Chris Frost writes
"The Debian Project began the freeze of its next distribution release, 2.2, today." Hit the "Read More..." link to read the full press release. This has been a long time coming, and it's good to see another stable release in the future. I've been running potato for some time now, and I'm eagerly anticipating woody, the next unstable release.
------------------------------
The Debian Project
press@debian.org
http://www.debian.org
Martin Schulze
January 16, 2000
------------------------------
The Code Freeze for Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 has begun
"The code freeze for the next Debian release, code named "potato", has
begun", says Richard Braakman, current Debian Release Manager. He
expects the freeze process to take about two months.
Until the new version is released, there will be three distributions
available on our servers: `stable', `frozen', and the new `unstable'.
"The new `unstable' distribution, code named woody[1], was created
today", continues Richard. The `frozen' and `unstable' distributions
start out with the same set of packages. While `unstable' will be
updated rapidly, `frozen' will have only bugfixes applied in
preparation for its release.
[1] Debian releases are code-named after characters from the movie Toy
Story. Woody is the main character, the cowboy action figure.
>> About Debian
The Debian project is an organization of many users who volunteer
their time and effort. Its tasks include maintaining and updating Debian
GNU/Linux which is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system,
and the development of the Debian GNU/Hurd operating system.
>> Contact Information
For further information, please send email to the Debian Press Team,
press@debian.org, or visit the Debian homepage at
http://www.debian.org/"
Slashdot Mirror
Woody - coming soon!
Consider this:
Waiting is not a Productive Thing(tm). Waiting encourages more waiting. Think of it this way, while we're waiting for kernel 2.4, well by the time it's out, XFree 4.0 will be just around the corner, so we'll wait for that.
Then something Even Better(tm) will be coming out Real Soon Now(tm) so you may as well wait for that too.
*bzzt* =) Just make sure it has drop in compatibility. Nuf said.
obviously neither are complete yet, but are getting close. And when released, what effect will that have on things?
I've been a loyal linux user for a short while now (about 8 months), preaching the virtues to anyone who would listen. But I'm considering giving up the ship and going back to windoze just cause it's so damn hard to accomplish anything in linux (permissions, changing to root anytime you want to do anything, no programs, compiling everything yourself and needing to go find libraries to do it when they work at all) and I'm getting worn out on it.
this is a serious question. I'm on the fence here.
I've heard the new X and KDE will revolutionize the OS, and I'm wondering a) when can we see them, and b) will they really make it worth continuing?
I'd assume those facilities are significantly changed from 2.2 to 2.4, and thus you will have to get new
packages for those with a new kernel package as well. Given the way that Debian works, that could
be an automatic upgrade: select the kernel and the other stuff comes in too.
All very true, but that's hardly the same thing as potato today being 2.3-ready like you claimed, now is it? I suspect that was the other poster's point, anyway.
It's just like my endless complaints (up to about 2 months ago, when potato bootdisks finally were released) about slink not supporting my system. All the debian people pointed out that potato *did* support my system, which hardly did me any good since I would have had to install slink first to upgrade to potato (at the time; that's since changed, and one thing I hope Debian continues is to make their unstable branch directly installable), and I couldn't install slink because it didn't support my system.
So, what if I'm on a box sufficiently USB-dependent that I can't install w/o USB support (say, USB NIC)? Am I going to have to wait another three years for a USB-capable, truly Linux 2.4-ready Debian?
This endless stability does come at a price.
Free software gives you that. As long as there are a few people interested in running it, there is
sufficient force for it to be maintained. You don't have to put up with some marketing department
discontinuing your favorite product.
I don't really see that as being different from Debian, where I have to put up with the "marketing department" never even releasing my favorite product because they're so busy hunting bugs that it's out-of-date when they ship.
Of course, one could also argue that the Debian development style isn't free, given the refusal to admit new maintainers into the club....
