woody, which makes life a lot easier.

    What else? Dselect probably shouldn't appear unless the user really, really wants it. It's an incredibly powerful tool that I use a lot, but the user interface is pretty non-standard. Producing a tool with a non-standard interface is one thing (and arguably a good thing under certain circumstances), but throwing this at people during installation is a bad thing. There should be ways of choosing individual packages without having to deal with dselect.

    To be honest, that's about it. The only other thing I can think of is for the installer to try DHCP before asking questions about network configuration, but the ability to override this is obviously pretty important. Some mechanism whereby you could stick a floppy in one Debian machine, run a program that copied a bunch of configuration onto it then insert that during installation of another machine in order to duplicate the setup of the first would be pretty cool, too. I'd have thought that Debconf may make this possible.

    Oh, more hardware setup during installation would probably be useful. At the moment (IIRC - the last Debian install I did was a couple of months ago) sound hardware isn't dealt with during installation. It's not too much of a problem for me, but the "I just installed this thing - why do I have to answer more questions afterwards to make all my stuff work" response could do with being minimised.

    I'll probably think of more. Oh well.
  • That's something that's always confused me. With the exception of wanting optimisations for your particular processor, why is a source based distribution preferable? When I want to install a program, it's generally because I want to use it. Ideally I want to use it in the minimal amount of time possible. What I don't want to have to do is sit around waiting for it to compile first, especially on my slower machines. Debian does this pretty well, and gives me trivial access to the source if I want it.
  • As another reference point, when the hard drive in my bridge/firewall died I was able to throw Debian onto it in less than an hour. That was a 486/8MB/160MB drive. Installation onto a server I'd just put together took about 30-40 minutes starting with completely unused hardware. I've no idea what's causing the difference.
  • I recently switched from Slackware to Debian and I feel the install was horrible. I can't recall all of them, but for instance, it gave me a nice list of what package groups I want to install. I just had bought a 45GB harddisk, so I was on my way to waste space. I selected most of the stuff, but it did not install half of the most used stuff (development eg. automake/autoconf/etc.). Next it started asking silly configuration questions eg. for Zopy. At the time, I had absolutely no idea of what Zopy was (it's still a bit vague to me) and it didn't tell me, it didn't ask me whether I wanted it, it just asked configuration parameters for Zopy.

    When I started wasting my HD space I simply checked anything that seemed intresting in gnome-apt (why isn't there a good frontend for that apt?). I ended up with all the possible game servers running... (OK, it might be expected that if someone installs a server he wants to run it too, but on my Slackware system I had both xdm and gdm installed with only xdm running. Debian starts screaming and kicking about it every time I start apt).

    But the problem I faced was how to disable the daemons. A few of the most hard were anachrond, wwwofle (or whatever...) and zopy. I removed them from /etc/rc.?/S??XXXX, so they don't start when booting (but it started complaining at shutdown - why? If the daemon is not running "/etc/init.d/XXX stop" should IMHO say nothing), but somehow they always managed to start in a day or two. I finally gave in and uninstalled them.

    Perhaps one improvement might be to first tell it what I want.

    [X] I want a development environment.
    [ ] I want a server configuration.
    [X] I want a nice graphical system.
    [X] I want to waste disk space.


    It seems like a nice distro on the whole, but the installation and management should definately be made more user-friendly. For example it seems to assume that everybody has a fast Internet connection... Can I tell apt "get the newest even if it requires downloading them", "download only if a version is not available locally" or "never download anything"?

    -- Ugh.. Just my rant on an unhappy install.. Blah blah blah..
  • ..would fit onto a single floppy.. and have all the rest from the net. usually everywhere i go there is a fast intenet connection. fast enough to download a the debian installation. so all i need is a good network install. my ideal install floppy set would be just one floppy. kernel. network drivers vor every card. everything else (scsi driver modules etc...etc...etc.. ) should be downloaded from the net. today i need the 5 floppy set. (there is a 3 floppy set but it does not have much network card drivers...so it is useless) but with an install disk that has just kernel, network drivers and a wget one could bild a ntework install disk on a single floppy driver....
  • Bear with me on this for a few moments.

    I just spent a nasty week porting a piece of software that should produce a report describing the outcome of an attempt to load 50-120 files of various formats into an Oracle database with over 120 'important' tables (there are another couple of hundred lookup tables). That's hard. The code is PL/SQL. That generates HTML, which includes a *lot* of Javascript, which generates a whole bunch more HTML that calls more PL/SQL.

    The overall output from this is a report that must be right. The contract depends on it. So, there is a major self-test system built in. Overall, it's a small (25,000 lines of code) but tricky lump of code. (making code-generating code test itself can do your brain over *badly*)

    Most of this task would have been easy. Except, I was working with 300 files for debugging reasons. I could only change 2 of them. We build a respected, succesful product. You can't have people changing things without documenting the change.

    I did it. Because I know how to. Because I have made a *lot* of mistakes, worked on many big projects, and because I'm a smug bastard.

    Many times this week, there was a quick and dirty hack I could have done that would have saved hours. But, the changes would have been in code I didn't own. I *couldn't* change it. If I had done I would have screwed maybe 100 other engineers.

    Unix is, traditionally, designed to have lots of small tools that do one job well. This works well. Until you have to work on a big project. Then, the whole game changes. If you have a single project with 500 engineers, a few million lines of code, several different programming languages and 20 (or 20 million) demanding customers, then programming becomes irrelevant.

    I suspect that Debian, Redhat etc. have realised that a distribution is more complex than any single component (including the million-line+ kernel). Managing a lump of software that big should (from historical observation) take hundreds of people. Most of those people won't be engineers. They'll be managers, documenters, configuration management people.

    I am impressed that organizations like Debian have managed to keep to the release schedule they have. Given the number of people involved, and the spread of skills in the Debian team, I would have predicted one release a decade.

