
The Very Verbose Debian 3.0 Installation Walkthrough 302
Gentu writes "Cited the general displeasure which accompanied the Debian 3.0 release, mostly regarding its dated installation procedure, Clinton De Young wrote an easy-reading but long article for OSNews going through the Debian installation step by step. Of course Progeny released recently the PGI graphical installer, but it is not as complete as the current Debian text-based installer and it will definately be quite some time before it get adopted by the project."
Ease of use (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ease of use (Score:4, Insightful)
not so much dumb itself down but at least make a more intuitive interface, and i'm not just talking about the instalation. If they want less-than-ubergeeks to use it then they whole thing should be reworked.
Re:Ease of use (Score:2, Insightful)
Debian is a technical distribution for technical users.
I would go as far as to question if the Debian devlopers are that interested in expanding beyond the current user base.
Re:Ease of use (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ease of use (Score:2)
So let's have both.
it IS being reworked! (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, and it is being reworked. Not so much because we think it needs to be "dumbed down" as because the existing system is fragile, and takes too much work to tune for each new release. Tweaking and banging on the old system has added months to each of the last couple of releases.
The new system (d-i, or debian-installer) is in heavy development, but wasn't ready in time for Woody.
Re:market share (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, the installer is not that difficult.
for the thrill of it , ofcourse (Score:3, Insightful)
And many of them also have some ideological views (like breaking the monopoly of a certain software giant)
I think their market share actually DOES matter to them.
(I agree on the installer though)
Re:Ease of use (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ease of use (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ease of use (Score:2, Insightful)
well that's patently untrue. i have to work with stupid people who use debian.
in my experience, the debian demographic is most strongly represented by 2 idiotypes: those who are in the older bracket who know their shit but are totally elitist about it, and those in their teens or early twenties who think they know it all and who really cut their teeth on redhat or mandrake and switched because of religious indoctrination. both groups cling to towing the debian line with a religious fervour rarely seen outside the middle east.
just get the fucking job done ffs. use whatever you find easiest. please don't give us the "debian is better" line because i've had to use both mandrake and debian, as servers, side-by-side for several years and there is ***no*** difference in stability. debian just takes (much) longer to install.
Re:Ease of use (Score:2)
Think I know it all? Some days. But *I* started on Slackware, went to Red Hat (5.2), got fed up with Red Hat, and switched to Debian, liked Debian, and stayed with Debian. I will probably keep using Debian until I switch to HURD (which will still be Debian).
I use Debian because I find I can be most productive with it. Gentoo is nice, but I don't want to waste time building everything. Everything else I've used simply lowered my productivity.
Re:Ease of use (Score:5, Informative)
Not anymore... [debian.org]
I run a mixed testing/unstable system this way, and it works for me.
Re:Ease of use (Score:2)
Re:Ease of use (Score:2)
I run a mixed testing/unstable system this way, and it works for me.
And I run a mixed stable/testing/unstable system; a mixed testing/unstable system; and a mixed unstable/experimental system with a whole bunch of 3rd party sources in my sources.list.
Mixing packages from the different distros is easy and you can add other repositories which are not part of official Debian.
And "malfunctiony" isn't a good term for describing unstable. It actually works very well. My primary desktop is the mixed unstable/experimental system.
Re:Ease of use (Score:2)
and i can't understand the fuss about dselect.. it works, which is enough, by that i mean that it _really_ works, and the interface keys are easy enough to learn. and it takes care that you have the stuff that you need to run the stuff you have selected(and shows the recommended/required too).. just select the programs you wish to run and it'll take care of the rest.just about everything else would be eyecandy. imho it's better than windows update.. which _has_ let me down several times(illeagal exception while updating, so how do you update?).
and for those that want eyecandy easy-easy x86 debian, just get xandros...
Re:Ease of use (Score:3, Informative)
Why I bother to use aptitude (Score:3, Informative)
Well, as a recent aptitude convert, I can give a partial answer to this. Aptitude keeps track of which packages have been installed purely as dependencies. Any "auto-installed" packages (marked with "A" in the display) will be automatically removed if you remove the package(s) that depend on them. (And you can set/unset the "auto-installed" flag manually if you want or need.)
Furthermore, you don't actually need to use the fancy aptitude interface -- you can treat it as (essentially) a replacement for apt-get, i.e. you can say, "aptitude install foo", and it'll install foo, plus its dependencies. However (and this is where it gets good), you can later say, "aptitude purge foo", and it will remove foo and its dependencies[1]. No "pain" involved for an experienced apt-get user, except learning to type "aptitude" where you used to type "apt-get".