So, waiting for a release for the most part is a moot point. You can install Debian whenever you want, .x releases.
and have the lastest of everything, or have something that's thoughly tested(MUCH more then other
distros). And, "unstable" for the most part, as alot of people will tell you, is alot better then other
distros
There's only one problem with your argument: it's *NOT* a moot point.
Take me, for example. I like Debian, and prefer to run it. I have a box which won't even boot w/o a 2.2 kernel.
Guess what? That means I couldn't install Debian until November, when beta boot disks for potato finally came out.
It's easy for you to say that it's a simple matter to upgrade if you want, but the problem is that that's a specious argument--it's not always a simple matter (or even possible at all) to upgrade, because the base you'd be upgrading from may not work.
Standard Debian Disclaimer:
:)
Debian is made up of volunteers.
The "organisation" debian does not put together a distro designed to grab market share, but to be a great system.
Dselect perhaps may not be for everyone. BUT YOU DON'T NEED TO USE DSELECT- just skip that step and apt-get the whole system.
Slashdot comments have VERY low standards regards to debian.
Please do NOT comment unless you know what you are saying.
Incidently- Debian is one of the best systems around for those who are in the right frame of mind to use it. That includes me, and everyone I know
NOTE: I am not a "Debian developer"
I don't like them.
Do you?
How can I avoid dealing with them completely? There are so many of them when I go out into the world. I go to a resteraunt, and ask the waitress if she used Debian, and she doesn't even know what it is........ ARGGHH... where can I get some service in this town.
Yes, you are correct and Ian Jackson, the dselect/dpkg designer and coder has said as much. This is why Debian now has console-apt as replacement for dselect and why DPKGv2 is being developed as we speak.
You forgot the best way to please your girlfriend:
Upgrade from NT to Linux to replace your Microsoft with a Woody!
Linux has to lose the elitism and make an idiot proof installer if it ever hopes to displace Microsoft.
We're here to make a good system which is powerful, configurable, flexible, and, above all, usable. This mentality that we must somehow "beat Microsoft" is misguided.
If we make what amounts to an OSS version of Windows, then what was the point? We've "beat Microsoft" at that point, but in so doing have become just like them, albeit a much poorer version.
What in God's name is so difficult about dselect? There is one problem with dselect which I can think of, and it isn't because of dselect: it's because of maintainers who screw up their dependencies, and that's going to be a problem regardless of what package manager front-end is used.
Make good software because it's good software, not to "beat Microsoft." When you make something idiot proof, you attract idiots, which isn't very beneficial.
I'm not trying to be "31337" here, either. I'm just sick of people saying that "if it isn't idiot proof and/or like Windows, then it's worthless and the users and developers are just trying to be elitists."
Elitism is a good thing, just as descrimination is a good thing. It just has to be appropriately applied. Not hiring someone because he's black is probably very stupid; I can think of very few situations where that's appropriate (e.g. acting). On the other hand, I can think of very few situations where it is appropriate to hire someone because he's put five million piercings on his body, has tatoos all over himself, dresses like he lives in a dumpster, has orange hair, and has marbles surgically implanted under each eyebrow. Unless the guy will never have contact with clients and is really good, I don't want him in my business.
If Linux hopes to ever displace Microsoft, it needs to be a good system, with good users, with good functionality, security, and flexibility. Making a OSS version of Windows is a waste of effort.
I've been running one computer on unstable and one on stable. You *do* notice the difference, but almost anything that breaks is fixed the next day. Its usually little things like innd an inewsinn both having a conf file that clashes.
I have to say, I like console-apt, only a couple of gripes which I can ignore.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
I got that too. I assumed my mirror wasnt updated.
Just use 'potato' as the name.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Its probably not going to make it as the default installer for Potato, but its pretty good. IMO it just needs a "tell me what packages depend on this" function, and to be a bit more robust with poor connections (it freezes if downloading stops)
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
"Debian is rock solid while Mandrake isnt. Mandrake people make linux look bad"
Use what you like, and stop moaning. Just becase Debian only increase the minor version for each minor release is no reason to bash them.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
You can buy unstable on a cd from many vendors who are listed on debian's web site. http://www.debian.org/distrib/vendors
--
see shy jo
This more or less means downloading the OS from scratch. Trivial on a T1, non-trivial on a modem.