    'Nuff Respect. Complexity *is* hard. And you can't engineer it away.
  • X configuration in Solaris/i86 isn't even a no-brainer. Early in the install it tells you what your video card and monitor are (with spooky accuracy). Then, the rest of the install is done in X.

    More than once, I've got bored with trying to guess monitor capabilities when installing Linux/xBSD (I really mean the excellent XFree86). So, I tank the Free *nix install, stuff my trusty Solaris disk in, and wait until it tells me *exactly* what graphics config I'm dealing with. Then, the XFree86 install goes in clean

    (The Solaris drivers usually kick shit out of the XFree ones anyway - I blame Scott McNeally's World Domination Complex)

  • What it asks is very straight forward. You load drivers (through a menu) partition your disk, set up your network and go. Just because they don't auto detect your hardware doesn't make the install hard.

    No. My distro of preference is Slackware. It doesn't autodetect, and a lot of people think that it's a hard install because of this. Autodetection isn't the issue. The problem is that Debian just dumps a whole mess of packages that you might want to install on the screen, and expects you to sort it all out. When you select the packages you want, it tells you that it's not right because package A conflicts with package B, even though they are completely unrelated.

    And in comparison to that other os, Debian is cake. I don't know where it ever started that windows is easy to install.

    Umm... perhaps because you can click on 'standard install' and get it all on easily? The Windows install process has a lot of problems, but it's nowhere near as fucked up as Debian's.

    Ever installed windows on a board where the specific IDE chipset doesn't have the specific driver?

    Nope, Windows generally comes with the hardware support. Let's face it, if hardware aimed at the x86 market doesn't have Windows drivers, it's basically DOA.

    Windows wouldn't even install on my most recent box.

    Funnily enough, the same happened to me. I installed Slack.

  • EricFenderson wrote
    First of all, I don't appreciate being labeled a troll because I dissed Debian, but I'll bite. Now, I haven't tried 2.2 - we're still running 2.1 - it could be better. But I just don't understand the Debian philosophy of "the more we can fit in, the better it is". Maybe I'm just too much of an old timer to jive with these package things - I don't understand why I should learn yet another package format when source tarballs, gcc, and foo-program --version manage a system perfectly.

    You didn't get labelled a troll because you dissed Debian. You got labelled a troll because the person who labelled you a troll couldn't believe you couldn't figure out how to skip over the system type selection simply by saying "I don't want to do this" at the right time. Sure, it may not be obvious what you're telling it to do the first time, but the second time you should remember what it means. Don't be offended just because he's giving you the benefit of the doubt.

    The way you deal with the Debian philosophy is to realize that you have control over what you install. Just because Potato comes on three CD's (plus source) doesn't mean that you need to install all three CD's worth of crap. Install nothing at first, and then go back and carefully select what you want. You'll need to learn how to use the slash and backslash keys in dselect and how to search packages for file names at www.debian.org, but it's all in your hands. You have all the control you can handle and maybe then some.

    As for being too much of an "old-timer", well, I started using Linux in April of 1992. I've got a boot disk (5.25" floppy) around here that's labelled as "Linux V0.11 Patched" where I had patched the serial drivers to do RTS/CTS handshaking so I could call in to work using the Datarace modem they provided me. (I wrote the patch in the Denver City Hotel, Denver City, TX while I was out looking at the SWEPI CO2 injection project in that part of the world. Ahhh, those were the days!) I go back to when you could neither read nor write MS-DOS disks and you needed shoelace to boot from a hard disk, which was something I never bothered with. You don't get much more of an old-timer than me.

    For my own part, I try to avoid installing stuff that isn't packaged because then I become responsible for its maintenance. When I use a packaged distribution, the distribution's maintainers have the responsibility for keeping track of things. Yes, you can install the latest stuff from tarballs now, but are you going to keep on top of what all the latest stuff is until the end of time? That gets to be work and you'd better not skip any steps or you'll wind up with something whose installation requires more of a porting effort than anything else.

    Case in point: I have a server that started life as a Slackware-based computer in 1995. Along the way, I've upgraded a lot of the software, and written a chunk of custom software, but a lot of the software never gave me any trouble, so I didn't mess with it. Why should I, when there's a lot of other stuff that needs doing?

    Now, I need to install bind 8.2.2p5 because the version that I have seems to have difficulty with AAAA records. Easy, right? You just get the source, unpack it, maybe run ./configure, and then type "make" right? Right. Except "make all" causes the compile to go for a while and then stop because one of the source files can't include sys/mbuf.h. None of my computers has a "sys/mbuf.h" file. It must be confused about my operating system.

    Let's see. I thought I followed the directions. Let's do it again. Grrr! I'd chuck it all, but this is the primary name server for all the zones we serve and moving it is a can of worms I don't even pretend to want to contemplate.

    Think this'll never happen to you? Well, maybe it won't. You might stay on top of things better than I have. However, I've come to appreciate the convenience of an upgradeable distribution in my old age. You may be able to keep track of such things, but I don't have to. Oh, and the command "named --version" doesn't do anything useful that I could see. Just FYI.

  • First Let me say that Debian is my absolute favorite distro, but I think it is unusual that slashdot reports on non-esential Debian goals/activities. Debian's installer, yes it was mentioned on the developer mailing list this week, but is it really slashdot worthy considering the next version of debian won't be released for at least another year unless we're really, really lucky? I don't think so.

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  • FYI: The Realtek 8139 driver included with most distro's is ass. I had exactly the problem you describe with the net just 'going out'. About 2 months ago I couldn't get a decent driver for it, that situation has probably changed, so you should look around.
  • if you have already installed one machine and have the packages the way you want run:

    dpkg --get-selections \* > packagelist

    on the target machine run:

    dpkg --set-selections < packagelist

    apt-get dselect-upgrade

    done!

