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Major New Features in Debian Etch 167

Posted by timothy from the spurred-by-the-offshoots dept.
Klaidas writes "Linux.com reports that the third beta of Debian Etch installer (released August 11, 2006) has some major new features, which might make this version of Debian the easiest to install. According to the original announcement, we will now be able to install using a graphical user interface on i386 and amd64 platforms. We will also be able to set up encrypted partitions during installation. Debian Etch is scheduled to be released on December 2006"
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Major New Features in Debian Etch More

Major New Features in Debian Etch

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  • Oh, wow... (Score:5, Funny)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:11AM (#15926051)
    Etch-A-Sketch runs Debian?!
    • Yeah, but the dang scroll knobs don't work.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )
      Etch-A-Sketch runs Debian?!

      This call for a reference that dates back from what, for the computing world, was the transition of the classical period to the early Middle Ages. This joke was popular among DOS apologists:

      Q: What's the difference between a Macintosh and an Etch-A-Sketch?
      A: You don't have to shake the Mac to clear the screen.

  • Monitor (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:17AM (#15926083)
    > The installer is designed to work at a resolution of 600x800

    Hm, looks like a rotated old LCD monitor.
  • "We will also be able to set up encrypted partitions during installation. "

    Isn't this a potential non-starter under the British Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA)?

    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/15/165 9233 [slashdot.org]

  • Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:19AM (#15926093)
    I am teh Old Skool. Any Debian installation that does not require lamb's blood, sulfur, salt, mercury, a transcription from the original Assyrian, Fermat's Enigma, and a Circle of Power etched in holy chalk consecrated on Michaelmas is a Debian installation for which I have no use.

    Friggin' noobs...

    • Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SamSim ( 630795 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:26AM (#15926131) Homepage Journal
      And for those of you who are noobs, here is how to install Linux on a dead badger [everything2.com].

    • Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!! (Score:5, Funny)

      by pb ( 1020 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:40AM (#15926195)
      Hah, you had it easy--in my day, we had to use dselect!
      • *shudder* I remember the first time I tried to install Debian after using Slackware and then RedHat for some time. I'm still suffering from the dselect-induced post-traumatic stress...

      • Hmmm (Score:2)

        by phorm ( 591458 )
        Better than the old RPM-based (without a package-updating/downloading frontend) distro that I've been having fun maintaining lately. Try upgrading glibc on one of those babies and watch all your apps blow up.
    • Don't worry. It's still possible to use a live CD à la Knoppix, then install the latest debootstrap and use it to install Debian. Well I suppose it will still be possible in the foreseeable future. This is about the only solution when your hardware is too recent to be detected by the installer anyway.
    • When the install ask for the virgin's blood, the average slashdotter need only dilute theirs with some Extra Virgin Olive Oil.... this dilutes the "virgin" quality down to a reasonable level... after that the install works just fine!

    • I am teh Old Skool. Any Debian installation that does not require lamb's blood, sulfur, salt, mercury, a transcription from the original Assyrian, Fermat's Enigma, and a Circle of Power etched in holy chalk consecrated on Michaelmas is a Debian installation for which I have no use.

      Friggin' noobs...

      Don't worry. It will use a GUI, but it will still work basically the same. They would piss off too many users who have already invested in Lamb's blood if they made it all useless! The only change is that the c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Entropy ( 6967 )
      Actually, that sounds far closer to a Gentoo installation ..
  • I believe that installation is one of Linux's biggest stumbling blocks to larger adaoption. I spend most of my Linux time running Live CDs where there is no OS installation at all (I love you Ubuntu). The issue for many home users is software installation. While there have been significant inroads made in this area over that past few years, it has generally not yet reached Windows' "double click the .exe to run" simplicity. Linux has a huge following among the geeks, nerds, and geeky nerds. It is also
    • installing stuff provided by your distro is easy, arguablly easier than installing stuff on windows (you don't have to go searching for download sources etc first)

      the problem comes when you wan't something more custom. Something from outside the distros "walled garden" the distros are very resistant to universal packaging efforts like autopackage.

      • the problem comes when you wan't something more custom. Something from outside the distros "walled garden" the distros are very resistant to universal packaging efforts like autopackage.