Plus, unlike apt-get, aptitude will take notice of suggestions and recommendations. You can configure how it treats these. I find life much happier with aptitude treating "Recommends:" as a dependency and ignoring "Suggests:". This is much less annoying than apt-get's habit of simply ignoring everything except actual dependencies. (And, if you're the install-everything-just-for-luck type, you can have it auto-install all of the suggestions too.)
[1] except those dependencies in use by other things, of course.
Re:Ease of use (Score:2)
I bet that has nothing to do with your packages not being up-to-date. Old "known good" packages tend to have less bugs and predictable functionality, but are saddled with security issues. In fact, as far as security is concerned, the bleeding edge is almost always better.
A compromise between stability and security is of course releasing patched versions of older, reliable versions of software. This is why RedHat is still at OpenSSL 0.9.6b. They just keep increasing the patchlevel.
Re:Ease of use (Score:2, Interesting)
dh_make_perl is a better solution; it creates a real package from the CPAN module, so upgrades and removals can be handled cleanly. Plus, like any package, you get to see what it is going to install before you let it change your system.
Of course, the best solution is to package it for Debian, or to file an RFP for whatever needed it in the first place so that somebody else might package it.
The day I can't manage runlevels by manipulating symlinks in the filesystem, but instead have to use some wretched special-purpose utility, is the day I find out who is responsible for enforcing their ideas on me and rip out their lungs.If people just want *alternatives*, then there are at least five or six different systems packaged for Debian that manage this stuff.
Re:Ease of use (Score:2)
Just say no to messing with
Re:Ease of use (Score:5, Insightful)
Something need not be fully graphical to be intuitive. I talking like MS-DOS editor vs VI intuitive. They just need to spruce it up, and add some better default options.
Shit, even the FreeBSD 4.5 install is monochrome text! But it's intuitive. With options like "You can configure your partitions manually, but if you have no idea what the f**k you're doing, press X to autoconfigure," or something similar to that.
Re:Ease of use (Score:4, Funny)
so you're saying that if windows does it it is alright? do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?
Re:Ease of use (Score:4, Insightful)
For a solid discussion of why design consistency (across programs, platforms, and systems) is key, check out Joel On Software's User Interface Design for Programmers [joelonsoftware.com]. Here's the relevant part of the argument:
So, if Grandma can install Windows but not Debian, there's something wrong with Debian, if Debian's goal is to become a distro that the average person will use. If Debian's goal is to be some '7ee7 h4x0r d00d w4r3z O5, then make it hard--hell, make it obfuscated. That'll show those newbie lUsers, right?Re:Ease of use (Score:3, Insightful)
You're forgetting that Grandma can't install Windows -- Grandma gets her computer with Windows pre-installed. Oh, and if there's ever any problem she pays the teenage kid next door five bucks to fix it for her.
Quite frankly, I'm not sure what the fuss is about, regarding the Debian installer. I'm hardly a "guru", but I've had no problems with the installer the last few times I've had to use it (most recently, two weeks ago). It's intuitive enough for anyone who can actually handle a clean-install of pretty much any operating system, and it's easily navigable if you don't quite get it right the first time.
Re:Ease of use (Score:4, Insightful)
Like I have posted before, the perfect product is as easy to use as turning on a lightswitch. The difference between being an expert and newbie is eliminated and the product "just works".
People need to stop spreading this myth that ease of use is for dummies. Ease of use is the ultimate goal, Period!
Re:Ease of use (Score:2)
Re:Ease of use (Score:2)
I don't think Debian deserves to be exclusively associated with high levels of clue in their user base. This may be a security blankey that some hold on to in order to feel elite, but I don't think it is fair or true. Red Hat, Mandrake, and other distributions with graphical installation front-ends may be more accessible to new users, but that does not mean the power users of those distributions are any less intelligent than Debian users.
Besides, if I want to feel like I'm really stretching my brain, I install Gentoo or a BSD. Debian (aside from Progeny, RIP) has always seemed like a feature-lacking Linux distro to me.
What about debian's own install guide? (Score:5, Informative)
-dk
Re:What about debian's own install guide? (Score:2, Redundant)
Long installation manuals? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Long installation manuals? (Score:2, Funny)
Comming a long way. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Comming a long way. (Score:4, Insightful)
Debian is in no way an uber-geek distro or anything. The installation is actually one of the best I've ever seen. This is mainly because you can choose the order in which you want to set up your installation. :)
If you don't know what to do, the installer gives you the most logical next step and alternatives. Switching back and forth between different installation steps is also very easy (if you screw up or forget something).