    --
    Ethan
  • I have some problems with the Red Hat installer. Have you ever tried choosing individual packages? MY GOD is that a pain--you have to double click every single package. And when you tell it to choose packages, it leaves out a lot of important ones deselected by default--like, oh, egcs! Whenever I find myself installing RedHat, I just tell it to use the textmode installer, never had any complaints about that one.
  • Dear Bill,

    We noticed when you were in third grade, you had difficulty deciding just how much mud was supposed to go into each tower in the sand castles that you were creating during recess, so we determined that we needed to develop a more friendly partitioning application and package selection utility to put into the installer in order to reduce the difficulty you experience when installing Debian. We do hope that you enjoy the new interface enhancements, and we thank you for your continued support.

    The Debian Installer Development Team
  • That comment looks familiar... T-Shirt seen at Copyleft.net [copyleft.net]
  • Source is good to support multiple architectures.

    Say i have the i386 binaries and source, if i want to install to say a PowerPC, or an old mac i would need 3 or 4 cd's of binaries for it.

    If the installer could build from source, it would require only a minimum of PowerPC binaries and the rest could be built from source, not time efficient, but better than sending away and getting new binary cd's delivered, or not being able to install to a second machine.

    Debian supports a fair few different architectures, so this could be handy, it would way down on the priority list for the installer though.

  • Do you think your mum could install debian ?

    The trick is making the installer easy, without dumbing it down for those who can make informed decisions.

    I think the key to debian becoming more popular in non technical circles is improving its installer.

    I have been hanging out with the installer team for some time, and we are very much in the planning stage, so constructive feedback is very welcome. (we wernt expecting a slashdot story though)
  • is to be able with dpkg/apt to install just from a list of packages ala RedHat kickstart. Does anyone have any elegant solutions?
  • Cool! Thanks for the suggestion. Some of the hardest things to see are those which are right in front of your eyes.
  • I suggest that Debian take hint FreeBSD "custom/expert" installation. You are presented with a menu, from which you choose a task, such as partitioning a labeling the disk, choosing the installation media, choosing basic software sets to install, and setting startup options. Then you choose "commit", and the filesystem is created, and the base system copied over. Then you can go back and install specific software packages, configure your mouse and keyboard, chage root password -- even set up X. This tool ("/stand/sysinstall") is available to the superuser at any time, and provides a central place for many common sysadmin's tasks, with minimal loss of functionality. It's no replacement for command-line tools, but for an application as focussed as a system installation, it's great. And for experienced FreeBSD users, it allows to to do a full installation in ten or fifteen minutes. (Assuming your disks and source media aren't slow. ;-)

    All in all, it's similar to Debian's current installer, but less linear and allows you to easily make changes before commiting your installation.

    OpenBSD's installer is my favorite of any OS, because there's no bullshit involved. Very fast, very clean, very simple.

    I find Debian's current installer to be the most sane of any GNU/Linux distribution, though. Slack comes in a close second. I hope Debian isn't trying to make it more "user friendly" a la Redhat's default installs (i.e., select one of three "types" of machine uses and sit back and watch). That would be the beginning of the end... Debian seems to be more about pleasing those who know what they're doing, and I don't want to see that change.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • What strikes me is:if you want a server why are you choosing a predefined task ?I would say it makes more sense to just install and configure the base system then get with apt the packages you need.How is anybody suppose to guess what you want on a server and waht type of server are you installing.
    If you need to make similar configuration than just take a look at
    dpkg --get-selections ; dpkg --set-selections .
    It's not Debian's fault that you don't read the docs about available packages or that you don't ask either in debian-user or debian-devel .
    Alterante if you do a lot of installs of similar machines why don't you just create your own tasks ? It's not that hard to make a fake package that contains nothing and have only depends.
    As I said ,read the docs and ask in the proper places for help .
  • Autodetecting is important. It is a waste of time to find out which chip is on your network card, your graphicsa card, your sound card, what the refresh rate of your monitor is, etc... Under linux mandrake these are all autodetected, but in debian you have to go though old manuals, try to figure it out from looking at the cards, etc. How can anyone not consider it a ridiculous flaw?

    (someone who runs debian himself)

  • And $10 for the source CD? That's nonsense. You can get source CDs for about $2 plus shipping if you shop online.

    Shipping to some parts of the world is $8 for a CD. $2 + $8 == $10; QED.


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Have you seen This [usuck.com]? It proves your point in more ways than one.

    -----
  • I wish they would make it clearer what files one needs to grab to install debian.

    Go look the disks for installing debian. It is full of redunancies and confusion. There are docs explaining it all and they are confusing too. They should have zips of popular configurations. That way you only have to grab one file. Thank goodness you only have to install once.

    The main problem I had with installing potato was broken tasks. It is easy to work around though.
  • or expert people who like things to Just Work(tm).

    I'm glad I'm not the only one of those. I bought my wife an iMac so it would Just Work. Best decision I ever made - it was so EASY to set up. Buying a PC last week, it took me 3 days to even get a working system (from components), then another 3 days to install all the stuff to make it a *usable* working system.

    I installed Debian on said PC and found the installation pretty easy. Not as easy as Windows Me, but easier than Microsoft Office. The "basic configuration" is just about 10 clicks away. No network setup was required. No package selection required either, unless (like me) you want all the development tools and kernel source code.

    What sucks about Debian though is that - as a relative newcomer to Open Source - I expected that when I paid $50 for Linux I'd get a CD of the installation and a CD of the source code. No such luck. You get a flyer, though. You can either pay another $10 for the source CD or download hundreds of megabytes over your 56K modem. Great. If I wanted to download hundreds of megabytes, I wouldn't have paid money for a distro. Sending off a check is just so old fashioned ;)

    Er ... that was a ramble, wasn't it? ;)

  • It was called "Storm Linux" but it says it's the Debian distribution. I guess the Storm installer != the Debian installer.
  • i have a linux boot disk that boots up into a tiny ram shell environment automounts an ntfs or fat partition, extracts the password file, and changes the administrator (default, but can choose another) password. so i agree all of this can not only work, but would be sweet

    ---

  • You really should try ROCK Linux 1.2.0 [rocklinux.org].

