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Debian

Web Site For Debian Newbies 65

Posted by Hemos from the new-stuff-for-debianites dept.
lemox writes: "DebianHELP is a slash-style site that seeks to allay some of the problems new users face with Debian. There's not much there now, as they seemed to have launched only a few days ago, but it seems like it has a lot of potential. They need Debian-specific write-ups on many problems faced by new users, so here is your chance to make a contribution."
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Web Site For Debian Newbies More

Web Site For Debian Newbies

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  • I think the slowness is due to well /. If it is standing u this well, a Debian story on /. for gawds sake. It will be really fast when it is not getting pounded into the ground
  • From their about page [debianhelp.org]: "Let's face it: GNU/Linux is Unix." (4 paragraphs down after the bold) What a glaring error this is (anyone remember a little ditty that goes something like this: "GNU'S NOT UNIX"?!?) Linux is Linux [linux.org], GNU is GNU [mit.edu] (and most definitely not UNIX). Both are UNIX-like and arguably better, but definitely not the same.

    Other than that (a rather large philosophical error in my opinion) the site looks very nice. A very valuable resource, I think. The best of luck to them.
  • Depends on what one means by something "being a Unix."

    If by "being a Unix," one means that the OS is an "official" Unix somehow, either by the OS code being based on the Unix code from AT&T, or by getting whatever certifications are necessary from the OSF, Open Group, etc., then the GNU/Linux combo is not a Unix.

    If by "being a Unix," one means that the OS has Unix-style APIs and interfaces, then the GNU/Linux combo is definitely a Unix, the recursive acronym in GNU notwithstanding.
  • a) plenty of themes you can work with

    b) some people want layout control, some want layout that works straight up

    c) get linux apache mysql php working and nuke runs out of the box, slash needs a lot of help.

    all depends on what u want

    some people would rather get something that works and dedicate their effort to the content you know.

  • But I'm of the opinion that solving the problems faced by new users is best done at the OS level, not the documentation level.

    Both approaches are necessary in my opinion. Help files are included with Windows, MacOS, etc. because even when a system is easy to use, people need assistance. No interface will be easy for everyone who has never worked with it.

    I would go so far as to say that no system which is so "easy to use" as to not require documentation is not powerful enough to be worth using....

    Nothing against making interfaces that are as intuitive as possible, but documentation is the most important thing in any case. How else are you really going to learn how to, say, write shell scripts? And you can tell me that newbies don't need to know about scripting, but then what are they using linux for? One of the great things about unix-like systems is that you can figure out so much just by grepping through scripts in /etc, and that you can save so much effort with the occasional bash for-loop....

    ---Bruce Fields

  • This site looks like a nice idea, but wouldn't it be better if the same amount of energy could be put into, say, revising the debian install manual, or the apt-get source pages, or whatever? It's nice to have a place where you can go to ask questions, but it's even better if the answers are already there in your system documentation, right where you expect them to be. (Which, unfortunately, seems to be the case less often than it should be, in every distribution I've tried.)

    ---Bruce Fields

  • except for positive moderation done while over the karma kap?

    --

  • I've used linux for about 3 years on and off, and one of the hardest things I had to deal with was poor, or non-existant documentation. I would gladly read the f*cking manual if i could f*cking find it! (not meaning to be bitter, it's the morning coffee)

  • I just do a 'rpm -qa' on Redhat, but I have no idea what the equivalent on Debian is.

    dpkg --list

  • Except that debianhelp.org isn't running slash.

    See this page [debianhelp.org] for details.


    --
    Turn on, log in, burn out...
  • now, why don't you explain to everyone how your grand scheme of solving the problems faced by new users is best done at the OS level.

    By an easier installation system, something more like windows'? Redhat is heading that direction, though their disk druid tool is complete dung.

    Whups, right, sorry. You can't. Or are you still confusing OS with interface? Or maybe you're confusing linux with an OS that gives a shit about new users?