The terminal also comes in quite handy sometimes (although I don't think it's something for newbies)
The only thing that makes Debian "hard" to install is the fact that you have to use your keyboard to navigate (tab, arrows, enter) instead of pointing and clicking. And if you would just take 5 minutes to master your keyboards navigational keys, you'dn notice it's not such a daunting task afterall
Same goes for configuring the system after initial boot. Debconf will help you trough it all, with almost every ease of the graphical configuration tools on other distros. Although the package selection can be a pain in the ass, but then again, you could just select tasks, instead of individual packages.
I think the main problem is that some people don't like the Debian installation/configration because ncurses looks "old" :)
right solution, wrong problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is, as many people has mentioned before, the automatic (non-existing one at that) hardware detection. We weren't sure about what kind of network card he had (as in which chipset to use), and we were doing a network installation (just boot up from disks), so that was a huge problem. Finally, we just tried all the drivers, one by one, until the right one didn't fail on load.
Everything else was pretty easy.
Re:right solution, wrong problem? (Score:2)
I've run into the driver selection problem, as well as difficulty picking up my existing ReiserFS partitions. But those I could get through as long as I had a second box with a network connection up so I could ask in #debian.
The showstopper for me was what this writer seems to call 'tasksel'. No doubt one you know how Debian packaging is categorized (and once you stumble into the right keys to expand and collapse trees) it's perfectly obvious how you use it.
A clear explanation of how that step works would be more important than a lengthy/verbose explanation of the whole process. Although, given that the author of this new HOWTO recommends just not using it at all, a simple explanation may not be forthcoming.
Re:right solution, wrong problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have tried recently to install debian "Woody" on my own for the first time and coming from the perspective of a ex-PC/Mac user, now a dedicated initiate to the Tao of Linux, I think there is room for improvement of Debian in a number of areas, primarily respective to the beginning stages, though not limited to it, in addition to both installation and intuitive hardware support as mentioned by Dionysus [slashdot.org].
Now I won't harp on the negativity, because overall, I have found both Potato, Woody and Sarge to be rock-solid, and many of the KDE and Gnome applications are comparable to their Windows and Mac equivalent office and system utilities. As a matter of fact, when it comes to system utilities, in fact with basic to moderate knowledge of Debian, one can easily administer many powerful capabilites, such as Apache, samba, perl, gimp, MySQL, and much more. Okay now I'll get back to topic.
I had trouble with my video chipset not being supported by the default kernel and needed to get a different one, either by downloading a different binary, or compiling it myself (soon, maybe, but I don't trust myself to do that yet). I also had trouble with a set of Debian install diskettes that kept giving me a "Malformed Release file" error. I had base install image diskettes, that after downloading and imaging all 20 onto diskette found out the the gzip archive was corrupted. I had difficulty determining the cause of the problem. After installation, configuring the network was over-simplified and should allow for more interaction with other installed packages
Now, I think these could be resolved with the following additions or changes:
Well, that's a bit more than just $0.02, but as far as getting solutions, I'm going to be looking into a error databse for debian... maybe the developers have something like that, if not, who wouldn't want one? (Wanna help? [mailto])
~Calamon
Re:right solution, wrong problem? (Score:5, Informative)
Finally, we just tried all the drivers, one by one, until the right one didn't fail on load.
This doesn't address the general issue, of course, but it's a very useful tidbit for your future information:
If you're trying to figure out what driver to use for a semi-unknown card, you can often get some really good hints by running "lspci". It just lists everything that the PCI bus reports on it. "lspci -v" gives a bit more information. I find that 99 times out of 100 I can just look at the information reported and narrow down the list of possible drivers to just two or three.
After that, of course, modprobing them one by one is the simplest way to figure out what's likely to work, but it's a lot easier with a smaller list.
Failing that, I've resorted in the past to writing a little 'for' loop in bash to just load every driver in the directory, then running 'lsmod' to see what managed to load. Something like:
...executed in the directory with all of the network modules is butt-ugly, has numerous problems... and very often works like a charm ;-)
Not newbie-friendly, though. But for me, like many I know who were around during the bad old days of Windows driver hell (Win95 to early Win98), I have a visceral fear of automagic hardware detection, and I would *much* rather just configure it myself, thank you. That way I know what is getting loaded, and when, and why.