    When you install it, it brings up a system onto a ramdisk. You have to partition your HD's, format, and mount you partitions yourself (including your source partition or cdrom).

    Then you start the installer. Or perhaps I should say "the sorry excuse for one". You are now at a shell-like prompt with a few commands. One lists all the packages available, and the status (will this be installed or not). So you list all the packages, sees that for example Binutils is not selected. Then you issue the command for selection (was it S??), f.x. "S binutils". Repeat the listing and selection part until happy.

    Then you issue a command which unpacks all the packages to /mnt (you better have mounted a partition there!).

    That's all. Now you chroot to /mnt , configure away, and if you want, make a new kernel and reboot the system.

    Good luck ;-)

    crond@undernet
    Norwegian Linux Community

  • I agree with you somewhat. I'm presently a "long-time newbie" with Linux. (I first started tinkering with it in 1997, but I haven't had much time to get serious with it..) The first distro I tried was Debian. (Bo, floppy install, IIRC.) I thought the installer was a piece of cake - the menu system clearly lays out all of the steps, giving a quick overview of the whole process BEFORE you start. Sure, I had to look up a couple (ok, several) things up here and there, but I never got off track and was able to boot to Linux on the first try.

    Then, I met dselect. Let's not go there.

    So, back to the point - no, the Debian installer is not hard, especially if you know where to find the answers along the way. But, a while back, I tried out Storm Linux and Mandrake, both with graphical installers. The installs were as easy, if not easier, than the Debian installer, and in the end I had a completely configured Gnome box and was able to actually USE Linux apps and get a feel for what I was getting into.

    Granted, that's certainly not what everyone wants. Many of the /.rs want the gritty, hardcore, under-the-hood type of install that Debian offers. But, if Debian could improve that installer, maybe more newbies would have a better experience with Debian and stick with it.

    (Potato ISO is coming down the pipe as I write!)


    Sean

  • I think the Slackware installer is the best Ive seen. It looks/feels a lot like the kernels make menuconfig (is that lib ncurses?), its console-based, and fairly easy to use
  • I'm with you Brother. Mr_Wood
  • RedHat Installer: Menu based, simple options, mostly autodetect. Just click next until you log in as root. It's a very simple process, and easy for people new to Linux, as long as they have reasonably common hardware.

    Once you get it installed, you have to play with rpms or install new packages from source, which can at times be frustrating.

    Debian Installer: Wow. I had to reinstall Debian on my box about 100 times until I got the configuration to catch. If I didn't have a problem with the network card, I had a problem with X. If I didn't have a problem with X, I had a problem with smtp. Basically, the only way I got it done was to reboot the RedHat partition, start linuxconf, and copy all of the appropriate value down so i could enter them later when I tried to install debian. Maybe I'm spoiled and refuse to pull out the manuals for my hardware. Maybe I don't even have the manuals for my hardware. Either way, it tried about 30 network card drivers until I figured out what the right one was. (again from linuxconf in RedHat)

    But, I must say, apt-get has made it all worthwhile. I spend 90% of my time on the debian partition now.

    In any case, installing Debian is a real b$tch.

    Win32 Installer: no idea, as I've never installed it. It comes pre-installed.
  • Something which would be delightful is the possibility of kickstarting a debian.

    Also, Suppose I want to install my system using reiserfs, which is not included with the default kernel, currently. Apart from hacking the install disk, there is not much posibility. Hence it would be nice to have the possibility of pre-configuring an install kernel with features not present in the default one.
  • I'd like to see a Windows-based program that gets all this info, and then burns a Linux boot CD with a customized kernel, etc. set up for your hardware.
  • Everyday there is something negative about the Debian installer here on slashdot. Ok... so some people don't like it. In my opinion it's really not, and never has been that bad. What it asks is very straight forward. You load drivers (through a menu) partition your disk, set up your network and go. Just because they don't auto detect your hardware doesn't make the install hard. I actually started using Debian in '97 because the install was actually straight forward and well documented. I had tried slack and Redhat but they wouldn't cooperate. And in comparison to that other os, Debian is cake. I don't know where it ever started that windows is easy to install... but it isn't. Ever installed windows on a board where the specific IDE chipset doesn't have the specific driver? Well your screwed unless you have mscdex.exe handy. Windows wouldn't even install on my most recent box. Just because Debian leaves you some choices doesn't mean that it's hard.
  • Hmm. Sounds kinda like a Slackware(my fav) manual install :)
  • 1) Insert cdrom.
    2) Boot
    3) mount /dev/cdrom /mnt
    4) tar -xzf /mnt/packagename.tar.gz
    5) Repeat step 4 for all desired packages.
    6) Edit Configuration
    7) Up and running. No reboot neccisary. (Unless you want to rebuild the kernel)

    Moderators: Feel free to mark this as "Funny", though to me it actualy IS the ideal install

  • I think people make emphasis on binary packaging package management systems too much. Something that will couple tightly with "./confgure, make, make install" will do more good then all these packaging systems, in all of the packaging systems they should have such thing. I understand that it will be way harder, but if we can make an effort on making .tar.gzs not retarted RPMs DPKgs and we world would be a better place. Why? Because if maker will follow the guidelines of make tar.gzs and portable software, making binary rpms would be a breeze.
  • Start out, definitely, by offering certain pre-packaged "sets" of install classes: minimal, X station, GNOME station, KDE station.

    There should also be a "Wizard" like Q and A session which asks the user salient questions about the install: like,

    a) what kernel would you want to use?
    b) do you want to network?
    c) do you wish to use X?
    d) what windowmanager(s) do you wish to use?
    e) etc.

    to "layer" certain classes of install on top of each other.