    Operating systems don't care about anything. We don't have AI yet, so computers don't have emotions. Linux users do however seem to care about increasing "market share", so they WOULD seem to care about new users.

    As for the definition of OS, or Operating System [tuxedo.org], the definition in the Jargon File (Thank you, ESR) begins "The foundation software of a machine; that which schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user between applications." Arguably, in this day and age, the installation system and the windowing system can be considered parts of the operating system, whether they run in user space or not (and of course, on unix, they do.)

    Perhaps I should have said "Is best done at the application level" but my statement is not too far off from using proper definitions.

  • Nothing against making interfaces that are as intuitive as possible, but documentation is the most important thing in any case. How else are you really going to learn how to, say, write shell scripts? And you can tell me that newbies don't need to know about scripting, but then what are they using linux for? One of the great things about unix-like systems is that you can figure out so much just by grepping through scripts in /etc, and that you can save so much effort with the occasional bash for-loop....

    Whistler is easy enough to get basic things done in without documentation, and it looks as though it will end up quite stable. Right now, however, it likes to choke quite frequently. In fact, the machine will hang on boot if my Wacom USB tablet is plugged in.

    Similarly, linux is almost easy enough to install and use without docs. Solaris, oddly enough, really IS easy enough to install and use with no documentation; You can tell it to auto-partition a disk, and install everything, or everything plus vendor-supplied drivers if you're feeling uppity, and it'll just work, booting into CDE and everything. No sweat.

    I agree that there's no point to using any flavor of Unix without knowing something about what you're doing. I had some time logged on public access Unix systems (running SCO, for the record) before I installed my own (Xenix 2.3.2 on 286) and then later started getting a real education with Linux (Slackware 2.0 on a 386-25 with 8mb of ram, 120mb disk, and a 1mb Trident VGA card, and I ran X.) Back in those days, of course (which by no means make me an old school linux user or anything), if you weren't quite good with computers, you couldn't even really get slackware installed. If you couldn't figure out how to build a kernel (which there was documentation for) you were bound to not have everything working right. But then, these days, you don't really have to build a kernel at all to use linux as a desktop OS.

    Everything in computing leads toward the end-user not needing any training to accomplish things on the PC. Once upon a time, images in word processing documents were added in a special view and in order to see your text flow, you had to do a preview? Sound familiar? This was the case all the way up into Word Perfect 5.1 on DOS, and it really wasn't all that long ago that that was state of the art. Now, you can drag a photo into word, and stretch it or what have you. Easy. Simple.

    Operating systems are going the same way. The start button folds out and gives you easy access to start things. Once upon a time windows had seperate program and file managers; Those days are long, long gone. MacOS has gotten ridiculously easy. Someone who wants to websurf can buy an I-Opener for a hundred bucks, pay the too-high ISP fees, and never have to open a manual because it's OBVIOUS where everything plugs in and it walks you through everything.

    People will argue that to shovel all that onto an OS is to make it slower, yet you can run QNX from a floppy disk - At least, enough of QNX to dial up and websurf. Besides, the installer only runs at install time. This is all user space, it doesn't require anything in the kernel. It's not going to cause bloat, except maybe a few more megs used on the CDROM. If you're that butt-hurt about it, keep the old, simple installer too, and make both the glitzy and crusty installers call the same scripts and/or programs to get things done, but there's no need for the install process to be painful.

  • A while ago I would've wholeheartedly agreed with you. I tried Debian back when the latest release was hamm (?). After becoming thoroughly pissed/frustrated I went back to using RH.

    Up untill recently I kept on using RH up untill 7.0 came out. After downloading/installing/barfing I decided to see what the other vendors were peddling. I decided, what the hell, let's see what the GNU/Kids are up to - so I downloaded the ISO images for Potato. For starters they've now got a simple option in addition to simply running dselect that allow you to select package groupings. I went ahead and selected the X system core, C/C++ devel/debug and let her rip.