        Personally, I think it's a good thing that Joe Averages can't as easily install software that hasn't been made a part of the "walled garden." The "double-click, execute/install" method for Windows software from Jimbo's Shareware Hut is right up there with discs that execute software on insert as far as security and malw

    • Re:Install is (1 of) Linux's biggest problem(s) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by massysett ( 910130 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:51AM (#15926256) Homepage
      How do these posts on Linux install being hard get modded up? First, the article was about the installer for Debian Etch, not about individual application installation. Installing Linux is generally *easier* than installing Windows. With Windows you have to search all over the Internet for drivers. Linux usually comes with all the drivers you need and configures them for you.

      Second, even if you want to talk about installing apps, it's super easy to go into Synaptic or whatever tool your distro uses, click on something, and install it. Why is it that people think that "I can't install things the exact same way I install things in Windows" equals "it's hard to install things"? If you want to do things the Windows way, use Windows!

      Third, I have seen Linux apps that are easy to install "the Windows way." Google Earth is a prime example; Skype is another. Download, click, and use.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by xiao_haozi ( 668360 )
        I agree with you. But (I think) what the poster was referring to may have been a more general reference to linux os installs. Yes, there is the ease of Ubuntu which is far easier than most windows os installs in my opinion. But there can also be the more comlex (but not always) installs of slack or vector, etc. For someone who has done partitioning etc, then this is no biggie. But for someone who is a non-power user or not for computer saavy then they may not even understand partitioning let alone inst
        • But there can also be the more comlex (but not always) installs of slack or vector, etc.
          And can you give me any reason for a newbie to be installing Slack or Vector? The entire reason for having different Linux distributions is to allow some to cater to new users (Ubuntu, SuSE, etc.) while still allowing others (Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, etc.) to cater to power users who want manual configuration for all settings.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by xiao_haozi ( 668360 )
            good point. and I would agree. I just pointed this out as it was something I encountered a few years back when I was trying to jump into linux and was experimenting with vector and slack, etc., as these were touted by a few resources as probably running better on old architecture and low memory machines.
      • "Download, click, use" isn't happening on Windows, because you don't get
        all dependencies. Just try installing .net apps for the first time (and mistakenly
        thinking 2.0 is a better choice than 1.1, therefore removing 1.1).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      While there have been significant inroads made in this area over that past few years, it has generally not yet reached Windows' "double click the .exe to run" simplicity.

      True, but.... making it very easy to double-click to run some binary from some server is one of the nice ways to get a ton of crapware (adware, malware, spyware, trojans, viruses, backdoors). And if you're installing credible software, then top it off with an equally crapware-laden crack, then you're just as bad off.

      I must admit that I have
    • I believe that installation is one of Linux's biggest stumbling blocks to larger adaption.
      I run XP on a Dell P4 HT with a gig-o-ram.
      XP takes longer to get to a useable desktop than my livecd linux on the same box.
      And, once the knoppix cheatcode you want to use is entered, no further questions are asked by the system, and your desktop is soon ready.
      I also can beat the time XP takes on the Dell, on a 200 MMX with 256 MB of RAM.
      All I enter is:

      knoppix fromhd=/dev/hdd7 myconfig=scan

      I do have the CD "installed" i

  • Major New Features (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iiioxx ( 610652 ) <iiioxx@gmail.com> on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:26AM (#15926128)

    At the risk of sounding like a troll, is this not a sign of how far behind the rest of the Linux world Debian has let itself fall? An installation GUI touted as a "major new feature"?

    For years, Debian was heralded for it's packaging system, and yes apt-get is/was great. But the rest of the distros caught up, and easy, automated installation and updating is now a feature that one expects in a Linux distro as standard equipment. Just like a GUI installer.

    This is like a car manufacturer in 2006 saying they've just added airbags to their cars, and it's a "major new feature!"

    It's not a major new feature. It's about damn time.

    • Re:Major New Features (Score:4, Insightful)

      by eipgam ( 945201 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:34AM (#15926168)
      I'm just glad it's optional. I've never been a big fan of graphical installers, they've traditionally been awful and sluggish. And lets be honest, it's not like the current debian installer is hard to use.