    Any selection of a package should select all dependencies.

    I should be able to tell when I've selected a package or not. VERY LITTLE window thrashing should be required. I tried Debian's install and it drove me crazy, I was in an infinite loop of window thrashes.
  • Well, I'm sure I am. I'm not ashamed of it, either. When I put a disk in the drive, I want to have some idea of what I'm doing, and not have to wonder if I should buy some sixty dollar book just to figure out the quirks and quarks of an install.

    I never noticed anything about an apt in the install. All I saw was a list of things, when I pushed enter it went to another screen and I couldn't get back to the original. Not very intuitive.
  • Please read the Debian Social Contract [debian.org]
    • 4. Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software

      We won't object to commercial software that is intended to run on Debian systems, and we'll allow others to create value-added distributions containing both Debian and commercial software, without any fee from us.

  • that, and Debian kicks much ass

  • I think there's still a fair bit of merit to the thesis of the essay entitled Clueless users are bad for debian. [debian.org] Its initial thesis is:
    • Stupid Users are Bad.
    • Stupid Users are Bad for Debian. therefore:
    • Stupid Users should be ignored.

    With that less-than-hugely-friendly beginning, it moves on to real points that are not nearly as unfriendly as that initial thesis. (Which I think is there to shock the gentle reader...)

    The opinions do not remain any less strong; try out:

    Eventually these maintainers, although they know they provide a powerful, complex tool, would believe that they need to convince lure more users over and gain the approval of those who are too myopic of lazy to RTFM. These great maintainers would confer and agree that perhaps the users are right and it is time to develop an easier way to install. This is the point where I say "foo!"

    The author then proceeds to suggest that "keeping Debian powerful" is Job #1, whilst "making Debian more friendly" is a task that others can worry about.

    I tend to agree with this; the proper priority seems to me to be to keep building a powerful and useful (and evermore vastly increasing) loosely-but-sufficiently-tightly integrated set of packages.

    Making installation easy isn't forcibly part of that.

    I agree with the suggestion that it might be a good idea to have an unambiguously BETTER scheme that could include queueing up installation configuration information, so that you essentially configure as much as possible before getting to the Commit This Configuration To Your System Now point, at which point disks get partitioned, filesystems get mounted, packages get dropped into place, and the likes, rather than configuring it piecemeal, one step committed after another.

    It's probably always fair to say that it's a Good Thing to have a partitioning of package sets (ala "Network Server" versus "X-Developer" versus "Desktop System" versus "Web Server" ...) that perfectly agrees with whatever you, the user, wanted; as preferences are in the eye of the beholder, it's nearly impossible to get this perfect.

    I'd LOVE to see a lot of the "other-than-packages-and-partitioning" configuration deployed via the install tools creating scripts that do the configuration, and which could be used to redo the configuration... My personal prejudices involve cfengine; [hioslo.no] I've set up enough cfengine scripts that any time I install Linux on a system I plan to hook up at home, the first thing I do after getting the system running is to install cfengine, do an NFS mount of my "standard" scripts, and then execute them to set up my favorite maze of NFS mounts, shell configuration, and network services. For a distribution to do this sort of thing would be pretty cool.

  • What is beautiful about FreeBSD is the post-install. I installed Redhat, then helix gnome (yes i used the horrible idea that is go-gnome, i was out of patience by then). Then I was presented with a really really pretty lot of nothing. Nothing to browse through available packages on a repository and install new ones. Heck not even an icon to grpm. No autorpm either, but that doesn't actually have any browse functionality anyway. I got netscape, and got this nice hodgepodge that was rpmfind. Browse by category, and you find the same package with slightly different versions and builds for about a dozen or so builds.

    FreeBSD: cd /usr/ports. I am now a kid in a candy store.

    Debian is a happy medium .. I just like my extreme :)
  • One size fits all works in clothing, but not necessarily software. The Debian installer is less refined and tailored to experts more than other peices of software, but so what? Technical people like technical solutions because it's easier to get desired results. The debian installer is far more flexible and usuable in unique situations than every other distro I've seen. If it's too much for you, get someone else to install it or wait for an alternative installer. Would you do anything less when it comes to rebuilding an engine or painting your house? As long as there's a choice in installation options, though, I'm okay with making a simpler interface. I just don't want to, by analogy, be forced to paint my house with a eyeliner....

  • It would probably do you some good to read the Debian Social Contract [debian.org]. It explains many of these things. I'll give a brief refresher as i go through your comment.

    they're an often politically obnoxious organization threatening to push away corporate newcomers to the Linux movement

    That's silly. I work at a company that makes a commercial distribution of debian, with some custom add-ons (the company is Stormix [stormix.com]). Also, here's a quote from the Social Contract [debian.org]:

    We won't object to commercial software that is intended to run on Debian systems, and we'll allow others to create value-added distributions containing both Debian and commercial software, without any fee from us. To support these goals, we will provide an integrated system of high-quality, 100% free software, with no legal restrictions that would prevent these kinds of use.

    So, you see, Debian has explicitly stated that they are trying to make sure anyone can make a derivative work without being encumbered by bad licenses

    And because it's GPLed like everything else from Debian,

    According to the Social Contract [debian.org], any software written for Debian must be under license that meets the Debian Free Software Guidelines [debian.org]. This could be BSD license, or MPL, or numerous other licenses...it doesn't have to be GPL. GPL just seems to be the most common choice.

    even if they try to change future liscensing, this distribution will make for at least one more before they do so. Let's hope they never pursue that course.

    The social contract specifically says that Debian's priorities are the Users and Free Software. If Debian "sold out" or some such non-sense, it would cease to be Debian. There will never be a non-free release of Debian.

    So, don't worry about getting one more free release of Debian before it goes sour. It just won't happen.