    By getting this base system up and running I was able to apt-get the things I wanted (Netscape, Helix, etc...). In short, anyone who naysays what Debian is doing should probably give it another chance.
  • The most frustrating thing about using a new *nix for me has always been lackluster documentation of admin interfaces for basic workstation needs

    Examples:
    useradd/adduser
    pkgadd/rpm/yast/whatever
    printing system oddities
    startup files
    window system management

    I consider myself an intermediate level user of computers, but I've stayed away from the current distributions of Linux because of the focus on building a better admin interface and screwing up the basics. (I've been forced to learn to deal with Solaris brain damage to a certain extent, but it is certainly nothing I'd use at home.)

    It seems to me that the best way to document this would be to teach the fundamentals and do articles on how the interface the admin tools provide works.

    Simple example:

    adding a user
    The fundamentals:

    password, shadow password, dbm files, home directories, shell .rc files, skel directories, uid, and group memberships.

    Interface tool details:
    Is the home directory created for you and permissions set corretly. What is the "template" directory for .rc files? What editor is used by default and can it be changed by ENV?

    If this sort of approach is applied to managing software packages, printing, setting up name resolution, font management, and so on it would go a long way to making Debian more accesible.

  • But I'm of the opinion that solving the problems faced by new users is best done at the OS level, not the documentation level.

    Both approaches are necessary in my opinion. Help files are included with Windows, MacOS, etc. because even when a system is easy to use, people need assistance. No interface will be easy for everyone who has never worked with it.

    Interface design needs continuous work in any OS, but many people unfamiliar with computers in general and easily intimidated by unfamiliar territory can become confused even when the right choices should be obvious. This is not a problem restricted to newbies. How many technically minded people panick when the computer does something they don't expect and make the problem worse than it is. Blaming the interface only goes so far.

    I don't mean to blame the users for being stupid. Most users are in fact rather intelligent. But panick clouds the head and hinders real troubleshooting. For this reason documentation is a real help.

    Also understand that there are many areas which may be easy and intuitive (like SWAT) once you know the basics of what you are doing that are beyond the scope of beginners. Does everyone need a full fledged web server operating on their machine? Should people who don't know what they are doing run Apache, with mod_perl and php connecting to a Postgres DB? Of course not. With servers, people should know a bit about what is going on before running them, if for no other reason than security. For these things, power is more important than intuitiveness, and documentation is a must.

  • There were two things that I started to get really heavy into at the same time. Lifting weights and learning Debian. Since I had some spare time to kill and wanted to learn perl, I used slash to make a discussion board about bodybuilding [metamuscle.com].

    It sure is a headache to promote a site like that [metamuscle.com]. I should have just made a debian help site and relied on Taco and the boys intense love for Debian to get a debian site in front of a million eyes two days after launch [metamuscle.com]. t;P> Ah, just kidding, I hope this site does great, and I'll to contribute whenever I can to it. Debian is my favorite distro, and I'd like to see Corel [crel.com] and Storm [stormix.com] continue to smooth the gradient for people new to it.

  • Re:Excelent! (Score:3)

    by Kynes ( 45273 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @05:05PM (#611145)
    > Excelent! We need good sources of documentation and HOW-TO for linux.

    something like, say, www.linuxdoc.org? :)
  • I think it was a joke ... :) But I understand, sometimes too much coffee can make anything seem like a personal slight worthy of a gunfight. :)

    Dave
    'Round the firewall,
    Out the modem,
    Through the router,
    Down the wire,
  • Our website deals with newbies in business and aims to guide their decisions based on the latest industry news and some resources on how to run their companies better. Could you guys contribute and help? Me too a founder of a new startup.
  • Check out our web site at the given link and that should answer your quetion and quest also please put in your comments on the site through our discussion forum.
  • Okay, maybe the subject was a little dramatic, but do you not think it's funny GNU/Linux is UNIX, while GNU specifically stands for GNU's Not Unix. Just a little stupid, misguided drama on their part (I guess I am guilty of a similar stupid, misguided drama). GNU's Not Unix is definitely Unix. Makes you go, "hmm."