    • Re:Major New Features (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pecisk ( 688001 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:34AM (#15926169)
      AFAIK, nor yast nor RedHat eq. is not as powerful and stable as apt-get, so no, it is not just about features, but it is about features done WELL.

      Fedora and SUSE still feels very old - because of rpm usage - against Debian and Ubuntu. And that is my expierence after 7 years of using Linux in work and home.

      • Re:Major New Features (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sketch ( 2817 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:49AM (#15926242) Homepage
        > AFAIK, nor yast nor RedHat eq. is not as powerful and stable as apt-get, so no, it is not just about features, but it is about features done WELL.

        I find it funny that everyone says apt-get is what makes Debian great. I've used apt-get for years on Redhat. I'd say it's just as stable as on Debian. Sure, it didn't come installed by the OS but it only took one simple command to install it.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by joshua ( 2507 )
          It's not so much apt-get as the vast number of really good packages. If you want to install something, you're far more likely to find it packaged and packaged well on debian than on redhat.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by MartinG ( 52587 )
          and how many packages for redhat are available from apt repositories? No more than a couple of hundred last time I looked.

          And most of the few that were available have moved to yum.

          Can you even get official security updates for redhat via apt?

        • As an admin with RedHat 7.2 server at the moment I find apt-rmp a bit lacking...

          Actually if any friendly /.'ers could point me to a decent repositiory for a sorry SOB
          in my situation I would be extremely grateful!

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Sketch ( 2817 )
            If you just want updates, upgrade to 7.3 and use fedoralegacy.org updates. (Though it looks like they are going to discontinue them at the end of the year. It looks like it may be time to consider upgrading, if you don't want to do your own security updates...)

            There are a few other repos, but it looks like they are in the process of merging their repositories to rpmforge.net. There's a package list here, and links to the 3 seperate repositories:

            http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/rpmforge.php [wieers.com]

            DAG provides
            • Hey, thanks for the info. I'm mostly interested in security updates. They seem to be difficult to track down at this point.

              Bottom line is I just need to get off RedHat and use a different distro. I didn't buy RedHat so I don't hold a grudge over this. It's just a bit of a PITA. I'm thinking Ubuntu LTS Server is a good option for long term support. It's a co-located server in a tightly controlled NOC so it's tough for me to get at it through anything but ssh. I would love to try the macho approach and reinst
        • $ apt-get install apt
          bash: apt-get: command not found

          It's not working...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by CRC'99 ( 96526 )

          I've used apt-get for years on Redhat. I'd say it's just as stable as on Debian. Sure, it didn't come installed by the OS but it only took one simple command to install it.

          Ahhh yes. Now lets have a look how hard that is shall we? :)

          # yum search apt | grep apt.i386
          apt.i386 0.5.15lorg3.2-6.fc6 extras-developme

          Hmmm - so apt is already in the Fedora repos.... that means running 'yum install apt' and you're done. So remind me again, what makes Debian so special? Surely it can't be apt if apt is available el

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Bronster ( 13157 )
            So remind me again, what makes Debian so special? Surely it can't be apt if apt is available elsewhere....

            Um... that would be the fact that apt isn't a second class citizen on Debian and it really is well integrated, plus the repositories "just work"[tm]ed much more easily for a long time. Debian does some things stupidly, but a lot of things very sanely - it's a set of tradeoffs that some people really like.

            (then again, I'm running Ubuntu these days on my desktop - Sarge on servers, so what does that say

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by 00lmz ( 733976 )

            Well, here's what the Debian people say [debian.org] (in a section titled "Quality of implementation") -- I've marked the important part :) :

            People often say how they came to Debian because of apt-get, or that apt is the killer app for Debian. But apt-get is not what makes the experience so great: apt-get is a feature readily reproduced (and, in my opinion, never equalled), by other distributions -- call it urpmi, apt4rpm, yum, or what have you. The differentiating factor is Debian policy, and the stringen

        • apt-rpm is orders of magnitude slower than apt-deb because of the goofy wat the RPM packaging system is designed.

          You can rightfully expect apt-get install to take about 3-4 times as long on a RedHat system than a debian system.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by teg ( 97890 )

          Apt is old tech, and doesn't work too well on Red Hat in e.g. cross platform scenarios. Things like multiarch confuses it to death. Also, occasionally, it wants remove a ton of packages when updating.