    -Doviende


    "The value of a man resides in what he gives,
    and not in what he is capable of receiving."
  • Now maybe I hit return twice when I thought I hit it once, but I just installed the lates stable Debian on my computer (which uses a regular ethernet card as a network connection) from the CD and I saw nothing in the installation that had anything to do with setting up networking. When I booted, networking didn't work. I had to go into the config files (which were frustratingly different from the redhat layout which, while not bad, was frustrating because I didn't know where to find anything).

    I'd just like it to get the network settings when you install.

  • Well I guess ideally the installer ought to do the minimum amount required to get the OS running with apt or dselect. Then you can go crazy installing whatever else you want or need. One CD rom contains the OS and another (set?) contains all the packages you could possibly want. I prefer this minimilistic approach to the install-just-about-everything method most other distros take.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • In 2002, when woody will be released, technologies in Installation will be more advanced, please keep this in mind. Users may be more demanding. With 2 years (or more!) to plan ahead, the Debian installer should be great!
  • I've been using debian since kernel 2.0.30 came out. (came out, not included in distribution). I've installed it time and time again, and each time, the installer has been fairly consistant. I wouldnt mind them changing it, as long as they make it as flexable as the current one.

    Although I cant really complain about debian's install, I can suggest some things that would have helped me out on some occasions.

    1. the ability to install files from an ftp server, or an http server, or something like that. (looks like it's going to happen so far as the draft indicates)
    2. a little bit more flexability in kernel module selection. More modules in the list, more organization, more explanation, more indication of what info the module may need, etc. A really nice thing would be an index of what hardware uses what module - for example, turtle beach tropez plus uses the crystal audio sound driver, etc.
    3. maybe a documentation disk - should contain some of the kernel docs, some walk through, etc.
    4. maybe a utility disk that contains a few more utilities - a partition resizer, command line ftp, lynx, etc
    5. the ability to pause an install - maybe save it to a diskette?
    6. better handling of bad media. it sucks to be installing the base system, and the last floppy is broken, and you've got to start all over again (see point 5)
    7. default to security. dont install services by default, no matter what package group the person selects.
    8. the 'task' packages should be listed seperately - it sucks to have to scroll thru pages of package lists when you're not sure what sorts of things that you're interested in... maybe some sorta shortcuts/links to package catagories (ie games-nonfree or something)

    Thats about all that i can think of. I'm not really complaining, but these could make my life easier sometimes - not that i couldnt create them myself, but when they're part of the distribution media, its easier.
  • the package and paragraph thing is exactly what debian's deselect does. It also displays currently installed version, the version that's available from your package sources, etc.
  • Leave the installer the way it is, and ship the distro with a "Debian Installation Keypad" -- it's a pressure sensitive mousepad with the word "ENTER" silkscreened on it. Just pound your fist on it about 100 times, and your done.

    But seriously, I think it would be best to let the user describe what they want to use the system for, then allow customization from that point forward.

    also might be nice to let the knuckle draggers choose the classic install up front.
  • This has to be a troll but I'll bite. I don't know what version th poster was using but I can do a network install of 2.2 on a DSL line in just over a hour and that is with alot of stuff. X, Helix Gnome all that good desktop crap. The next point is that if you work it right the 2.2 installer gives you more control over what you want than any installer I've ever seen. Just choose simple install and do not select any tasks or roles. This will drop you to a login prompt and then let you apt-get what you want and only what you want. Debian can be *very* small if you know what you are doing.
  • Yup my only problem with the Debian installer (2.2) is X setup. If you install X it should be easier to set up. Other than that it is pretty sweet. And if you really want to do a custom install (once again 2.2) just choose simple and then don't select anything from the lists. It will drop you to a login prompt and allow you to apt-get what you want and only what you want. With the exception of X having been a pain to get up and going it is really really sweet.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The ideal installer would automatically brew extra-strong coffee at critical points, and come with a heavy-duty hanky for when your hard drive suddenly no longer boots.

  • Re:Good for them (Score:3)

    by Doug McNaught ( 668 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @01:53PM (#760376)
    but on the other hand, they're an often politically obnoxious organization threatening to push away corporate newcomers to the Linux movement.

    I haven't seen any evidence of this myself. Care to provide examples?

    -Doug

  • Re:Geez... enough. (Score:3)

    by mikpos ( 2397 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @03:41PM (#760377) Homepage
    First off: Corel is the one that's making (was making?) a Debian-based distro, right? I often get Corel and Caldera mixed up. If I'm wrong, s/Corel/Caldera/g for this post.

    I don't think *any* operating system or *any* distro should try and tailor to too large a population. This is a big problem for Windows. Windows was a *great* operating system for, say, 30% of the population. But Microsoft doesn't seem to be happy until it gets 100% of the market share. Hence, Windows isn't really "great" for anybody; it's just "pretty good" for most people.

    I wouldn't want to see Debian fall into the same trap. Pick an audience and go with it; don't try to be everything. Maybe Debian won't be the distro that Joe Sixpack uses. Big deal. Corel will be there to pick up that part of the population. Debian is tailored towards hackers; Corel is tailored towards Joe Sixpack. Both are similar (based on the Debian package manager) and both do what they do well. Everybody wins.

    Of course that's an idelic situation and we're not there yet. But I get annoyed whenever Debian (or whoever) does something cool and then someone shouts "but they're neglecting demographic X!" I highly doubt that there will ever be a single product that will be good for everybody.

  • What Debian's installer should be like: (Score:3)

    by pschmied ( 5648 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @02:28PM (#760378) Homepage
    FreeBSD.org [freebsd.org].

    Seriously though. FreeBSD really has a great way to install. It's not as colorful, or graphical as some others, but it really is the epitome of easy--if you know what packages you want.

    I usually start with the standard install, select the X-Developer package, the ports and then any stray packages.

    Then for those truely wonderful programs that they can't fit on one CD (yummm.... LyX is good.) I cd /usr/ports/category/portname, then make install.