There is some truth to this, but it's quite possible to do Debian on a modem (I did), or with something less than a T1.
In my case, I used a 2.1 install disk essentially as a base-system installer, and built up the rest of my system over the course of a week or so. If this is your first Debian box, this is a good way to fly. It's better to assemble a system slowly and see how things click into place than to try to load everything at once. My download sessions would run 8-10 hours. I've got dual phone service, (one of which is never in use, one of which is <g>). So it works. As stated, apt-get update and apt-get download -d can be scheduled for automatic execution (remember to echo a 'y' or linefeed to the latter for cron jobs).
Other alternatives:
Other points to recognize: with Debian, more debs => more bandwidth required. Because each package has a probability of being updated, you are essentially required to provide more bandwidth to keep your system up to date. More arguments for keeping lean selection on board. If you're not using a package, lose it. Your updates will go faster.
You also don't have to upgrade your system. "If it ain't broke...". You should stay current on security alerts, but otherwise, if what you've got works, stick with it. Under unstable, there is a rather alarming frequency with which things break (does anyone out there have a successfully installed emacs19 or emacs20 from the past four months?), though usually this just means that the upgrade doesn't install. A --force usually works, though you're taking a risk.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Corel's Linux distro is built around Debian. It's one of the most slickified distros out there -- if you believe MSNBC's writeup. If you want Debian package management without the krufty interfaces, give it a whirl.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
First, do you mean "why do distros come with one installer" or "why do they come with one package manager". There's a difference.
The installer is somewhat insignificant -- you want a piece of software which can boot the system, partition disks, set up some reasonable base defaults, and connect you to a package management system. Ideally you only need do this once. To date I've heard of bootstrap installs (you've got a running system and build a second under it), RH, Debian, YAST, etc., Windows-based installation programs, etc. There are several flavors of installer built around RPM, dpkg, and whatever it is that Slack uses. Reasonably moot issue. Why does everyone seem to have their own? Probably a combination of NIH and support (we support our installer...).
The package management system is a different horse. This is what you're relying on to maintain, upgrade, and verify your system over time. In large part it consists of a package database, some method for identifying dependencies and/or relationships, and possibly some way of resolving them. This isn't a task which is easily split among several systems on a single box.
There are tools for managing packages from one system under another. 'alien' is one such tool, and it permits RPMs to be installed under Debian, and vice versa. But AFIAK, you lose many of the benefits of integrated package management. Ultimately with today's package management architectures, someone's got to rule the roost, and peered administration isn't supported.
Got any better ideas?
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
This means I may not have to sit through 70+ meg updates on my 56k modem! I like the sound of that! :)
:)
Thou it does present a problem... which version to stick with until woddy final is out? Frozen or ongoing potato? I think I'll have to choose frozen, just so I don't have the huge downloads i mentioned.. (or so I hope, anyway.)
that, and I don't have to change my apt.sources file to use frozen.
bash: ispell: command not found
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> I may be wrong, there may be a patch for USB kerboards under 2.2.x
:)
There's a near full backport of the usb subsystem to 2.2.x, actually. Try www.suse.cz/development/usb-backport/ for a patch to update 2.2.14 to 2.3.39's usb stuff. not sure how solid it is, as i haven't tested it yet, and it's better to have the usb stuff in a "stock" kernel than depending on patches, but maybe this might make it into 2.2 upon release of 2.4? or am I just dreaming again?
bash: ispell: command not found
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rpmfind (see rpmfind.net) is a database/service that will find the files in the packages for you. It's quite snazzy.
You can use it via the web interface (above) or via the CLI tool.
...j
I believe you're referring to the Utwig..
