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Debian

Introduction to Debian 374

Posted by CmdrTaco from the for-the-noobs-in-the-hood dept.
[vmlinuz] writes "SitePoint has an article that I wrote that introduces Debian and has guidelines on installing it. This could be usefull for managers, new users and other people that may be interested in using Debian." And honestly, who among us isn't interested in using the obviously superior Linux Distribution against which there can be no other contenders? (Oh dear god don't flame me! It's a joke people!)
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Introduction to Debian More

Introduction to Debian

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  • The first person to mention (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29, 2003 @09:55AM (#6324803)
    Gentoo is gonna get modded down.

    • MOD PARENT DOWN (Score:5, Funny)

      by Adam9 ( 93947 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @09:59AM (#6324830) Journal
      Read the parent to understand why.
    • Sorry but Debian installation is a pain in the ass. The average user can't install it.

      If you can't f'ing install it you can't evaluate its superiority. Mandrake is by far the easiest distro to install. Until Debian is as easy to install I don't think it will ever get bigger Linux market share. If you want to give a taste of Debian to average user your best bet is to give them a Lindows CD.

      • Re:The first person to mention (Score:5, Informative)

        by polyomninym ( 648843 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @10:44AM (#6325010)
        Hey, don't forget Knoppix.
      • Dude, i have jsut spent the last 30 hours installing gentoo, xfree and kde. It may be simple to do, but it shouldnt take a lifetime to finish :P

      • Re:The first person to mention (Score:5, Informative)

        by KrispyKringle ( 672903 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @12:20PM (#6325445)
        The installation may be terrible, but the great thing about Debian is you almost certainly will only have to do it once. That's the whole focus on stability, maturity, security thing.

        Plenty of other otherwise excellent OSes have difficult or non-user-friendly installations. FreeBSD is a good example. But it gets the job done, it isn't really that hard if you RTFM, and once you are finished you have a far superior OS to Mandrake (in my opinion).

        No, Debian isn't going to be on the desktop of Windows users anytime soon. That's a position most likely to be filled by RedHat or Mandrake. But not just because of the installation; desktop users want features and bleeding-edge more than code maturity or stability. Debian doesn't even have KDE3 in the stable tree yet. So while a nicer installation may be nice, the kind of users Debian targets don't really need it.

        • I have several computers running, and I don't even remember when I did the "original" install. To put it on a new machine each time I restore a tarfile backup of some other machine, then tailor what needs tailoring. Works for me.
      • If you can't f'ing install it you can't evaluate its superiority

        Yeah but if you can't install it I can measure yours.

        Seriously I've never seen anything wrong with its installer - its really cake compared to a lot of things. First time I ever used it was on a sparcstation simply because Redhat stopped developing for it and I fell in love so much so that at my job (at the time I worked for a small software company) I switched ALL our Redhat systems to Debian. Reason? Mainly the consistancy - all config fil

      • Re:The first person to mention (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ax_42 ( 470562 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @12:33PM (#6325523)

        Sorry but Debian installation is a pain in the ass. The average user can't install it.


        a) That is an (old) prejudice, the Debian install is pretty easy by now (including the tasklist --- if you want X, then click "X-Windows".

        b) "Pain in the ass" to the average user means full control for me. Debian will give you a tight, small system by default. The amount of software that Mandrake tries to call a "basic install" is scary.

        c) Debian will give you a very happy text-only system if necessary. Again, this may be a pain in the ass for the "average user" but I prefer the command line, thanks.

        What I love about Debian is that you can start with a very basic install which I can expand as much or as little as I want. Painlessly. For example, I can take my console only system, type "apt-get install gimp" and have all required libraries etc installed automatically (and working).

        Mandrake is about the lowest common denominator, Debian is about control.
        • The average user can't install it.

          a) That is an (old) prejudice, the Debian install is pretty easy by now (including the tasklist --- if you want X, then click "X-Windows".

          Debian is a superior distro in many, many ways. I can't argue with your points b) and c), but a) is wrong. Debian is a pain in the ass to install.

          I have an old AMD K2 box here. It's a practice box that I got from a friend. I opened it once. It's now tucked under my desk under a pile of other stuff.

          I installed RedHat on it a few weeks ago. RedHat autodetected almost everything: The network card, video card, hard drives. Not perfect, but it was actually easier to install then Win2k. It took 2 hours total, and I was away from the computer for 80% of the time.