  • Re:Maybe it's just me (Score:3)

    by jilles ( 20976 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @11:08PM (#611150) Homepage
    You are absolutely right. Somehow, I never need any documentation whatsoever installing one of the windows variants. My network card, video card, sound card are pretty much standard and are recognized by the windows installation without a glitch. As soon as I pop in a linux distribution (I tried debian, redhat and mandrake very recently) I start running in to trouble (network card is not recognized, I'm asked to enter refreshrates for a pnp monitor, soundcard (sb16!, probably the most standard soundcard) is not configured by default and so on). That's not a documentation problem, but simply the result of immature installation tools. Now I realize that installation is not a top priority at debian, but for a mainstream distribution like red hat, this is becoming pretty much unacceptable behavior. Mandrake tries to fix some of this but is rather buggy to say the least.

  • dselect is already being replaced
    so you can all stop whining about it and install the alternatives
    aptitude and console-apt replace it
    there is even gnome-apt(but it sucks.. sort by category, NOT letter *hint hint*)

    (Yes i know debian still uses dselect on install, but you dont _have_ to do that.)
  • I mostly agree. I see several reason for this:

    1. Linux hystorically aims to people that don't mind tweak with configuration and often favors flexibility over easy-to-use.

    2. Modems, video cards and such *must* be compatible with M$soft OS or they will be out of market. With linux, it is the OS which shall adapt to the hardware.

    3. Hardware manuifacturers don't want to realease specs or provide open-source drivers.OTOH, many in linux community are against close-source drivers.

    About how much Windoze is easy to use, I disagree, however. Some time ago, I gave my old computers to some computer-illeterate relatives. I re-installed Win98 on it. Well, they had (and still have) the same understanding problems they could have had with, say, the GNOME or KDE interface.

    There is nothing that beats knowledge to make something easy to use.

  • It even says so in their documentation.

    Really? I had SuSE for two years and never read that. I though it was somewhat 'inspired' by RH, since it uses RPM.

    Their package manager tool ( a part of YaST actually) _does_ resemble dselect, however.

  • I don't see anything bad in selling ads with a non-official debian-site ( not sure that would be a suitable business model, however ).

    The important thing is that any doc is written with an open licence, so they can be linked to, copied, mirrored and edited. In the Web is easy to integrate documentation, when copyright and such do not hinder you.

    debian-user is much appreciated as a very helpful info source. However some of the veterans are starting to be annoyed by the many newbie questions (while others discuss how to put toghether newbies sites ). With more newbies-oriented docs and sites, some of the newbie-introduction load will be put off the shoulder of the list.

  • Excelent! We need good sources of documentation and HOW-TO for linux. All too many times people in #linux or #linuxhelp are rude, and obnoxious when a newbie askes a very sipmle and innocent question. There needs to be websitea nd chat rooms that can help these newbies get into Linux, otherwise how can one assume that linux will grow?

  • I have been working on a computer lab that will give youth the chance to try out other operating systems without making their parents crap their pants about reformatting. The problem is, I don't know that much about those systems. I guess I'm a bit pathetic.

    Anywho...this website will (hopefully) start to let me put this OS in my information bank. Now, only if I could get a good book on OpenBSD that is less than $20.

    In case you might be interested, this lab is part of the youth-run youth center located in Louisville, KY called the BRYCC House [brycchouse.org] (Bardstown Road Youth Culture Center). Just this saturday, they started a webstreaming radio station(It's RealPlayer, but only becasue of a bandwidth donation we got). Please check it out.

  • ...when I finally get off my slacker ass and install Debian [last time I installed Linux was three machines ago, and it was a 1996 era version of Slackware with much help on the install], I'll write down every question I have. Of course, I guess I'll have to edit out questions like, "Why do I have such a crappy computer?" =)
    --
  • *ahem* twas just a joke. :)

  • But I'm of the opinion that solving the problems faced by new users is best done at the OS level, not the documentation level.

  • That is just a tiny wee bit niaive ... if an OS cannot be released until it works with everything you might want to throw at it...

