[TriLUG] Debian installation.

Thu May 22 17:02:28 EDT 2003

Hi,

This is in reply to Ben's post on my original post.  BTW, sorry about my replies not appearing under the appropriate thread on the trilug web site.  I use digest to get messages, and I haven't figured out how to put the right subject line in yet.  I am also sorry that the original post is not indented correctly on the web, my second one is right.

Are you the Ben I met at Perl meetings and the Trilug installfest ?  I will assume you are, sorry I don't remember your last name so I can't be sure.  If so, your recommendation is one of the reasons I decided to try Debian.  Thanks alot.

You are right about the hardware detection, but once I got my video info right it did work.  It's actually kind of like the older installation process.  In the mid-90's, I usually had to generate the XF86config myself, but the tools (running xf86config command) usually made the process much easier.  I wasn't aware of the Xandros distribution, but I did try Knoppix and posted my comments about it.  

Thanks for the praise on the post.  Especially if you are the Ben I think you are.  It's nice to hear that a Debian expert like yourself thought the post was basically accurate and well-written.  You are welcome to share the post with anyone you like, Debian people, new users or whatever.  If you like, I could try to rewrite the post to be suitable for posting on a web site.  Right now, the post just reads as a personal narrative.  I am not sure that this is a bad thing.  I also thought I did suggest that people use the network install and only download one cd, maybe it just needs more emphasis.  I hang out in the chat room, so if you would like to talk about it that would be fine.  The only other thing I would like to do if it were posted on a website is to use DocBook.  However, I have never used it before so it may take a couple days to learn it.  

You are also right about the buzz on the Debian install being worse than the bite.  I find this has more to do with how Debian people think and are.  They are mostly technical people not marketers.  They are willing to share all of the information with you even (and sometimes especially) the pitfalls.  That's the way many competent technical people act.  They post the bugs if there are problems and give you an honest report.  They tell you the whole story, if you are patient enough to listen.  Unfortunately, most other people don't think this way.  By contrast, take the microsoft approach.  They rarely if ever list bugs or problems.  People then just assume that because they don't list problems the problems don't exist.  And since Debian lists them, Debian must be full of problems.  I have always wondered that if that were literally true why there are any patches given on the ms websites.  I guess they would say they are only adding new features to improve customer service (or whatever).  Or maybe changing some "features" that are counter-intuitive (what I would call a bug).

On the sources.list issue, I saw this mentioned by Mike in his suggestion about using Knoppix.  He is right, if you use Knoppix there are many more entries in the sources.list file.  This is because Knoppix is really a mixed distribution (i.e. it takes some packages from stable, some from testing, and maybe some from unstable).  The apt.conf file actually shows the default distribution as testing.  It probably needs the extra entries to update correctly.  When you install Debian using the normal install procedure, it only gives entries for the stable distribution.  So the confusion on the complexity of the sources.list is really a product of using Knoppix.  I didn't mention this in my Knoppix post.

Hopefully we'll talk later,

Bill Gooding

// Ben's original post

Folks,

No, Debian's hardware detection leaves something to be desired, but it's
something that they're working on.  They're also working on a graphical
installer that is a very high priority for the new Debian project leader
Martin Michlmayr.  Keep an eye out on the Debian Weekly News
(http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/) for updates on things like that.  It
also gives a very good accounting of new packages, orphaned packages (ones
that no longer have an official Debian maintainer), and packages with
security issues and updates.

Back to the point.  While the Debian installer does not do very good
hardware detection, it is also true that Debian expects users to know a bit
more about their hardware than your average Red Hat install does.
Personally, I consider this a good thing, but it's difficult when you get
down into the realms of non-standard hardware, and specialty stuff.
Debian's USB support is there, but not as intuitive as other distros.  It
does require you to know a little bit more about the software doing the USB
work than do other distros.  That being said, it's still not an overly
difficult process, to my mind, and most folks will learn alot about their
systems in the process of making all of this stuff work.  If that's not your
cup of tea, you probably want to go with a Debian distro like Xandros, which
has better support for that kind of thing at present.  I'm sure the Debian
project will claim a great deal of that technology over time, the way they
did with the Progeny and Corel Debian distros.

Bill, that is an EXCELLENT document on the installation of Debian.  I'd like
to see that put into a document that we can have up on our website for users
who may be interested in trying Debian, but who may want to know more about
the install process before trying it.  The buzz on the process is typically
MUCH worse than the install process itself, and so many users don't even try
it, or wait a long time to do so, largely due to the intimidation factor.
This might help to alleviate alot of that.  Thanks for putting it together.
You did an excellent job.  It actually pointed out in a better way than I
might have described the process, and looked at it from a much more
realistic point of view.  I never really thought of the install process as
being in 2 stages, but you're quite right in saying that it is.  You might
want to emphasize that Debian is quite easy to install over a high speed
Internet connection, and that those with that facility may wish to avoid
downloading the CDs altogether, or at most, only download the first CD.
Only folks doing a standalone system with no connectivity need all three
CDs.

One person mentioned that the sources.list file was a bit intimidating.  I
thought so at first as well, but maybe we can change that.  The file is
fairly straight forward in that it simply defines protocols (http, ftp),
server URLs, distro versions (woody, sarge, sid, or stable, testing,
unstable, either way), etc. for downloading packages through apt, and
updating your system with security and bug fixes.  Once you get a good
sources.list file, it's easy to just port that too other machines via a
floppy, and use it elsewhere.  In fact, it is not even architecture
dependent, as I ported one from an Intel box, and it worked flawlessly on a
Sparc machine without ever needing to edit it.  Also, by just changing
stable to testing, or woody to sarge, whatever, you can then just run
'apt-get update' and 'apt-get dist-upgrade' and easily go from one Debian
distro to the next.  I've never been able to do that with Red Hat.  I've
ALWAYS had problems trying to upgrade those, whereas Debian's dist-upgrade
process has been an absolute joy.  YMMV.

That's my tupence.  Thanks again, Bill.

Regards,
Ben Pitzer

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