          I'm installing Debian on it today. I'm on try #3, and have spent 3 hours flipping back to my primary computer and reading documentation. I'm still on CD #1.

          Debian can't automatically find the drivers for network card, will only give me the option to reformat hdb and not hda (I booted to an emergency disk and used fdisk to destroy the partions on hda. Now debian sees hdb. Go figure.),

          My fear is that I will have to drag the computer out from under the desk, open it up, write down make and model numbers. I just wanted a 1 hour project to do while eating breakfast... I have a million things to do today, and don't feel like spending my Sunday morning choking on dust, scraping my hand on the case and searching for obscure installation hints on the internet with my primary computer.

  • Sweet Jesus Malda! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nidhogg ( 161640 ) <shr.thanatos@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Sunday June 29, 2003 @09:55AM (#6324804) Journal
    *dives for the bunker*

    You know you can't say something like that around here!

  • On a similar note, (Score:4, Interesting)

    by discogravy ( 455376 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @09:57AM (#6324817) Homepage
    The Very Verbose Walk-Through to installing Debian 3.0 [osnews.com] from OSNews.com

    My biggest complaint w/ debian is the slow release cycle. I'd like to be able to pin the newest KDE/gnome/whatever to stable and do an apt-get upgrade without breaking a million things. Last time I pinned kde 3.1 and updated I spent three days finding broken stuff and fixing it.

    And yes, I am aware of the other debian-based distros that are more up to date, but they're all (to my knowledge) pay distros, and I am looking for something cheap/free.

    • Re:On a similar note, (Score:2, Informative)

      by damiam ( 409504 )
      KDE was broken in unstable for a long time, due to the G++ upgrade, but it works fine now, and is updated quite frequently. Since unstable is really quite stable, there's no reason not to use it.

      • Re:On a similar note, (Score:2, Informative)

        by Ophelan ( 55379 )
        Specifically, unstable can be successfully implemented in a production environment IF you pull you're own copy of it to a local mirror periodically, and then verify on a non-critical machine that updating does not foobar things. Installing straight from unstable to a real machine can cause headaches.

    • Re:On a similar note, (Score:5, Informative)

      by blakestah ( 91866 ) <blakestah@gmail.com> on Sunday June 29, 2003 @10:03AM (#6324854) Homepage
      I'd like to be able to pin the newest KDE/gnome/whatever to stable and do an apt-get upgrade without breaking a million things.

      You can pin the newest KDE/gnome/whatever to unstable. Newest always goes in unstable first. Unstable is pretty cutting edge, but with an occasional hiccup.

      The point of stable is that it works. Things go there after they are 'tried and true' in unstable, and then in testing.

      • Re:On a similar note, (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        By the way, it can't be emphasized enough that "unstable" is still really darn stable... stable enough, in my opinion, for any reasonable home user. While some packages occasionally have small problems, it's very rare for anything big to go wrong - and when something does go wrong, it's almost always fixed within a few hours. There's even a program now to list bug reports on any package you're updating (forgot the name; sorry), so you don't even have to try packages with known bugs.

        People keep saying that

        • People keep saying that debian evolves far too slowly. These people, obviously, have not tried unstable.

          Actually I used debian for about 6 months. I installed stable, immediately upgraded to testing and stuck with it for a few weeks. Testing was *awesome*. Nothing ever broke. Then i went to unstable. Unstable was also pretty good, only small problems every so often, nothing major.

          But, kde 3 came out. And I really wanted it. I waited and waited and it never got added to debian. I tried the unnoficial pac

      • Part of the problem is how slowly stuff migrates to Testing. Some maintainers (especially the GNOME/KDE guys) seem to have a policy of not moving anything to testing until its obsolete by at least two versions. Often, the claimed reason is because there hasn't been enough bug-testing... But the purpose of testing is to get more bug-testing from people who don't want to risk having to reinstall their system because they ran an apt-get upgrade without checking the news listings for system-destroying packages.

        • As I understand it, this process is automatic. A package needs to have no bugs against it, or any package it depends on, for some amount of time before it can be moved. Further, packages won't move until it can be guaranteed that they won't break packages already in testing, which is determined by a package with exclusive versions in its dependencies.

          The more complex a package is, the longer it takes for it to be verifiably safe. That's just the nature of the beast.