    And the name winmodem does rather give the game away - as I understand them, much of what is done in hardware in a conventional modem is done in (OS) software in a winmodem. The trick, of course, is to turn the winmodem into a linmodem [linmodems.org]. Or, err, buy a concentional modem.

  • FYI -- slash sites abound thanks to Slashcode [slashcode.com]. Some of the more interesting include ...

    Buzz.CA [buzz.ca], EarthDot [earthdot.org], and GoSports [gosports.org] (mine). A full list exists here. [slashcode.com]

    What about a slash newspaper. All news, all dot ... maybe a tech, international news, sports, lifestyle, and money sections to start. I guess if you customize enough you can get there with slash itself by picking up headlines off of others.

  • My winmodem doesn't work properly with Debian.

    Then why did you pay your hard-earned precious [pineight.com] money for a modem that was designed to work exclusively with Microsoft® brand Windows® brand systems and not with Debian GNU/Linux® systems?

    Also..solitare and minesweeper don't seem to work.

    What problems did you have getting XFree86, GNOME, and GNOME Mines to work? These are the kinds of questions you might want to ask at debianHELP.org [debianhelp.org].

  • DebianHelp vs DebianPlanet (Score:3)

    by doomy ( 7461 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @05:21PM (#611163) Homepage Journal
    What's the difference between this and Debian Planet [debianplanet.org]. Seen it in the topic on OPN. I figure this must be the eh? Offical help site? Ideas?
    --
  • I've been using Linux for 4 years and I still find debian installation to be the most confusing. The menu then submenu then dependancies. It boggles the mind. Why not do the dependancy checking after I have selected all the packages. I'll admit it has been a while since I tried debian (2.0). But I don't think it has changed that much.

    Why are they focusing on debian? What about slackware? Oh yeah that is easy to install, it just doesn't have a decent package manager. I think that is why I went with Redhat. It was easy to install (relatively) and has some sort of package management. It is nice to be able to upgrade fro mRH 5.0 to 7.0 with little problems. I hear debain's apt get is supposed to be nicer, the only problem I have is getting debain installed and getting through dselect. How about "dselect for dummies"? Or installation for idiots. Something short and simple. Or better yet just redoing the installation of it to make it more humanly understandable.

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • Seems like a lot of people are using phpnuke now. When I was trying to create a web log of myself I didnt see any clean slash like implementation that would interface with postgresql. My only option was to create my own web log [f2s.com]. Sadly I've lost interest in this endevour. Maybe someone here might be interested in taking over the code and doing anything they wish with it? I work mainly with Unicode, so I had a revision of the code that did Unicode pretty well. The only drawback is that my application (named smoothlogger) lacks threading (due to political reasons). There is a pretty extensive admin interface and some nice tools. Everthing comes in a few tiny files :). And it fuses well with postgresql. Enjoy.
    --
  • Actually, I have had more problems with Debian, but found Suse more confusing (seems somewhat based on Debian really, but with a dselect-like GUI...).

    Where I have had real problems in Debian hasn't been in the install but rather with kernel services like ipchains which, apparently was not included by default on my kernel.

    I intend to get much use out of this site!

    Entirely as an aside, I like how the mount points for CDROM and Floppies are in the root directory in Debian. Make sense and saves keystrokes. At the same time I use mostly Redhat...

  • Re:No help whatsoever... (Score:3)

    by thopkins ( 70408 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @05:37PM (#611167)
    You don't live on the bleeding edge and run Woody. My woody has been quite stable.
  • SUSe was based on slackware not debian. It even says so in their documentation.

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • This still does not solve the dselect problem. It is clugy.