          I prefer RPM to dpkg as a format capabilitywise, and yum to apt as a front end - and not by a small margin either.

      • are you saying that you like apt-get in debian better than apt-get or yum in fedora?

        Or you just like the .deb extension more than .rpm?

        The obvious long term solution is to aggree on a unified repository that rpm based systems and debian based systems moved to use.

        Then .rpm and .deb could be used on a single system (if file locations are also agreed upon).

        Finally, a non-vendor name would need to be agreed on. .. .lpf ?

        • Re:yum or the name "rpm" (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Reverend528 ( 585549 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @09:18AM (#15926436) Homepage
          Or you just like the .deb extension more than .rpm?

          Lets face it, before yum, rpm was a pain in the ass. Before yum, rpm users were likely to find themselves in "rpm hell" seeking numerous rpm packages that were required by whatever they sought to install. Many people who migrated to debian or gentoo during that period are likely to have only bad memories of the rpm packaging system.

          • Face it, without apt, we'd have "Deb hell" just the same as RPM hell. Every try installing a program from a deb file and finding missing dependencies?

            RPM hell is no more an issue than DEB hell. Any RPM based distro I've used in the past couple years has had a package manager to deal with RPM files, just as Debian has apt-get. Yes, Debian has more packages off the bat, an advantage. However, in order to play DVD files, install Opera, or install non-free/contrib software I've had to edit /etc/apt/sources.
        • I'm a big debian fan, but I need to start exploring scientific linux, which is red hat based. I installed a vm, told it "yum install gaim" and it couldn't find the package. I'm not familiar enough with the yum syntax to be usefully able to help myself out right now; you seem to be more knowledgeable than I am so what do I need to do to perform the equivalent of apt-cache search foo? Thanks!

    • Re:Major New Features (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Eudial ( 590661 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:44AM (#15926213)


      At the risk of sounding like a troll, is this not a sign of how far behind the rest of the Linux world Debian has let itself fall? An installation GUI touted as a "major new feature"?

      For years, Debian was heralded for it's packaging system, and yes apt-get is/was great. But the rest of the distros caught up, and easy, automated installation and updating is now a feature that one expects in a Linux distro as standard equipment. Just like a GUI installer.

      This is like a car manufacturer in 2006 saying they've just added airbags to their cars, and it's a "major new feature!"

      It's not a major new feature. It's about damn time.


      A graphical installer adds ABSOLUTELY nothing to the installation. Unless you're a newbie to Linux (if you are, debian isn't really too suited for you), you will see and understand this. Who the bleeding heck cares how the installation looks? The focus should be on a fast installer that works on as many configurations as possible, not fancy eye-candy.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by garcia ( 6573 )
        Regardless of what level of a user you are the installer's looks are meaningless. My current machine (running Debian unstable -- which, as a side note, has been very unstable lately) had Debian installed in October of 2002.

        Think it matters much when you will probably use the installer once or twice ever?

        Not to me it doesn't.
      • Navigating an unfamiliar tree in text mode is a pain in the ass. The only decent way to navigate a tree in text mode is via command line with tab completion, but that sucks when you are unfamiliar with the tree. You need tree navigation to customize the list of packages to install.

        Not everybody can read a language that works fine with 256 fixed-size characters. There exist languages like traditional Chinese, Thai, and Arabic. You won't get these people to suddenly switch to a more practical alphabet.

        Complet

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Eudial ( 590661 )

          Navigating an unfamiliar tree in text mode is a pain in the ass. The only decent way to navigate a tree in text mode is via command line with tab completion, but that sucks when you are unfamiliar with the tree. You need tree navigation to customize the list of packages to install.

          It's not like you're going to install the system often--and if you are, you're going to need an intimate knowledge of the installer.

          Not everybody can read a language that works fine with 256 fixed-size characters. There exist lang

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by r00t ( 33219 )
            The kernel certainly does not support traditional Chinese, Thai and Arabic text rendering. Point to the source code; mere parsing of UTF-8 will not do the job.