          Still, you can use unstable without prob

          • What I'd like to see is an intermediate step between unstable and testing. The policy would simply be "packages that have been in unstable for at least n hours (48 would be good)". Actually, you wouldn't really need a different repositoy, just an apt-get option that checks the changelogs and removes from consideration any "excessively new" packages. It might be cleaner to do it as a separate branch, though.

            This simple precaution would prevent 95% of the (rare) problems that do crop up in unstable. Wha

            • I hope that if you develop something like this, you keep it to yourself, you selfish bastard. :-)

              I like the current system just fine. If you upgrade constantly, you'll eventually be the one to get bitten. But it rarely needs more than a bandaid, and you can save everyone else the trouble. This way even users who never contribute a line of code still benefit the whole through their use.

              • I hope that if you develop something like this, you keep it to yourself, you selfish bastard. :-)

                Not likely :-) Actually, I don't really need it. I think it would be helpful for some other people I know who'd like the upgradability of Debian and the software in unstable/testing. Testing would, in theory, be the ideal distro for them, but it frequently gets jammed up over a few packages, and when it's in that state it gets *no* security patches, which is very bad, IMO.

                This way even users who never

    • My biggest complaint w/ debian is the slow release cycle.

      That's the very thing I like most about Debian. There are enough distros pushing for 6 month release cycles regardless of the reliability of the underlying software. Debian seems to take the opposite stand, sticking with old versions until the newer versions work properly. Personally, I'd rather have a reliable KDE 2.2 than a buggy KDE 3.x-beta1. I make my living using this software. I don't want to spend time tracking down obscure kdelibs bug

  • I thought the beauty of open source was... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zubernerd ( 518077 ) * on Sunday June 29, 2003 @09:58AM (#6324819)
    to quote the article: "There is a distinct possibility that some Linux vendors may close up shop, change their business direction or adjust their practices in some other way. Thus, the distribution you use today may not be around in 10 years. "
    I thought the beauty of open source was that even if the original author (be it a natural person(s) or a company) decides to no longer support a project that the source is there for you to look at and provide your own support.

  • A Joke?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29, 2003 @09:58AM (#6324825)
    No, here's a joke.

    How many Debian users does it take to change a lightbulb?

    Just one, but he has know how to apt-get install liblightbulb1. apt-get install light-switch-client if you want to be able to turn it on.

  • For Managers? Installing Debian?? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by robbyjo ( 315601 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @09:59AM (#6324828) Homepage

    Oh, please... It's a joke, isn't it?

    I'll be glad to see if there's any managers USE Debian. Managers INSTALLING Debian... ?? Wow! It's so... "news that matters".

    • Hi robbyjo. I'm MadFarmAnimalz, and I am currently handling planning at what you could call a very large company. I was (please try very hard not to retch) assistant marketing director previously, and I had founded the Competitive Intelligence unit before that.

      I am a true-to-the-bone suit (manager).

      I use Debian too, at home... Installed it all by my very little welf too! Yeehaw!

      Of course, I must confess I don't use it exclusively... I am a member of the horde guilty of having multiple OS'es on the machin

  • what's a distribution? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hubert_Shrump ( 256081 ) <cobranetNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday June 29, 2003 @09:59AM (#6324831) Journal
    and while we're at it, what's lignux?

  • Superior Linux Distribution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29, 2003 @09:59AM (#6324835)
    And honestly, who among us isn't interested in using the obviously superior Linux Distribution against which there can be no other contenders? (Oh dear god don't flame me! It's a joke people!)

    Well if debian could get their installer and hardware detection right I don't know how far off that statement would be :-) Debian just needs to get over the fear of anything new, such as anything graphical. Judging by unstable it looks like they are moving in the right direction.

    • Re:Superior Linux Distribution (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lobsang ( 255003 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @11:02AM (#6325095) Homepage
      I use Debian and I really like it. A very welcome departure from the nightmare RedHat has become.

      Yet, I agree with you. The installer is a pain in the arse. Bear in mind however that I only installed Debian once. All the other installations were "cloned" from the original one.

      In any case, I'd love to see Knoppix HW detection routines incorporated into Debian. Knoppix is a killer in this area.

      • Its one of the easiest to install and admin linuxs going. Its also the best industry supported distro going. Like someone already pointed out Red Hat+apt-get > Debian.