Heck, I even tend to configure my kernels with everything as a module just so I can tell what drivers are being used and what aren't.
Re:right solution, wrong problem? (Score:2)
At least it did for me.
Re:right solution, wrong problem? (Score:2, Informative)
Thanks for the info.
Re:right solution, wrong problem? (Score:2)
the point, I think, is that you shouldn't have to.
And I wasn't disagreeing with that point, just giving you some ideas for the next time you find yourself in a similar situation.
I do know that when I used RedHat, most stuff (like the network card) was autodiscovered. And as long as you have an option to confirm it, I don't see a problem with that.
I'm just excessively picky; it's not the fact that the card is automatically discovered, it's the fact that I don't like the way the installers configure them to get loaded up. And the problem really isn't with autodiscovery/configuration on install, it's the fact that RH, Mandrake, etc. want to do discovery again every time the system boots, so if I fix the configuration the way I like it, chances are kudzu is going to come along and muck it up after each power failure.
Re:right solution, wrong problem? (Score:2)
RH, Mandrake, etc. want to do discovery again every time the system boots
That's probably so the OS can detect new hardware the user might have added. Of course, you have a good point that the OS should NOT overwrite configuration settings for pre-existing hardware. It should just recognize new hardware.
Arg! (Score:5, Funny)
AAArrrgggh! RAS syndrome!!
(RAS: Redundant Acronym Syndrome)
Re:Arg! (Score:4, Funny)
That was the joke, right?
i386 Is Not Enough (Score:4, Informative)
> graphical installer, but it is not as complete as
> the current Debian text-based installer
More importantly, it's i386 only.
Re:i386 Is Not Enough (Score:2, Informative)
Jeff Licquia
Progeny employee (but not speaking for them)
Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux... (Score:5, Informative)
On my house mail server, that's a different story. I'm running Debian on an old P133. Debian made it really easy to install a totally stripped down system and exim configuration beats the *#@$* out of sendmail configuration as far as I'm concerned.
The debian install isn't bad at all if you're FAMILIAR with linux and know what you're doing. People complain it isn't as nice as Mandrake install. Guess what, Debian is put out by hobbyists and not by a commercial company. The focus is on functionality, NOT GUI interface design.
Debian isn't shooting for the average Joe Schmo linux desktop user. I think Debian is great for systems when you want TOTALLY cutting edge (unstable gets updated all the time and installing new packages over the net is a breeze), when you want just a few precisely chosen packages, or when running headless.
My largest complaint about Debian isn't about the installer per se, it's about X windows and fonts. Basically, I apt-get install gnome etc... and I have no idea what is up with the font situation. It use to be that you didn't even have truetype and had to fuck around for hours to get basic truetype working. I have no idea what the situation is with anti-aliasing and gnome 2.
But watch the criticism of Debian. Debian is a free product that is remarkably functional. It literally amazes me that anything in Debian works at all (and for the most part, everything does *with a lil tweakin*). Unless you start paying money for Debian GUI development, watch your tongue :P You're not ENTITLED to completely free operating system with a nice graphical installer!
Re:Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux (Score:2)
I think Debian is great for systems when you want TOTALLY cutting edge (unstable gets updated all the time
Just to head off the obvious incoming criticism (no KDE 3 in unstable, GNOME 2 just hitting unstable, etc.), allow me to point out that the state Debian unstable has been in ever since the developers got serious about the Woody release is an anomalous situation, and it'll be corrected soon. The Debian development process has been going through some major growing pains recently (my box reports that it has over 11,000 packages available to it, and most of those are available in 11 architectures -- *whew*!) but things are getting sorted out, things are getting automated and I expect unstable will soon be the leading-edge distribution it has traditionally been. It may not quite keep pace with the source distros (Gentoo, etc.), but I think it's a very reasonable choice for those who want to stay on the leading edge but don't have time for the bleeding edge.
And, FWIW, I'm posting this from a Debian unstable box running KDE 3.0.3 with all the goodies. Getting KDE 3 running involved adding one line to my sources.list and running an ordinary update.
Re:Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux (Score:2)
Note: I am not saying that Debian sucks, just that people have IMO very valid concerns about its installer. Why not voice them?
What about O'Reilly (Score:2, Offtopic)
Debian & the Happy Gentoo User (RTFM Syndrome) (Score:5, Insightful)
People say Debian's installer sucks for people who don't know what they doing. I had trouble the first time I installed Debian. I can whisk through the installer with no problems now.