-- Does Rain Man use the Autistic License for his software?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
It was a long time since I installed Debian, but I think the problem is that you also need to get the base system, which basicly is a large tgz-file containing the most basic parts of a GNU/Linux system. From there you can use apt to download everything else.
I'm not sure how well the potato boot disks are working, you can always use the slink disks instead, and then install potato from there.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
Funny indeed. I've never managed to install *anything* without a hitch, except for FreeBSD (which I can practically do blindfolded now).
The real question, though is how easy it is to stay up to date once it's installed, since you're likely to be doing that much more often than actually installing/reinstalling (if you're not a windows user, anyway). Again, I find FreeBSD's cvsup && make world mechanism to be as near hands off as one can get. Simply beautiful.
just use 'potato' as yr source. That way you don't have to change it as the mirrors update.
Isn't he the guy who writes the best-selling kid's books?
Explain your cryptic reference, and I'll explain mine:
Go play Star Control 2; you obviously haven't yet.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
:) You are correct, sir. All part of the humor.
However, thanks for the Star Control link! (I love those games... Any game that uses mods for sound must be cool.)
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
This is why I use redhat: no frozen potatoes.
Maybe if I had a microwave card for my computer, I wouldn't care, but I find it's too much trouble to constantly be heating and stirring those frozen potatoes. They take forever to heat up, and even after that, they don't always have that even consistency.
So I use RedHat 6.0, even though I don't know if I have to microwave a "Hedwig" or not. (Hedwig? Is that an alien from Star Control 2?) However, I guess if I used Debian, I could just try to Slink around the whole issue...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
However I *do* think that having the latest kernel permits certain conveniences as far as default packages and installation set-up goes.
Agreed. Perhaps some sort of Potato and 1/2 would be in order? There are some really nice features in the new kernel. It's not too hard grab and install those but it would be nice to have it integrated into apt without having to configure for unstable. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how ;-) Perhaps if it were split off like non-us is done now and somehow, supplimental CDROM handling is added? The biggest problem I have now is that the fast install over fat pipes at work doesn't work so well over 56K at home (not that that's Debian's fault).
WRT to firewalling, the new way is iptables. There is an ipchains compatability module that allows the tables to be handled through ipchains. I'm using that on several boxes now with good results.
There's nothing wrong with an installer that has an expert mode, a normal mode, and install wizard. Again, to deliberately exclude those not already deep in the fold is the very definition of elitism.
I just don't see it. There are several different distros that all give you a good Linux system. Some are targeted at professionals, some to business, and others to novice home users. There IS a need to make the home versions more friendly, and it appears that the work is being done. Perhaps you should write the perfect install wizard for novices?
One thing I DO know for certain is that all of them are easier than SLS was when the kernel was in the 0.9x versions. Of course having to download off of a BBS at 9600bps didn't help either.
Funny. I've installed a few dists lately + freebsd. Debian's was the only one that went without a hitch.
And dselect does NOT suck. Its just complicated.
If you want only potato, use "potato" instead of frozen or unstable.
and aptitude (just a few minutes ago, in fact), and i like dselect better that either. I miss the info displays; the sorting by availability, priority, and name; the hold feature; the ability to undo mark-for-(un)install without resetting everything; indication of obsolete packages.
:). But I believe that I have info screens (latest version, press Enter); I have grouping but not by priority yet (I consider that a dselect misfeatures, but the grouping order will become configurable, hopefully within two versions) -- so that's a legitimate complaint; hold definitely works (you can hit '-' on a package that's being upgraded or just hit '=' anywhere); undo is another thing I really want, and obsolete packages should actually be fairly easy to check for with the right APT magic. In fact, I think I'll go add that now. Expect it today or tomorrow in the 0.0.5 release.
Aptitude author speaking.