        Easy to use, free, widely supported, plus its the best looking distro out of the box. Plus they are strong supporters of linux and are a large reason why linux is where it is today.

        The only thing thing I don't like is how they have gone to a one year support cycle for their free version. But hey, I'm not the one footing the bill for all
    • Actually I quite like the Debian installer, but then again I've installed Debian on a large number of machines and love it's speed and simplicity.

      As for unstable, I've no doubt that in time it will move to testing and then stable, and all the while my Debian b0x3n will be as solid as ever, whilst others scratch their heads over the latest and greatest buggy packages pushed into the latest and greatest Commercial Distros. (All that being said I do have a soft spot for Red Hat for my desktop box)

  • Thanks CmdrTaco..I am switching to Debian this fall..

    Debian has no software patents and doesn;t like them .,hurray

  • Installer (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29, 2003 @10:02AM (#6324851)
    Debian is sometimes superior to other Linux distributions but IMHO the installer is just horrid. When compared to other Linux installers, notably RedHat (which is very nice), it fails. Other than that, Debian seems to be the way to go for any would-be Linux guru.

    • Re:Installer (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tyler Eaves ( 344284 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @10:22AM (#6324908)
      Almost right.

      The install is fine.

      It's dselect that sucks.

      • Re:Installer (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gilesjuk ( 604902 )
        Dselect is a bit of a pain yes, pressing the wrong key brings up the help window grrrr.

        I found more recent installers to be better, but when you exit a kernel module category it often returns you back to the top of the list, thus losing your place in the list.

        All distros should give you the option of automatic hardware detection and manual selection if things go wrong.
      • Yeah, dselect does blow chunks. And is the only real annoying part of the install.

        My suggestions to anyone using debian are to skip past dselect during the install, and then apt-get everything afterwards. You can find out what packages there are by looking at packages.debian.org [debian.org].

        Another hint you might want is that I've had problems getting the debian config programs to set up my XF86Config-4 file correctly. If you're moving to Debian from another linux, I'd recommend backing-up this config file for

      • Lots of people keep complaining about dselect being bad, but very few of them actually comes up with anything specific. How this "dselect bad" comment could be rated as "Insightful" is beyond me.

        What exactly is wrong with dselect? What do you use instead? Why do you find that tool superior?

  • Another way to try debian... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rinikusu ( 28164 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @10:06AM (#6324860)
    For those turned off or scared away by the debian install process (which still seems stuck in the 90's. Jesus, did I just say that?), grab a Knoppix CD.

    No, seriously. I don't run debian primarily because I don't want to go through the install process. I don't know what chipset my nic has, and I really don't care to know, know what I mean? Ditto with everything else.

    I've been using flavors of RedHat, culminating with Redhat9 that's currently my Linux of "choice", mainly because Redhat offered superior hardware detection/setup. But, I've always had to tweak a bit here and there to get it working nicely.

    However, with the advent of Knoppix, I think that's about to change. I popped in Knoppix 3.2 today for the first time to see what it was all about. The hardware detection on this LIVE CD is absolutely.. superb. It recognized and setup my Orinoco Wireless card. It found and mounted my Sony Cybershot Camera. Jesus, it even found and setup my Wacom! The only thing it didn't do was give me dual-head support OOB, but I don't think I know any distro that does that. But that's okay, fortunately I know how to set that up myself. It comes with KDE, it looks great, it just WORKS. And because it "just works" I'm really tempted to wipe RedHat off and do the HD install of this.

    Some notes that I've come across, though: As Knoppix uses a special blend of testing/unstable (or something like that), it's really hard to do dist-upgrade and what not without downgrading your desktop. I heartily recommend reading through the docs at the Knoppix website and finding out what issues may remain. As a desktop Debian based distro, though, I think Knoppix just plain rules.

    • And if Knoppix doesn't detect all your hardware (yes, it's possilbe--Knoppix doesn't find my mouse or NIC), try Libranet. It's not free as in beer, but it was worth the $40 I paid for it.

    • Re:Another way to try debian... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by warmcat ( 3545 ) * on Sunday June 29, 2003 @10:38AM (#6324982)
      On the subject of Redhat and Debian, something that I don't see mentioned enough considering its usefulness is apt for Redhat, available from freshrpms [freshrpms.net]. These guys have tons of RPMs which are fetchable and managed by apt-get, just like the Debian Troll keeps telling you -- the only difference is its RPMs and Redhat instead of .deb and Debian.