I installed Gentoo some months ago for a LUG demo. The installation process ate my Windows partition (because I was an idiot and typed mke2fs
Putting the installer into X or gtkfb will sure make it seem a bit more friendly for new users, but unless it's backed up by a great set of administration tools for package management etc such as Red Hat provide, you're just fooling people into thinking that they can get by without knowing anything.
I think something like what has been produced here is what Debian needed more than a graphical installer - this page will instill the sense that "if you read the instructions, complex tasks become simple" into people, and that's what really counts.
If you're going to change something about Debian, change dselect. It's horrible. It needs to be changed. I haven't used dselect since I learnt how apt worked, but sometimes it would come in useful if it wasn't so god awful!
RTFM is a damned sight easier to say to someone if they have a decent manual available. Lets hope this guide can fill that void.
Hard installer as a screening tool? (Score:3, Insightful)
Redhat's administrative tools are graphical and there's really no good analogue in Debian.
Re:Hard installer as a screening tool? (Score:3, Interesting)
Debian's installer isn't designed to be hard, nor is it Debian policy to screen out idiots using the installer. More the point, Debian is designed by people who know Linux, and swayed in general by people with a clue. They have never had a problem with their current installer. PGI [progeny.com] was designed by Progeny [progeny.com], a company founded by Ian Murdock to sell Debian as a (desktop?) solution to the sort of people that would want to see a graphical installer on it. (It has now become a solutions provider - "The Linux Platforms Company".)
The new Debian desktop distribution [debian.org] will mark a change to all of this, I'm sure. It will provide a place for documentation writers and usability experts to become Debian developers. This is the distribution that will see work done on an installer, which will probably either replace or modify Debian's current installer. But I don't want to see it removed entirely.
Re:Debian & the Happy Gentoo User (RTFM Syndro (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're going to change something about Debian, change dselect. It's horrible. It needs to be changed. I haven't used dselect since I learnt how apt worked, but sometimes it would come in useful if it wasn't so god awful!
Try aptitude. It's far better. It still suffers from the my-hell-this-list-is-huge problem, but making 11,000 packages not seem intimidating is a daunting task. Part of Debian's problem vis-a-vis Redhat, etc. is the fact that Debian packages so much more stuff. That's a fact that makes for a huge list of packages, but a huge list of well-integrated components is a *good* thing. So use aptitude, use it's search feature when you know part of the package name and use 'apt-cache search' when you're not sure what you're looking for, and life will be a bliss never known by users of other distros... ;-)
Uhhh (Score:4, Insightful)
Does somebody somewheres not know the definition of plug and play?
See, there is this USB port thing, and you, err, plug stuff into it, and, uh, well, heh, it is supposed to kind of, err, work.
If USB mice require configuring then there are more serious problems here then just the lack of a graphical installer. . .
Re:Uhhh (Score:5, Insightful)
Up until relatively recently USB support was a pain in the ass under Linux. Tools for dealing with USB devices are still in their infancy, and if something doesn't work the first time around, it usally takes a lot of tweaking to get things working.
usbutils is a good package, but you still have to learn it before you can just go ahead and plug in a usb mouse or joystick or cablemodem and get it working.
In other words, at least for the moment, dealing with USB devices is best left to a Linux USB-Howto (there are a few) and not to a specific installation guide.
Re:Uhhh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uhhh (Score:2)
Re:Uhhh (Score:2)
Moving on, apparently we agree on the subject.
By the way, do you know any good ways of removing one's foot from one's mouth?
Re:Uhhh (Score:2)
As long as the manufacturers write Windows drivers, and users write Linux drivers, USB support on Linux will always be behind Windows.
p.s. I think the whole idea of drivers is wrong. A separate driver for each device means that there is no standardization.
Re:Uhhh (Score:2, Insightful)
Err
*looks over towards MacOSX*
Re:Uhhh (Score:2)
Re:Uhhh (Score:2, Informative)
Plug and play is taking your brand new USB device out of the box, plugging it in, and having it work instantly.
Re:Uhhh (Score:4, Informative)
input
mousedev
hid
usbcore
usb-uhci
buy putting them in
Re:there are these things called drivers... (Score:2, Informative)
MS has this thing called the Generic HID driver, it allows for darn near any analog input device to be plugged into the computer and work somehow.
TWAIN, scanners;
VESA, Video (though really a new 2D API needs to be made up and widely implemented. . .
Monitor refresh rates and such can also be communicated automatically to the operating system.