    FreeBSD is really a great system for novices, or expert people who like things to Just Work(tm).

    I think that FreeBSD really represents the best of the Ncurses based installers.

    Whatever they do, I hope they stick with the ncurses install. It is just as easy as the graphical system and a whole lot less more reliable.


    -Peter

  • Re:The ideal install? (Score:3)

    by Azog ( 20907 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @05:02PM (#760379) Homepage
    Actually, I kind of like the Mandrake installer, but it's too limiting. But Debian could get some good ideas and code from it, and then improve on it.

    For those of you who haven't seen it... it boots off CD, quickly starts a Linux kernel with framebuffer support, and then starts X on top of that. After picking what language you want for the install, the next question is: choose Regular, Custom, or Expert installs. From that point on it's pretty slick. It autodetects most PCI cards, and sets up X for you. You can also back up at any point, and there is a text mode version as well.

    Anyway, what I think would be good for Debian is something similar to start with, but after answering the language question, instead of just Regular, Custom, Expert, a really detailed menu would be nice.. something like this:

    Choose which ever of these descriptions fits you best. Don't worry, if you change your mind you can back up. These choices just set defaults, so if you're not sure which one is best, just pick one that seems good, and you will be able to customize your install afterwards.

    1. I'm really an expert..
    \- and I want to see all the possibilities.
    \- I'm setting up a lot of computers, and have a saved install config file on the network or on a floppy...
    \- but I want to customize from that.

    2. I'm New to Linux...
    \- I don't know anything about my computer. Please autodetect everything and don't ask hard questions.
    \- I'm a normal home user with a modem
    \- I'm a normal home user with ADSL/Cablemodem
    \- I have a LAN and want to share and secure the internet connection.
    \- I have Windows installed and want to import all my settings to Linux.
    \- I know Windows pretty well and want to see all the Linux options, with explanations.

    3. I'm an experienced Linux User...
    \- I've got loads of hard drive space. Install everything and I'll sort it out later.
    \- I want a customized Gnome environment
    \- I want a customized KDE environment
    \- I want to choose a window manager and pick individual packages
    \- I just want development tools and source code.

    4. I'm setting up a server...
    \- Secure Web Server with Apache, etc.
    \- Samba server
    \- NFS server
    \- MySQL or Postgres SQL server
    \- other choices
    \- customized server

    5. I'm building an embedded system...
    \- Full development environment, plus another partition with one of:
    \- Bare minimum, just enough to boot.
    \- Boot into stripped down X 3.3.6
    \- Boot into stripped down X 4.0.1
    \- (more choices)...

    etc.

    The idea here would that the user would make a choice at the beginning of the process that would guide all the following choices by providing defaults, but not restrict it.

    Autoinstalling software for CDR's, auto-downloading encryption software, and automatically connecting to find updates would all be slick.

    Mandrake also has a pretty slick graphical disk partitioning system. It allows you do anything you want, but also has an "auto allocate" which sets up root, swap, and home partitions. I think Debian would do well to take that, but change the auto allocate default to do the "right thing" depending on the user's earlier choice of what kind of installation they are doing.

    I'm sure Red Hat, Caldera, Slackware, and everyone else has good ideas too.

    If Debian takes all the good ideas from the other distributions and polishes them, they basically can't go wrong.

    I think that there's a tendancy among the linux distributions to a "Not Invented Here" syndome which is actually really strange in the open source world. Debian could break that pattern by using and improving good, GPL'ed stuff from the commercial distributions.


    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

  • Re:The ideal install? (Score:3)

    by Azog ( 20907 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @06:39PM (#760380) Homepage
    Please explain how this would be even remotely possible.
    Sure! I think there's already linux distributions that do this.

    Basically, you would do it by mounting the NTFS or FAT partition that holds windows, from the Linux install. That's easy. Then you read parts of the Windows registry - a little harder, but certainly not impossible.

    From that, you can find out the following information:

    - what kind of sound card, video card, monitor, ethernet card, modem, etc. the user has.

    - What their network settings are, or their ISP phone number, or their email passwords...

    - What screen resolution and color depth the user likes.

    - All sorts of other hardware and software information, like power management settings, how they have their Palm Pilot connected - do they have a scanner, what kind, a printer, a digital camera... Some of that stuff can be autodetected, but getting hints from the registry can't hurt.

    Besides reading the registry, you could import the contents of their Internet Explorer Favorites and set them up as bookmarks in Mozilla.

    You could go to the "My Documents" folder, grab all the files there, back them up, and set them up in Linux all ready to go...

    You could grab their color scheme and set it up for KDE or Gnome. You could try to pick a similar screen saver. You could get their background wallpaper and their winamp skin. If they have the toolbar set to autohide, you can make the KDE/Gnome panels autohide. If they have Quake III, you could go out to the net and grab the Linux executables to set up Quake III for linux...

    There's really no limit, it's just a matter of writing code for it. Most slashdot readers would have little use for something like this, but for people who have been using Windows forever, it could be a very friendly, reassuring thing to have Linux come up for the first time and look very similar.

    This would be a great thing, because a majority of Windows users don't know how Windows is set up. They don't know what their hardware is, or how their email is set up, or any of that. They set it up once, or had their kid set it up, and now they're helpless. Linux could go and find all that information. Installing Linux on top of Windows would be almost as easy and seamless as upgrading from Windows NT to Windows 2000.


    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

  • Re:What Debian's installer should be like: (Score:3)

    by Upsilon ( 21920 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @07:30PM (#760381)
    Um...are you sure you installed Debian? Because from your description it sure doesn't sound like you did. First of all, you say that "basic configuration is 10 clicks away". Last time I installed Debian the installer didn't even have mouse support. Maybe they've changed it since then, but I was under the impression the installer has remained identical (which is the whole reason this new installer is news). Furthermore, you said you didn't have to select packages, but I know of no way to install Debian without selecting packages. There are common groups of packages so that you don't have to select every package individually, but there is still some package selection involved.