      Their apt-gettable repository forms a really up to date exo-distro around Redhat where you can get the latest stuff that installs easily and 'just works'.

      • Re:Another way to try debian... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by martinde ( 137088 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @10:52AM (#6325051) Homepage
        > the only difference is its RPMs and Redhat instead of .deb and Debian.

        Now, I haven't installed from "freshrpms" so take my statements with a grain of salt, but... Past experience says that Debian has at least three big advantages over RedHat:
        - Almost every significant (and many not-so-significant) free software program is part of the official distribution, integrated with the menu system, mailcap system, configuration database, etc.
        - The installation of most packages tries to help you get a working configuration (by asking you questions) out of the box. People often find this confusing, but many find it preferable to having something like "sendmail" installed but broken.
        - Upgrading anything but the kernel itself does not involve rebooting, and your configuration is generally either left alone, or migrated with some help from you. (And most packages that can't do one of those tell you "I'm broken, please read [whatever help file]" so you have a chance of doing something about it.)

        Until you've lived in Debian (and perhaps another OS) and maintained a machine for some period it's hard to appreciate these things. I've got a machine that has been migrated to the latest and greatest since around 1996, and not had a fresh install in this time. It's had uptimes of hundreds of days, and just chugs along, secure and doing it's job.

        If running RedHat with "freshrpms" is like that, more power to you, and I'm glad RH has caught up. Otherwise you might want to give Debian a try. If you find the install confusing, as others have suggest, Knoppix makes a fine installer for Debian.
      • There is urpmi [urpmi.org] from mandrake as 'reimplementation' of apt-get.

      • Although I didn't mention it, I do have apt4rpm installed on my Redhat9 machine. It does rock, but it's repository is SORELY lacking. :(

        However, for what it does have, it really makes the whole Redhat + RPM thing much more bearable.
    • the debian install process (which still seems stuck in the 90's.

      Really? I wouldnt know, last time I installed an OS was in the 90's, debian in 1999 actually. What's a modern install like?

      • Really? I wouldnt know, last time I installed an OS was in the 90's, debian in 1999 actually. What's a modern install like?

        Hear, hear! This, people, is the bottom-line *reason* why Debian hasn't bothered (until recently) to build a really good installer. I installed the "copy" of Debian that's on my laptop (the one I'm typing on) three years ago -- on a different machine. Copying a Linux install from one drive to another is as simple as formatting, copying the files and running grub-install, and keepi

    • Live in or around Baton Rouge, LA? I'll give you Debian for $40 [hillnotes.org]. Yep, it's that easy and cheap. Try that one with Windoze.

    • From my exerience, Knoppix 3.2 doesn't install nearly as easily as Mandrake 9.0. Not by a long shot.

      First, I don't speak German, that is the first big obsticle I have to get around with Knoppix. Second, Koppix was not able to instaill a gui, mandrake had no trouble with the same system. Third, Knoppix does have mandrake's nice disk partitioning utility.

      Mandrake has it's problem also. RPM dependency hell sucks.

    • What about Morphix (Score:2, Informative)

      by clif2 ( 685465 )

      Morphix [morphix.org] is a modular variant of Knoppix. The FAQ [sourceforge.net] explains the differences between Morphix and Knoppix. Simply put, Morphix is much more flexible than Knoppix.

      I did an HD-install of the KDE (3.1.1) main-mod. The only problem I had was the with boot configuration (I have an unusual setup), the problem was solved by downloading the boot-disk image that contains the ever-useful Smart Boot Manager (I wish that more distros would, at least, include this as an option).

      Minor problem asside, the install went s

    • No, seriously. I don't run debian primarily because I don't want to go through the install process. I don't know what chipset my nic has, and I really don't care to know, know what I mean? Ditto with everything else.

      Then don't install Debian. You're not the target audience anyway. Debian is pretty much aimed at the server crowd first, and desktop user as a distat second, from what I can tell. This explains the long release cycle (to ensure packages are rock solid), the difficult install (Debian installe

  • Knoppix [knopper.net], everyone's favorite Debian-based live Linux CD, has an easy script to install to a hard drive partition. This is truly nice for anyone wanting a mostly pre-configured Linux installed with lots of nice toys like Mozilla and OpenOffice.org AND that has all the juicy apt-goodness of Debian as well.