Now Linux can, to one degree or another, do the rest of those just fine (no idea about TWAIN support, then again, TWAIN is not exactly the best standard in the world. . . . icky icky baaa d standard), the USB mouse should come come naturally.
Actually I think that USB mice should be in the same place that PS/2 mice are supported at, the BIOS. (heya, USB keyboards are supported in the BIOS. . . . heh)
Then again, I do not actually own a USB mouse sooooo;
just mostly the idea that adding a USB mouse is such a hassle that the author of the walk through omitted it. Even if manual configuration is necessary, it should not be that long to explain.
Hard? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure someone new will not know what the drive partitioning means and could impact. For that they should have a 'default: I have NO idea what this is' option on that. But all my hardware was detected except the network card and from experience I do know how to do that. Maybe they should put an app in there to try and auto detect them better. So other than selecting the network card to use by hand the rest is hitting enter ??
Re:Yes, huge f'in PITA. (Score:2)
I don't know why they even include dselect, it's worse than useless. It encourages you to mess with the dependencies manually, which is a pain and totally unnecessary in 99.9% of cases. If you don't mess with the dependencies yourself, they Just Work (tm). Aptitude doesn't look any better either. Until they get away from the "every software package in the entire world in one giant tree widget" approach they're never going to make any progress with an easy-to-use menu-based package manager.
I think what Debian really needs is a program that streamlines the process of finding the package you want, because apt-get already has the installing part down. Debian needs Google for packages. Not another program that simply lists every debian package ever made.
Notepad it (Score:2, Insightful)
Soon I'll be creating a webpage, so you too can run an open-relay EXIM server.
How to install an operating system (Score:5, Insightful)
Insert media
Boot
Enter hostname and IP address [NON DHCP SYSTEMS ONLY]
Done.
If it's harder than that, get a better operating system.
I know some Linux distros aren't there yet, but some are (stand up Suse and Red Hat).
OS/400 has been like this for over twenty years (except the IP stuff - LU6.2, SNA, oh the memories)
Solaris is just like that.
Installation is a difficult, but solved problem. Before you start whinging about different device drivers, incompatible IRQs, horizontal sync rates and other inanities, ask yourself why IBM, Sun, HP, Microsoft et al. have solved the problem.
If you want real geek cred, make the hurd work, or add an optimisation to gcc. Or, possibly, build an installer for Linux. Working through a difficult install is a waste of everybody's time.
Thank you and good night.
Re:How to install an operating system (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, to be honest, you should include also:
These can't be deduced by looking at the hardware.
You'll need it only once.. (Score:3, Interesting)
easy install good for hardcore techno geeks too (Score:2, Insightful)
Most modern installers automatically detect hardware settings and proceed accordingly.
Why would an ubergeek prefer to enter in chip information any more than a noobie?
And why would a super-intuitive interface (if there is such a thing), or at least a conventional one, solve the problem of the installer not figuring it all out automatically?
Finally, would an ubergeek reject Debian if it were as easy to install as Mandrake or Redhat? Is that all there is to Debian that makes it a distribution of choice for geeks?
PGI is *not* the next gen Debian installer (Score:5, Informative)
This installer is modularised, using udebs (micro debs) to extend its functionality. Currently bootable on i386 and s390 but probably not usable to do a complete install yet.
The Progeny-developed discover tool, similar to Red Hat's kudzu, is being used for hardware autodetection by the installer. But the Progeny installer itself seems to be not very useful to create a fully-fledged installer - it does not even have support for non-ext2 filesystems!
Re:PGI is *not* the next gen Debian installer (Score:2)
Sure, PGI doesn't support non-ext2, but from the documentation that didn't seem like a design issue, just an implementation issue.
Re:PGI is *not* the next gen Debian installer (Score:2)
Remember this is Debian. Although, yes, with the current state of affair they should have blessed a Progeny-installer set of images as well to help newbies, Having to deal with selecting rescue disk and base install images even when installing from the CD is rather.. ridiculous.
I must confess I am currently running Red Hat myself. Watching Debian closely though, esp. Debian Desktop - when they get the menuing system sorted out (heard it's a major mess now, and let's don't talk about their KDE3 packaging) I might give it a try again.
By that time apt-rpm probably has repository pinning as well.. hmmm
Re:Its called "Not Invented Here" (Score:2)
Oh weird, his X Strike Force site [debian.org] is down.
Re:Its called "Not Invented Here" (Score:2)
No, it's not [debian.org].
There is a bizarre idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
In open source, a lot of people will vocally voice their opinions that projects should be similiar to each other.