    But the thing which REALLY makes me doubt you installed Debian is the fact that you say you spent $50 for it. Huh? Debian is free. Sure, VA Linux packaged a version of it, but the most I've ever seen that sell for is around $30. How the heck did you pay $50 for it? And $10 for the source CD? That's nonsense. You can get source CDs for about $2 plus shipping if you shop online.

    Are you sure it was Debian?

  • Re:Good for them (Score:3)

    by Seth Cohn ( 24111 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @02:00PM (#760382)
    Total Flamebait.

    Go read the Social Contract, and you'll see there will NEVER be an attempt to 'change' the license in that way.

    As for obnoxious, the Debian crowd is the most idealistic and more power to us!!!! I found your post more obnoxious than most (but not all) of the stuff you'll see on Debian lists. And Debian list are renowned for Flamewars :)

  • Geez... enough. (Score:3)

    by spankenstein ( 35130 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @02:35PM (#760383) Homepage

    Everyday there is something negative about the Debian installer here on slashdot. Ok... so some people don't like it.

    In my opinion it's really not, and never has been that bad. What it asks is very straight forward. You load drivers (through a menu) partition your disk, set up your network and go. Just because they don't auto detect your hardware doesn't make the install hard.

    I actually started using Debian in '97 because the install was actually straight forward and well documented. I had tried slack and Redhat but they wouldn't cooperate.

    And in comparison to that other os, Debian is cake. I don't know where it ever started that windows is easy to install... but it isn't. Ever installed windows on a board where the specific IDE chipset doesn't have the specific driver? Well your screwed unless you have mscdex.exe handy. Windows wouldn't even install on my most recent box.

    Just because Debian leaves you some choices doesn't mean that it's hard.

  • Article correction (Score:3)

    by quickquack ( 152245 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @02:12PM (#760384) Homepage
    Correction:
    This looks very interesting -- as a recent Debian recipient (victim?) at the hands of an expert, I must say the install is pretty intimidating. This sounds like a smart area to focus on, but what would an ideal installer consist of, anyhow? Give examples, double space;)

    I believe you meant to say:
    Debian [debian.org] is the #1 VA Linux [valinux.com] distribution.

    Just wanted to let everyone else know that a mistake occured.
    ------------

  • Re:Is it free? (Score:3)

    by Phokus ( 192971 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @01:56PM (#760385)
    It seems that there are a few people still in the dark about how Debian's distribution fits together. We have 2 archives, and each has 3 sections. There is 1 official section in each archive. The two archives are the "regular/low fat/most of the stuff" archive, and the "non-US/don't mind me/watch out for the helicopters" archive. Software that breaks the US export control laws goes into the non-US archive. Inside each archive are 3 sections, called "main", "contrib" and "non-free". The only part of the archive that we "officially" support is the "main" section. Every piece of software in the "main" section is compliant with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. This software is all GPL, MPL, BSD, [insert favourite free licence here] stuff. The "contrib" section stuff *would* be in the "main" section, except that it for some reason relies on something from the "non-free" section. "non-free" stuff is stuff that we are allowed to distribute, but does not fall under our Free Software Guidelines. The official Debian cd images that come out with each distribution contain the regular/main, regular/contrib, non-US/main and non-US/contrib stuff, along with all the source. Of course, often to use much of the contrib stuff, you need to grab non-free stuff (many packages however only partly rely on non-free stuff, such as driver modules, this still gets them into contrib, but you can use them without non-free).

  • For me? (Score:4)

    by w3woody ( 44457 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @03:39PM (#760386) Homepage
    I must be tired, but when I read the headline, the first thought that went through my mind was "why did they go through so much trouble for me?"

    - Bill Woody

  • Re:Plan for 2002 (Score:4)

    by Fist Prost ( 198535 ) on Friday September 22, 2000 @04:20PM (#760387) Homepage
    I would reccomend looking at the shiny spots and faults alike on the more popular (read:more often installed) OS's out there and try to improve upon those concepts. Above all else, try to have "glossy-eyed newbie" and "I can install Windows" modes as well as the "I want to fdisk my hardrive in the most primitive editor you got" type, which a lot of folks still prefer.

    For the newbie/assisted install, try to probe for as much stuff as you safely can to minimize confusion. Also keep in mind that lines like;
    It appears you have a [fxy339 10/100+due/ipx with added dongle support, revision 667], is this correct? [y/n]

    Will scare the living bejesus out of someone who's never installed an OS before, so maybe don't have things like that in the first timer section. Just try to set it up for them and they can maybe try the next level install with a friend if nothing works right.

    Another thing, half the time an intermediate user will find they forgot to do something right on the network setup or maybe the sound card doesn't work right after installation, post install setup is muy importante. The approach earlier Red Hat (can't say about now) and slackware distros is nice. Individual parts of the setup (like modemtool, soundtool, netconfig, etc) may be run from the CLI. Try to integrate this into the setup program itself, so the person can just type "setup" and reconfigure any part of their system from curses or X, without having to know the name of the specific thing they're looking for.

    One last suggestion I'd like to make is the applications selection. Try to get a 1 paragraph blurb about each package offered, and then group all the similar apps together for selection, an example would be;
    Word Processors(check any or all
    that interest you)-
    [] VI. The classic text editor of Unix
    hackers. Has a lot of ~'s in it. Don't
    be frightened however, you'll get it.
    []Emacs. The classic text editor of Unix
    hackers. Click on "tools" then "read
    news" to find interesting porno.
    []Pico. The weenie text editor. It has
    all the commands at the bottom. Check
    this box and be a weenie.

    The user could check off any that interest them, and then remove them from their system at a later time simply by returning to setup (see previous paragraph) and entering the "apps" section. Just a few suggestions for the ideal installer. Stea^h^h^hUse them as you will.


    Fist Prost

    "We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."

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