            Also, WTF? Outside of graphics mode, you get 256 different characters. You can go to 512 on VGA sometimes. You'll need many thousand characters to do a traditional Chinese installer. Text mode in no way lets you do a cursive script, which is required for Arabic. Thai is a bit of both, sort of.

    • Re:Major New Features (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Whiney Mac Fanboy ( 963289 ) * <whineymacfanboy@gmail.com> on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:52AM (#15926261) Homepage Journal
      It's not a major new feature. It's about damn time.

      Do all the other distros have an installer that works across 11 arches? (Yes, it's the same back-end across all arches).

      The Debian installer is pretty fine IMO - the graphical front end is pretty nice & counts as a major new feature in my book.

    • Re:Major New Features (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Phleg ( 523632 ) <stephen.touset@org> on Thursday August 17, 2006 @10:07AM (#15926824)

      At the risk of sounding like a troll, is this not a sign of how far behind the rest of the Linux world Debian has let itself fall? An installation GUI touted as a "major new feature"?
      Actually, this is a pretty reasonably significant step forward. Debian lacked a good installation for a long time, simply because of the vast number of architectures it supports. Debian-Installer was written from the ground-up to support all (eleven? thirteen?) architectures that Debian supports, plus provide hooks for CUIs, GUIs, and scriptable interfaces.

      While the current iteration of the graphical installer only works on AMD64 and x86, it's only a matter of time before it's supported across all capable architectures.

      Also importantly, Debian has finally gotten this done "the right way", in that there aren't any significant hacks to provide nice things like accurate progress indicators, etc., that other graphical installers have used.

      And no, I can't think of any other Linux distro that has "caught up" to Debian in terms of packaging. Debian comes with over 15,000 packaged libraries/software, which is a shiton more than other distributions offer (Ubuntu excepted, for obvious reasons). Not only that, but there's simply no comparison between yum and apt.

    • Well coming from a guy who likes to recycle a lot of older 486's* and early pentiums I kind of appreciate the text based installer. I guess you could argue that letting the person installing pick between the two or falling back to text based automatically when faced with a limited resource system would be the way to go (ala RedHat) but as another poster pointed out the Debian installer does work on a number of different architectures.

      As far as I'm concerned the Debian installer *is* graphical. I just can't
  • Are there any screen shots of this GUI installation (links)?

    O. Wyss

  • About time (Score:4, Funny)

    by makomk ( 752139 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:46AM (#15926220) Journal
    I mean, even Gentoo has a graphical install now (though not a very user-friendly one, of course...)

  • GUI = easy ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jimcooncat ( 605197 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:49AM (#15926246)
    GUI doesn't necessarily mean easy to me.

    GUI does mean slow and many times buggier to me.

    GUI means (to me) that, unless shown in a text box, long error messages will be truncated or summarized.

    That said, I've never installed Debian from scratch. Instructions to get (which?) .iso file are too damned confusing.

    I've had no problems with the Ubuntu alternate install. A few years back I was installing Gentoo and though it was involved, I wasn't confused about what to download, thanks to the Handbook.

    If they want to market to Joe Average, they should clean up their website.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      That said, I've never installed Debian from scratch. Instructions to get (which?) .iso file are too damned confusing

      The answer is "any" (or well not CD 2-X of the set, unless you get disc 1). It comes in many different sizes, but the only difference between netinst, businesscard, cd-iso, dvd-iso is how much you need to download during install, which is a balance between having to redownload (if you install on several machines or need to reinstall) and downloading packages you don't need. If that is really t

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by petermgreen ( 876956 )
      what cds you wan't depends on the number of machines your installing and your ease of access to the internet during installations.

      if you are planning to work away from an internet connection get the whole damn set of main CDs/DVDs.

      if the machines don't have CD drives get the boot root and net-drivers floppies

      if you are just doing one box and don't plan to use the cds after initial install get the netinst CD

      if you wan't it to fit on a buisnesscard and don't care about ending up with an 486 optimised kernel (

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Mr.Ned ( 79679 )
      "I've had no problems with the Ubuntu alternate install."

      The Ubuntu alternate install is a modified and rebranded version of the Debian installer. If you didn't have problems with that, you won't have problems with Debian's.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Aladrin ( 926209 )
      It also means you probably need a blasted mouse to install the thing. I view this as a huge step backwards.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evanbd ( 210358 )
      Which iso? Easy answer:

      i386 netinst image [debian.org].