Debian is a great example of this. You frequently hear complants of a non-graphical installer, usually with the comment 'but my $preferred_distro has a graphical installer!' I haven't looked at the exact reasons why debian doesn't have a graphical installer, but an educated guess would take into effect the roughly dozen hardware platforms debian supports and the fact that debian will do things in ways that usually won't break - autodiscovery has the potential to cause problems. Plus, this is the distro where I can stick a few floppies into a machine, do a tiny install and skip tasksel and dselect, then apt-get apache, sshd and iptables, and have a small, fairly secure webserver without ever needing to download x.
The other complaint is that debian should have up to date packages. Debian's philosophy isn't to ride the bleeding edge, its to make sure everything works, and that stable is named stable for a reason.
I see a lot of this going on in the open source movement, and its just wrong. If Debian wants to be a better Redhat, the developers should join the Redhat team. Same with other projects. If mySQL tries to be postgres, even if it succeeds, we will have lost something. However, if mySQL strives to be a fast SQL database for websites, then we will have two good databases, both with a different purpose.
Each project should have a purpose, a goal, and it should be different from the other projects. Else there is just duplication of efforts and time lost as each project reinvents the wheel.
*easy Debian install recipe* (Score:3, Interesting)
A good start but... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a nice start, but it leaves a lot of hurdles for a new user to overcome.
(1) DMA still needs to be turned on for the hard-disk.
(2) It may sound heretical, but most folks will want the Nvidia OpenGL drivers (this is a real pain)
(3)
(4) printing...
(5) As mentioned in the article, most people use KDE or Gnome.
(6) CD-RW and DVD
(7+) I'm sure I've missed something. Just thinking back to the last time I set up a desktop system, I seem to remember adding my user account into a number of different groups to get things working properly.
Anyway, this isn't a bad article...it looks like a great place to start, but I think any newbie moving from Mandrake to Debian following these instructions will be left completely pissed off that their machine is now incredibly slow (1 above) and can't play a game like Chromium (2 above).
Re:A good start but... (Score:2, Informative)
The problem with Nvidia drivers is much worse than with the commercial distros.. A newbie would have to (a) figure out how to install the kernel source, (b) figure out that the kernel
My CD-RW experience required not only editing lilo.conf (obvious as you mentioned), but also adding:
alias scd0 sr_mod
pre-install sg modprobe ide-scsi
pre-install sr_mod modprobe ide-scsi
Somewhere in the
But the worst of all is not mentioning hdparm... A fresh Debian install crawls without UDMA enabled. It's a configuration issue, not an install issue, but it should certainly be mentioned. Don't Mandrake, RedHat and SuSE take care of this during the install?
Like I said though, I do think this article makes a great starting point for an "Idiot's Guide to Installing Debian." It would be even better with screenshots illustrating the different steps. It just needs to go further into initial configuration.
give newbies on-line help (Score:2, Interesting)
Can I axe my corporate exchange server yet?
BozoJoe
My name is bil and I use Debian.....Hi bil! (Score:2, Insightful)
I have installed Libranet on a few machines and only had a few problems with M$ specific devices, and onboard sound cards. The 2.7 version has default options for people that do not understand disk partitioning and is even on a bootable disk!
I dont text based installers (Score:2, Interesting)
Verbosity is sometimes the only way... (Score:3, Insightful)
Spoiler alert! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Spoiler alert! (Score:3, Funny)
Partition Hard Disk (Score:2, Interesting)
For example, the 'partiton hard disk step' I never see this step, at least not at the top of the list, because as soon as a hd has any fs that the installer recognizes the first entries are : initialize a Linux partition, or initialize swap space,
The real issue, having to install the OS at all, just buy a computer with it pre-installed, like 100% of Mac users & most Win32 users.
This install synndrome sucks
My method - tar (Score:3, Informative)
First install a system with a very basic set of packages. Then, tar up the entire filesystem and burn it to CD as a
I've done this on two machines very successfully. The only limitation is that you can only install on a machine with comparable hardware to the original (i.e. same arch).
Just "used" the guide (Score:5, Informative)
So did I find the guide helpful? I never even used it.
The guide did say that it was for new linux users; perhaps my experience with RH was enough.
Sure, I advanced the pages along with the install process, but I never even had to refer to it. I am certainly no hardcore linux user, but I don't find this "horrible" installer that bad.
Do a bit of research on your machine before you install. Write some stuff down. I wouldn't just blindly install RH without some investigation. Don't worry, you'll be fine, have a bit of confidence in yourself.