Part of the reason that you don't see some of the features you mention is that I'm working on things in approximate inverse order of difficulty. Most of what you mentioned (except for the undo feature) is almost trivial to add, so I haven't yet
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I think the current plan is to try to get this working while woody is unstable.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Potato will also come with several alternative package management frontends including gnome-apt, console-apt, and aptitude.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
You didn't read the first sentence of my assertion that it's not as much of a problem, did you? I said that it wasn't that much of a problem *if* (or iff if you want to be precise :) ) you aren't being charged for bandwidth or connection time.
Obviously, you are.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Don't worry, i noticed aptitude is still in 0.0.x releases, so it's nowhere near finished!
:) )
;) )
:-) I'm running out of other features that I want to add, though, so this may go in sometime in the next few weeks..
e , then second within those groupings sort by status/priority/availability/section/whatever/none , third yet again, and last by name/download size/installed size/whatever
:)
:) ) If you're willing to edit and recompile the code, line 372 of testscr.cc defines the grouping order. (be warned: it has more parentheses than you'll see anywhere else outside a Lisp program, partly because I was thinking in somewhat Lispy terms when I wrote that code..)
No problem. Sorry if I gave the impression I was jumping on you, but you're the first person who's provided detailed feedback (aside from "looks cool"..
My complaints were more directed towards capt, which is much more developed
Actually, depending on your point of view, I may be extremely close to having a superset of capt's features. OTOH, I haven't explored that program deeply; it looked like maybe it had more in it than met the eye immediately..
The "undo" i was referring to is how in dselect if you push +, then decide you don't want to install it after all, you can hit _ and it'll be in the state it was before the +.
Hmm. You're referring, I believe, to being able to purge packages? I'd think console-apt could do that..aptitude can (in fact, the default binding is '_') -- you just won't be able to tell what you did till the next release (I just added an indicator for it a few minutes ago
Just checked and you're right, console-apt doesn't have a purge mechanism. It's about two lines of code, so I have no idea why it's not there. (well, actually I do have one idea: purge facilities may not have been in libapt when console-apt was started)
i would've thought that to be as trivial to add as anything else.
What you're talking about is. If you look at the TODO for aptitude (don't take it too seriously, some of that stuff is just random ideas I came up with when I was planning the program), one of the top items is multilevel undo support. The main reason this is tricky is that selecting a single package can potentially cause a cascade of modifications to package states, so code to save the old state, track the new one, and find the differences is needed. Not too hard, but in the spirit of Aptitude I'm going to make it ridiculously general and solve several other annoyances in the same fell swoop. Unfortunately, this complicates the problem significantly and I've been too intimidated so far to do it
What would be really nice would be to pick first sort by status/priority/availability/section/whatever/non
I assume you mean 'group' here instead of 'sort' -- for me 'group' implies that the packages are placed in a separate, collapsable subtree, whereas 'sort' just implies that they get sorted within the subtree.
This is *definitely* on the Aptitude TODO. I estimate that it'll get into 0.0.6 but I'm trying to avoid promising anything about release schedules
The internal infrastructure to do most of that is actually already present; I just haven't written the configuration code yet (which is going to be hairy, since C++ doesn't make classes into first-class objects so to build association tables you need factory routines and..argh, my head is hurting already
As for sorting..I was originally going to provide more of this, but grouping worked out so well that I may just stick with the alphabetical sorting I'm doing now.
All in all, it's good that so many package selection programs are available, so people who hate one can use another.
Absolutely correct.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
(Disclaimer: I'm not a Debian developer; I just hang out on the mailing lists and in the new-maintainer queue..)
There are two things to note:
First, this isn't an official "Debian strategy", although many users end up doing it; in fact, it's a periodic occurance on debian-devel for someone to start a huge thread predicting the End Of The World As We Know It[tm] due to the slow release schedule, and for just about everyone else to agree that things need to speed up. There are several proposals to restructure the archives and make it easier to cut new releases more often; it looks like (I believe) they'll be in place before Woody.