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • Ever spend time in #linux? There is a constant flood of people coming in and asking fairly stupid questions they could easily find an answer to if they did a search on google. Most of the rudeness is basically "RTFM, newbie!" which people should have done in the first place. Answer them and you've helped them solve one problem... send them to the man/HOW-TO/FAQ and you've helped them solve most of their problems.
  • the article said slash-like

  • Re:Maybe it's just me (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Unfortunately, the chances some newbie is going to accidently type


    # man man


    at the prompt are remote and rapidly diminishing.
  • What I want to know is how much help they'll give for Debian BASED distros. I'm not talking about Corel since they fucked Debian around soo much. I use Storm Linux. It uses apt-get (therefore it uses .deb). It's essentially Debian with real KDE support, not that I have KDE installed anyways, but Storm detected and ran my Voodoo 3 3000 with out any problems where as with Mandrake, SUSE and Red Hat it crashed X every time.

    Mandrake is one of the best Distros out there, even Linus himself says he uses it(along with SUSE and Caldera), but I hate RPMs with such a passion. I think that Madrake only based thier distro on Red Hat is because it's the more established "standard" and would be easier for newbs.

  • DebianHelp is for absolute new users. DebianPlanet is not. That is the difference...well...I think it is the difference.
  • just use the faq at openbsd.org. you can also download the faq or get a local copy of the website like this(which assumes your using bash, read your man pages for other shells),

    export CVS_RSH="/usr/bin/ssh"
    export CVSROOT="anoncvs@anoncvs.usa.openbsd.org:/cvs"
    cvs get www

    the faq is more like a manual than a real faq. also, the man pages in openbsd are way better than on any linux dist. they are usually the first place to look for how to do anything.

  • stormix is supposed to be an easy to install debian. you can get it from http://www.stormix.com [stormix.com]. its still has deselect (and a pretty gui version of the same thing)

    from my limited use of it, seems kinda nice. havent dug that deep to find out if it had any incompatibilities with the "real" debian. it did fine with auto detecting sound and video hardware on a few machines that i tried.

    progeny [progeny.com] also has debian dist now in beta. havent tried it yet, but this one also looks promising.

  • And we nail them down with the slashdot effect, right ?

  • Or maybe even...

    Linuxnewbie.org [linuxnewbie.org]?


    -RickHunter
  • If your looking for step-by-step tutorials and howtos, HardcoreLinux [hardcorelinux.com] is your daddy.

  • Yeah, but it's not supposed to bleed, is it?
  • What I'd really love to see is a comprehensive guide/howto explaining the differences between Debian and (pick your favorite competing distribution) along with a guide to getting started with Debian assuming you know another distribution pretty well.

    I've used several different distros in my time, Redhat for about the last 2-3 years, but haven't tried Debian yet. I'd like to, but I just don't have the time to muck around with another distribution and learn all of its little nuances. Plus I recently got an account on a friend's co-located box which is running Debian. It's been a little difficult trying to help him with a few system administration things since I don't know my way around Debian quite as well.

    Does any such document exist for any set of distributions?

  • I asked these people about the severe erectile dysfunction I began experiencing after switching to debian, but they were no help. They wouldn't even talk to me until I agreed to refer to it as my GNU/Penis.
    Damn zealots.
    --shoeboy
  • http://www.Linuxnewbie.org
    has all kinds of walkthroughs to get hardware and software.
    It has gotten me out of a bind quite a few times
  • No, it does not run the memory usage daemon and bloated Perl code which makes Slashcode. This site is the new PHPNuke [phpnuke.org], better looking, lighter, cleaner layout, cleaner display. I'm no coder or worker for phpnuke, but it sure does kill slashcode.


    --------------------

  • Ahh, some signal among the noise.. I hope... (Score:4)

    by TrIaX ( 59440 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @04:38PM (#611185)

    The site, while pretty bare ATM, and a tad on the slow side, is an excellent start. There have been times when I started out with Debian that I was wondering "WTF?" and the answer been something simple like "you need to install the *-dev package to compile things against it" or something complex like having to touch various files during the kernel module probes when potato (back when it was unstable :) broke.

    I did notice on their banner that they have "debianHELP: Militantly FREE software help." in their top bar. I hope this means that they aren't going to reject helping those with questions on the non-free packages available, but instead allow questions/answers/writeups on ALL thing Debian.