3 platforms (Score:2, Informative)
getting woody installed on the PPC604e based hardware was a piece of cake, using one of the base install CDs and BootX. X windows was a pain to configure, but after about 1 hour it worked perfectly using the internal video card.
installation on the x86 box was quite easy, however, knowing what kind of NIC, video, and sound card made choosing modules much easier.
all in all, debian does the job for me. although the install is a little daunting at first, the provided online documentation is quite helpful.
thanks team debian!
Debian: It does your dishes. (Score:2, Informative)
Apt-get BitchX, hop on #debian, grab some sources.lists and download ONLY the packages I want. Sure you can do that with redhat too, but who wants to have to fire up a web browser to find all your rpms? That means I have to install a browser. I know there's those gui dealies that will grab rpms for me, but BAH! Then I have to install X.
And whatever that new hippy GUI installer is, as long as it's as powerful as dselect (or at least, can be), it has my stamp of approval. However, I -- and others, I'm sure -- will still just use apt.
Choices (Score:2)
B) GUI installer that is confusing, incomplete and unstable.
Which do you want? The old Corel Linux installer would crash everytime it probed my video card. The old SuSE installer never got off the ground with my friend's video card. Current Mandrake never fails to guess all of my hardware wrong. But I have never had an installation problem with textmode Slackware or FreeBSD. Textmode installers may be "ugly", but they work.
The problems with the Debian installer have nothing to do with it being textmode.
Screen resolution? (Score:2)
1280x1024 is a 5:4 resolution whereas almost every other "standard" resolution is 4:3 like 1280x960
I know, I know, I could "just" add that resolution to the config file myself, but it's still rather stupid if you ask me.
Debian's Install Procedure works for me... (Score:3, Interesting)
So I burned one CD, and printed out only a handful of pages from the installation manual (plus a bit on dselect). Armed with this, even being a complete neophyte, I was able to install Debian. The installer worked great, didn't hiccup once, and believe it or not I actually found it to be really intuitive. I mean, all I really had to do was to decide on partitioning (and that was pretty easy too), other than that it was mostly a question of trolling through dselect to get the things I wanted after I already had the system installed.
Granted, configuring X took a bit of doing, but all in all it was pretty painless. Considering how complicated the installation procedure could be, everybody with Debian and esp. the installer deserves a lot of credit for making it as painless as it is. Now that I've got the chance to use Linux at work on a project, and I've got a machine that could do Mandrake, Red Hat, etc. justice, I'm still going with Debian because I know it'll work.Re:It's too out of date. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's too out of date. (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the beauties of a good packaging system is that you don't have to upgrade everything just because one component changed. Debian, through its use of package dependencies, is particularly good about telling you which set of packages need to be upgraded whenever you upgrade a package or add a new package to your system. This helps prevent random system breakage that can be caused by inadvertantly changing something that other packages rely on. This is perhaps the biggest advantage the Debian package system has over an RPM-based system.
You could also contrast this to Windows, where even minor updates to Internet Explorer require downloading an entirely new version of the whole installation package for IE. Or the need to constantly replace your version of Windows every year or two if you want to keep up with the latest incremental changes, no matter how insignificant they might be. Yet, despite this, I don't see Windows having much of a problem attracting users. I think the reason is that many Windows users never bother to change the version of OS they're running from the one that came installed with the machine. How many people do you think still run an original version of Windows 98? In being able to keep components up-to-date without unnecessarily reinstalling huge portions of the system while not breaking what works, Debian has Windows beaten hands down, and also compares very favorably with other Linux distributions based on RPMs.
Re:It's too out of date. (Score:2)
Erm, RPM does this too. If you attempt to install/remove a package it'll warn you about dependency problems. Of course, you can just ignore these and --force it to comply, but unless you're sure you need to do this it usually leads to serious problems later.
I tend to use RH's up2date now too, which runs in the background checking for new packages and security fixes, downloads and installs them (if I wish), and hasn't caused a single problem.
Re:It's too out of date. (Score:2, Informative)
I admin a RH webserver, and I have to manually go in and tidy up rpm dependancy breaks all the time. Debian-unstable will usually fix these for you within 24 hours. If you're looking for stability comparable to RH, then use Debian-testing or Debian-unstable. If you want OpenBSD-like stability, then run -stable. (For the love of Gub, why doesn't Debian or OpenBSD have a way to check signatures on all of the official ports/packages?)
Re:Spelling Hurdles (Score:2, Funny)