Second, this isn't as much of a problem as you think, as long as you aren't being charged for modem time and/or bandwidth. I've tracked unstable for long periods of time over a modem. The trick is to set up a cronjob to download stuff in the middle of the night. Also, if you want to use less bandwidth, you can download less frequently than once a day (say, once every week or two) or upgrade individual packages that you want a newer version of.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
A startup company named RedHat has announced that it is shipping a new distribution of the Linux operating system. For unknown reasons, it has chosen to number this version 6.0.
:)
Sun Microsystems, a new contender from Palo Alto, California, has released a hitherto unseen operating system, Solaris.
And finally, a dark horse company named Microsoft in the city of Redmond, California, has announced that it will soon be releasing an operating system known as "Windows", with versions starting at 2000.
Daniel
PS - apologies if you didn't mean what I thought you meant
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Wait for the official potato release -- the boot-floppies are still in progress (do they even work right now?) I think 'base via http' is going to be in the final version if it's humanly possible, from what I've heard on the list :)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I dumped core and broke my woody...
--
keep acting shocked and move slowly towards the cake.
I brought up this issue on a Debian mailing list some time ago, but objections were raised to the idea of overriding packages (which I called "fake installing"). I now think we need a more fundamental solution. We need a distribution-independent install system that can adopted by program authors who distribute original packages (whether in source or in binary form). Distributions could provide their own versions of software while allowing users to replace these with whatever version they want, all without confusing the distribution's package management frontend.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
bah :)
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
And to criticize without trying to fix it yourself is the very definition of l00serdom. 100s34! U 4 n07 krAD!! First Post!
Bah. Debian was known for having a great installer back when Slackware was king. It's why I switched after all. They're not being elite, just resting on their laurels. But then, Corel has one of the easiest installers, and being Debian-based, I could hope that the Debian mainstream will just adopt it. The QT package selector really puts dselect to shame too... but I wish it was based on gtk instead.
Hmm.. so you would rather NOT have that 10% increase? What, you're too proud to take better advantage of your processor? Come on... haven't you ever felt that you were getting slightly cheated by installing RPMs built and optimized for the 80386 rather than your 80686?
--
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
A Redhat release is just as stable as a Debian release. The reason that Debian takes so much longer to release is that they include many more packages. That is good because you can find the packages you need on the CD, without the need to retrieve them via rpmfind. But I think that most people would give that diversity up to have more up to date packages.
It's also not true that you can just grab an updated package if you need it. Any current Slink user can tell you that. Package maintainers tend to make updated packages just for unstable, since that's what they run.
> most major distros are at ~6.x, nuff said.
Nuff said about you, I'm afraid.
When Solaris went from version 2.6 to 2.7, they decided to instead adopt 7 as the number of the version.
Windows NT has version 4.0 and Sun was afraid that clueless people would assume that NT was better because 4.0 is bigger than 2.7
Real Managers of course know that NT is a better server because it also run MS Office, which they (think they) know.
Until now, I used to have a fresh potato every morning when I came in to the office.
Soon, I'll have a woody every morning after I come in the office. It sounds very exciting!
I'd assume those facilities are significantly changed from 2.2 to 2.4, and thus you will have to get new packages for those with a new kernel package as well. Given the way that Debian works, that could be an automatic upgrade: select the kernel and the other stuff comes in too.
Thanks
Bruce
* ISDN
* Anything NAT-related (the ipchains -> netfilter transition)
* PCMCIA-CS stuff
* All the IP routing stuff
Bruce Perens.
It appears they are making changes that will let them admit new maintainers again. A lot of previously manual processes for managing maintainers seem to have been automated recently.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
You touched on the point without seeing it. In a world where we're used to nothing lasting forever, wouldn't it be nice to have control over how long things last?
Free software gives you that. As long as there are a few people interested in running it, there is sufficient force for it to be maintained. You don't have to put up with some marketing department discontinuing your favorite product.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I'd like to see more work on gnome-apt. A panel full of check-boxes is all you'd really need to set all the flags that dselect manipulates. The calls are there in libapt.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
There will doubtless be some humor around the code-name of the next unstable version. You can refer to downloading it as "getting a woody" :-)
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
In the interests of collecting all the flood of "look, beavis, he's anticipating wood" jokes in one place, and simultaneously preventing the uninterested from having to read all of them, I request that all such jokes be submitted as replies to this.