    Being a long time Debian user, I'll probably start lending spare time to help with what they need help with as my way of giving back to a distribution that I've fallen in love with. I just hope it doesn't turn into the standard "newbie posts questions, regulars flame with RTFM!" type of environment.

    ---------------------
    Aluve, TrIaX

  • You're reading it.

    Seriously, when I decided it was time to get into Linux, I just read every Slashdot article that looked like it might spawn a discussion of distributions. From this I made my decisions, started with SuSE (I'm too contrary to pick Red Hat..mustn't pick frontrunner) and moved to Debian just recently.

    I think it came out well. SuSE was easy enough to deal with for a newbie (the book is quite helpful, to me), and it got me used to Linux enough that I'm managing with Debian, which I had heard is difficult to install (agreed) and lovely once it is running.

    My reasons for switching: SuSE is very KDE-oriented. You get minimal support for Enlightenment, and GTK themes just don't seem to work right. The KDE stuff works fine, but I prefer Gnome, and decided a Gnome-centric distribution would be useful. The other reason for switching: every time I wanted to update the system, I had to manually walk it through getting the package list. There's no fire-and-forget method. It's not difficult, but the allure of a single command to update was too strong to resist.

  • debian help is a very good thing (Score:3)

    by daniell ( 78495 ) on Monday November 20, 2000 @04:40PM (#611187) Homepage
    the only odd thing about the organisation that Debian is is that the docs are a bit bad. They sort of rehash the same old docs and edit just a few things here and there, many of them are not clearly available in any html doc link, and are intended to be read once you've downloaded the installation. I think that a group of people out there specifically working to help keep people informed about where all the config files are and where the links to basic install information is would be quite helpful to those who want to try linux, and have heard that debian is better to use once its running than say red hat. Which is an opinion of course, but it would be a shame if they didn't get to experience the Debian dist just because the redhat dist has clearly addressed newbie issues.

    -Daniel

  • You're reading it.

    Seriously, when I decided it was time to get into Linux, I just read every Slashdot article that looked like it might spawn a discussion of distributions. From this I made my decisions, started with SuSE (I'm too contrary to pick Red Hat..mustn't pick frontrunner) and moved to Debian just recently.

    That's actually a pretty good point. I certainly wouldn't have any idea what .debs are or all the wholesome goodness that apt-get is supposed to be without reading slashdot. But I'd love to see a document that goes into the details of this stuff from the perspective of a seasoned Redhat user (or whatever distribution). One section might be common system administration tasks translated from one system to the other. For example, to list all packages installed on the system I just do a 'rpm -qa' on Redhat, but I have no idea what the equivalent on Debian is.

    Yeah I know, RTFM, and ultimately experience is the best teacher, but my whole point is that I don't have the time to spend on it like I once did, so I'm not going to attempt to switch unless it can be done without a lot of time invested. I used to have time to tinker and learn the guts of the system for hours on end, but now I just want something that works and works well. Redhat does well enough for me that at this point, any benefit of Debian probably isn't worth the switch if it means hours wasted just getting back up to speed.

    A well written document like this would be a great asset to the community... and who knows, maybe if more people get educated about different distributions, stupid flame wars would subside.

    Or maybe not. ;-)

  • Hullo?
    It was a joke. Laugh. It's okay.

  • As of Debian 2.1 the installation is MUCH nicer-- there is a "simple mode" available (dselect for dummies is right!) and it is very easy to use.

    Side note: I LOVE it when people dig into a distro or program or whatever and then say "well I haven't used the latest version that fixes all these problems, but it doesn't matter because I like to complain because it improves my karma."

    anyways... > 2.1 == good.

  • when slashdot posts an article about my website (run by Debian), and brings it to its knees?

    "Two is not greater than three, not even for large values of two."
  • I hope more Debian sites surface in the future. It's arguably the purist of Linux distributions because it's user maintained, has an ultraswank package management tool in Apt and runs lean. I just hope a clear-cut Deselect howto is in the plans, because i almost did a flying elbow on my keyboard the last time i tried using it.

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