    Yum!

  • I'm undisputedly a Slackware geek but I have to admit that Debian really is a better system. Whenever I feel the need to deploy some kind of GNU/Linux application, I find time and time again that it's easier and faster to do in Debian. More and more these days, however, when I need to deploy some kind of *nix application FreeBSD beats all the competition hands down as a platform. It's simply superior.
    P.S. Redhat is no good at all. It's not that I'm being close-minded, but every single time I try to use Redh

  • And we all know the REAL Linux distro is... (Score:3, Funny)

    by gatesh8r ( 182908 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @10:20AM (#6324902)
    Slackware for everything! [slackware.com] Use only 'cuz it's l33t.
  • Its gonna take some serious effort to get me off using Red Hat Linux. The latest versions, teamed with enterprise level RHN accounts make running multiple servers a dream.. I don't have any complaints with the product or the support, and their sales people are really friendly as well.

    Can't wait to do my RH253 course with them next month :)

  • The best way to meet linux. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by este ( 600616 ) <este AT subtend DOT net> on Sunday June 29, 2003 @10:30AM (#6324938) Homepage Journal
    My own experience with Debian:

    I have a number of longtime hardcore Linux fans, most notably my (now) roommate. After being ridiculed for a long time about my use of Windows (especially my need to reinstall it every three months, due to it's tendency to crap out, regardless of which one I used--9x, 2000, XP), I decided I'd try this so-called "Linux". :-)

    So I asked for a copy. Not even being aware that I had a choice of distributions, I took the first cd set given to me--"Woody", at that time Debian's testing distro, later to become Debian 3.0.

    At first, I kinda freaked. No pretty graphical install, but it really wasn't so bad. I've been through worse in DOS. The instructions were pretty straightforward, though I did have to ask my friend what NIC driver to use (it was tulip). But after about an hour, I had a working system, with WindowMaker as my default window manager, and witha simple "startx"....

    It worked.

    And didn't stop, ever. It's never even paused on me. Since then, I've taught myself every intimate detail of linux in general, and even tried a few other distros on my other machines, but always end up going back to Debian (though now I'm running unstable--I like to live dangerously). Even used it to turn my crappy 486/DX66 Toshiba Satellite w/16MB of RAM into a useful internet terminal for my living room.

    It's not the easiest way to start, but when you're done, you'll have a good grasp of everything you'll need for an everyday system, and adding features or building a custom "utility system"(email server, firewall, etc.) is just an apt-get away. Overall, I'd highly recommend it to anyone.

    Unless you're really -that- lazy.
    • I have to agree with this, mostly. I just installed Debian a few nights ago for the first time - and really, it just wasn't that bad. As a matter of fact, the installation went more smoothly than others I've put on my Mac Powerbook G3. The only slight problems I had were related to the fact that I didn't RTFM at all. I think that even if a somewhat new user read the manuals carefully, in detail, the install would be fine and interesting. So far things are working quite well - my wife got X working in about

  • meh... (Score:2, Funny)

    by buddha42 ( 539539 )
    Pretty thin article, but at least it doesnt contain the glaringly bad suggestions sitepoint is known for.

    Recent gem article's from them include:

    "image resizing in php" that is actually just a trick to use the height and width properties of the <img> tag to make the browser resize the image. "I don't feel like having 4,000 different thumbnails on my server for each product..."

    And, "practical web design with tables" for people who think "CSS is too hard"

  • Installer, unstable and a bunch of whiners (Score:4, Insightful)

    by j-kjaer ( 322300 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @10:34AM (#6324954) Homepage Journal
    I've been using Debian GNU/Linux (unstable) for the last 3-4 years and it runs perfectly stable. I update my system almost every day without dependency problems - I have never reinstalled the system from scratch since the package managment (dpkg/apt-get, whatever) takes care of my system and doesn't mess up anything.

    The old Debian installer is somewhat technical, but who doesn't like that? I find the old installer much more easy to use than Windows XP's setup. If the only reason for hating Debian is the (soon to be deprecated) text mode installer, you really should just run away.

    Debian is the superior distribution!