      That's the minimal network install image, which makes for a quick dl and then gets just what you need.

      HTH.

  • Where's the screen shots? (Score:3, Funny)

    by 9Nails ( 634052 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @08:56AM (#15926283)
    This article is worthless without pictures!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CRC'99 ( 96526 )
      This article is worthless without pictures!


      And for the old timers among us:

      This linear sequence of discourse inscribed in an electron-based medium yields no value whilst lacking lithography, daguerreotypy, or other for of relevant pictorial representation!.

      Why yes I do fark. ;)
  • I did not see anything about LSB in the official announcement! Is LSB dead? Debian should have mentioned something about LSB. Could somebody please breif a slashdotter on what is happenning on the LSB front? I'll appreciate, thanx.

    • Is LSB dead?

      Yes. The purpose of LSB is so that proprietary software vendors can produce binaries that run on any LSB-compliant platform (it's unnecessary for anybody who is willing to ship source for the user to build on their own platform). Most of the current platforms support LSB and have done for years. The proprietary software vendors have been completely uninterested in producing binaries for it, preferring instead to produce them for Redhat and SuSE. So you have a plethora of LSB platforms and precis

  • Installer Screen shots (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vivekg ( 795441 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @09:03AM (#15926326) Homepage Journal
    One of its real advantages is that it allows installation in nine new languages that cannot be displayed in the regular installer.

    I have also noticed that GUI installer is bit faster than the regular text based regular installer. However, this installer is not as polished as RHEL or Suse Linux GUI installer but project promises to polish it later on... If you are interested you can see Screen shots -
    http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/wp-content/uploads/2 006/08/debian-testing-gui-installer-1.thumbnail.pn g [cyberciti.biz]
    http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/wp-content/uploads/2 006/08/debian-testing-gui-installer-paritition-dis ks-2.png [cyberciti.biz]

  • There is a catch using the new installer. (Score:3, Funny)

    by stsp ( 979375 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @09:05AM (#15926348) Homepage

    The catch is that you need to tilt your monitor.

    From TFA:
    The installer is designed to work at a resolution of 600x800;

  • Encrypted partitions in SuSE for 3+ years! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Terje Mathisen ( 128806 ) on Thursday August 17, 2006 @09:56AM (#15926738)
    I have been using SuSE's encrypted partitions for more than 3 years now, they have always been completely integrated into the graphical installer.

    Yes, they do require someone to enter the (very long!) passphrase during the OS startup process, but that's a small price for the measure of peace of mind that it provides.

    Terje
  • I'm really glad to see the official Debian project making good moves on installation; though people gripe about the focus placed on installation ("How many times do you install a frickin' OS?" goes the refrain), it really is important. People who might be interested in and benefit from Free software are under no obligation to spend confusing hours getting things to install; it's true that most OSes get stuck on a machine and stay there for a while, but that doesn't mean that installation can be ignored. Wit

  • Big deal, not (Score:2, Insightful)

    by jones_supa ( 887896 )
    Even Sarge's installer is not hard to use. You don't have to do anything from scratch, you just answer questions. If you can't install the system with that, you probably couldn't use it either. There will be a lot to tweak after the installation anyway. Implementing a straightforward installed is probably not one of the biggest problems. It does not count as "major new features".
  • ...anymore, Ubuntu people, as there's nothing Ubuntu can really do that Deb can't. It's true that Debian is more geared towards proficient Linux users, but that's one of the reasons many of us love it so; it is clean, powerful, and stays the hell out of our way. For me personally, just the fact that it has a properly implemented root account rather than that crazy sudoers implementation in Ubuntu is enough to keep me with Deb. (What's up with that, anyway?)
  • I used this recently to install an AMD64/testing debian machine. While I can say in some ways it was quicker to click the various options, I've found that it sometimes has an annoying lack of consistency (probably due to the porting from curses). Notable that sometimes one must click on an option, and then choose "Continue", while other times you can (or must) double-click the option in question. Particularly annoying is when I've set an option, and it goes back to the selection screen, when I hit continue

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