  • GNU/You GNU/spelled GNU/it GNU/wrong (Score:3, Funny)

    by essdodson ( 466448 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @10:36AM (#6324967) Homepage
    GNU/Hey GNU/stupid GNU/it's GNU/supposed GNU/to GNU/be GNU/Debian/GNU GNU/Linux/GNU.
  • Debian's stable releases aren't a quarterly affair. Your average user who's trying to use an OS to do work or run a server doesn't want quarterly releases. Precious few people really need to jump to Apache 2.0 or kernel 2.4.21 the very day/week/month it comes out.

    But, for those of you who want the bleeding edge without risking instability, Debian does just fine there if you know what you're doing. Go ahead and jump to unstable. Seriously!

    The only thing you're missing is "apt-listbugs," which does this automatically with every update...

    slate:/home/brian# dselect

    Reading Package Lists... Done
    Building Dependency Tree... Done
    10 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
    Need to get 41.9MB of archives.
    After unpacking 16.4kB of additional disk space will be used.
    Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
    Get:1 http://ftp.uk.debian.org sid/main tetex-bin 2.0.2-4.1 [3774kB]
    [...]
    Get:10 http://ftp.uk.debian.org sid/main libnspr4 2:1.3.1-2 [117kB]
    Fetched 41.9MB in 4m19s (162kB/s)
    Reading package fields... Done
    Reading package status.. Done
    Retrieving bug reports... Done
    grave bugs of mozilla-psm (2:1.3.1-1 -> 2:1.3.1-2) <done>
    #189907 - mozilla-psm: psm doesn't register with mozilla
    grave bugs of tetex-bin (2.0.2-3 -> 2.0.2-4.1) <done>
    #195641 - tetex-bin dependency problem
    Merged with: 195677 195679 195683
    grave bugs of tetex-bin (2.0.2-3 -> 2.0.2-4.1) <open>
    #195723 - tetex-bin: postinstall script dies, making tetex-bin uninstallable
    Summary:
    mozilla-psm(1 bug), tetex-bin(2 bugs)
    Are you sure to install/upgrade these packages? [Y/n/?/...]

    Before starting installation, apt-listbugs fetches all the bug reports for versions between your current version and the target version. We can see that two bugs have been closed (fixed by later versions, or the bug reports were bogus), and we see that the tetex-bin bug is still open.

    In this case, we'd type 'h tetex-bin' to hold the broken package and proceed with a perfectly usable system.

    Of course, this still leaves you in the position to be the one in ten thousand who finds a critical bug on installing any given package. If that happens, be a Good Debizen and use reportbug so the next guy is notified. Further, if you flag a critical bug, it's rare that it isn't fixed within a couple hours, even at 2am on Sunday. Once you've reported your bug, go ahead and roll back a version and carry on until the developer closes the bug -- if you used reportbug, you'll get an all-clear email automatically when he or she closes the bug.

    With unstable and the apt-listbugs' automatic reports, the chances of ever winding up with a broken system are exceptionally low. Showstopper bugs are rare even in unstable -- maybe one package update in five thousand. But, with thousands of other users snarfing packages and reporting any bugs, the chances of your being the one to discover breakage without apt-listbugs warning you first are virtually nil.

    All that said, if you can bear to be a week to a month behind the bleeding edge, you can use apt-listbugs with testing as well. The chances of getting a broken system with testing and apt-listbugs are about the same as the chance of Windows Service Update not needing a reboot. Virtually nil.

  • The reason most jokes are funny is that there is an element of truth to them.

  • debian isn't just a distro. it's a lifestyle. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29, 2003 @11:13AM (#6325149)
    debian isn't just a distro. it's a lifestyle.
    Wimps and couch potatoes with their grey tasteless distros don't understand the pleasure a good distro gives. We offer two exquisite distro flavors for the linux user with style:

    - STABLE: coke drinking folks will never get it, but programs are like good red wine. They get better with age. That's why we only include very old programs in this distro. If you think that these programs are outdated and full with bugs that have since then been corrected in newer program versions, you miss the point: this isn't a fast-food distro. It's a distro you use at candlelight.

    - UNSTABLE: this is our distro for the fast and the furious. If you're complaining about this distro and saying that Mandrake and Gentoo both have up-to-date versions that, unlike debian, aren't actually "unstable", you miss the point and you're most probably a wimp. This distro isn't for couch potatoes but for people who love the thrill of the risk. For people who play carmageddon for real in their SUVs, go bungee jumping and skydiving and just occasionally forget to take a parachute. But that's what makes the kick of debian unstable.

    Debian isn't just a distro. it's a lifestyle. It's what separates the men from the boys. Go download your copy from www.debian.org now

  • The Debian Experience (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jjgm ( 663044 )
    We're a largish (>250 servers) Debian site. Actually, when I say site, I really mean about twenty sites scattered over three continents. We use Woody (Debian 3.0) with a few of our packages, and that setup works pretty well. In our environment, APT shines as a tool for managing the distribution of packages to a very diverse range of servers. The team running this is capable but of small size. It does help that the team manager is a Debian developer :}

    Although we rely on it, the release cycle reall

  • Although you may see this determination to ensure that Debian is totally free as being a little extreme, it makes sense in the long term. There is a distinct possibility that some Linux vendors may close up shop, change their business direction or adjust their practices in some other way. Thus, the distribution you use today may not be around in 10 years.

    This is not the case with Debian. The Debian project is entirely volunteer-run and doesn't seek to generate profit. This essentially means that, while the

  • Looking at it the wrong way (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Copid ( 137416 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @12:50PM (#6325630)
    When it comes to new Linux users, the install is the last thing you want them to have to worry about. Installing Linux is the hardest way to learn unless you're a serious gearhead. When I want to teach somebody Linux, I frequently choose Debian as the tool of choice to begin with. Here's why:

    1) I do the install and get the hardware working. Even Mandrake can screw up on some hardware, and if you don't even know how to edit text files, you're not going to be able to recover. Most people learn an OS that's pre-installed for them. Why not Linux?

    2) They don't have to stress about packaged depends. It's taken care of in a very simple, powerful, and elegant way. I've been using APT for years now, and I still learn something new about cool ways to use it almost weekly.

    3) Packages aren't broken "out of the box" as they frequently are in RH or Mandrake. Users can use a subset of the utilities and get used to them rather than searching for which text editor crashes the least.

    4) The rules on how packages behave are standardized, and file location/behavior is very predictable. Good for people to learn about good UNIX directory structure use.

    5) Things work and configure properly on their own, but you can hand-tune text config files without breaking some bizarre mother configuration script that depends on it being the only thing that ever edits the files.

    Once the user gets used to the shell, the directory structure, and basic system management, we talk about the installation process, and they can ususally basically handle it on their own. I learned Linux through the "trial by fire" of installing it wihtout even knowing how to use the text editors. It was painful and it took forever. No matter how pretty a face you put on the installer, you can't get around the fact that OS installs are usually not for beginners. Better to make the system self-consistent and manageable than to allow the user to easily install an OS himself that he has no hope of properly managing for himself.

  • I am not trying to fuel a flame here, but I don't really think there are that many "common people" such as plain old managers who know about Linux. IT people are the ones who would be most effective.

    Too bad some IT managers view the choce as "Linux = no counterstrike". The network administrator for my Cable ISP really sucks at Counterstrike, but he loves to play it while on the clock.

    Many tech support people are worse though. For example, when trying to get my friend's DSL modem to work with Mandrake Linux 8.0, I had to call up tech support. After the guy had me on hold for a while, he comes back on and says "You're trying to get your DSL modem to work with your Lexus, right?"

    As far as Linux vs. Windows goes, I believe OpenOffice.org is a great office suite and almost any buisiness can use Linux for all their office administration tasks. If the company wants to focus on their business, not the computer, Linux distros make for good operating systems. If the people in charge of a company favor having fashon makeover software instead of saving hundreds per seat for MS Office and Windows, so be it.

    As far as the companies who buy MS products and then lock the computers with Secure PC or Foolproof, management either is very rich and loves the Windows logo, or is probably leading the company downhill.

  • Debian Minimal Install (Score:5, Interesting)

    by virtigex ( 323685 ) on Sunday June 29, 2003 @01:32PM (#6325838)
    I use debian on my servers and embedded machines and install with a minimal install first and use apt-get for any commands I need. The minimal install is the LordSutch install [debian.org] and is over in about 5 minutes. Immediately after I apt-get the commands I know I'll need and thereafter apt-get commands as needed.

    I usually log in via ssh/xterm and just run a console on the screen. If I run a X server, it's usually Xvnc, so I don't have to work in a noisy machine room.

    Desktop/laptop machines are usually RedHat - RH does have a nicer GUI than Debian, but RH seems to be rivalling Microsoft in the amount of unneeded programs that get installed by default.

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