Thank you for your consideration.
Given the pedigree of Debian, I'm a bit bemused at my own experience with it around the time of the hamm/slink transition. After many years of running various RedHats and a couple of years of Slackware prior to that, I didn't expect many surprises. In fact, I expected even greater stability, if that were possible, because of that super pedigree thing (not really possible, since I never had any instability nor any other trouble with RH, but I expected good things anyway).
Alas, I persevered for 4 weeks during which I had to update numerous libraries (some repeatedly) in order to get Netscape and other quite normal stuff to work, always following the appropriate installation procedures for the item in question. Towards the end of this period, things got so bad that not only would Netscape no longer work properly, but the GIMP wouldn't come up at all. In utter frustration, I dumped the whole lot and went back to RedHat.
I have no idea what went wrong but it did, badly. This doesn't concern me too much personally (I'll try again when potato is released), but I can't help wondering how Linux newbies are coping with Debian, as opposed to Debian newbies that are fully-fledged Unix old-timers. If I managed to screw it so thoroughly then there must be quite a bit of rope available for hanging oneself in the distro.
[Yes, of course it was all my fault. I'm merely wondering how it was possible for it to happen at all, against a backdrop of more than just a little experience and a total lack of such problems with other systems, spanning Linux, many Unixes, and BSD. Very bemused.]
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
In fact, I've been using the 2.2.x kernels with Debian 2.1 (Slink) since May. (Which is when I first installed Slink). Works fine.
;-)
Note that kernel 2.2 was a huge change compared to 2.0. On the other hand, 2.4 is more like an incremental release (don't forget that 2.2 was released only a year ago). So Potato and the Penguin should live happily together
___
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Can somebody please explain what's involved in the ftp install? I downloaded the rescue and root disks, hoping that will work but it didn't. I got to the point where it asks where to install the system from. I select netfetch but it fails. It didn't even ask me for the NIC driver yet! What am I missing?
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I use dselect almost exclusively now, especially when doing updates (so that I can hold packages which I don't really need to be upgraded, rather than having to do a 100MB download once a week).
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Second, this isn't as much of a problem as you think, as long as you aren't being charged for modem time and/or bandwidth.
I'm in England, we have metered local phone calls. Any time my computer dials online, I am being charged. To pay for (at a guess) a day or two of solid online, slowly grabbing new debs, would cost about an order of magnitude more than a CD of the same files.
shouldn't that be
:-) [esc]
:set flame
aBesides, real men use vim.
:set noflame
:x
It's a cool idea to say "grab the CDs of the (heavily dated but rock stable) release version, and tell apt to download the upgrades" but when most of the packages have gone through several releases, this more or less means downloading the OS from scratch. Trivial on a T1, non-trivial on a modem.
--Malachi
"Life is all about strategy, mathematics and psychological perceptiveness."
Upgrading from 2.0 to 2.2 should be much easier than from 1.2 to 2.anything, because you don't have to deal with the libc5->libc6 upgrade. Just running apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade should do most of the hard work for you.
Ah, sounds quite simple. So what you're saying is CowboyNeal is looking forward to pointing his /etc/apt/sources somewhere new? Man, he really needs to get out more... ;)
"Sir, I'd stake my reputation on it."
"Kryten, you haven't got a reputation."
I've been running potato for some time now, and I'm eagerly anticipating woody, the next unstable release.
Erm, why exactly? I find it interesting that people rush to install the latest release of a distribution. Surely you can keep your packages up to date in the mean time? Why exactly does installing the latest release improve your system?
I don't actually use a distribution, having compiled everything on my system myself. But if I did, I certainly wouldn't want to install something over my carefully crafted system. What would be the point?
"Sir, I'd stake my reputation on it."
"Kryten, you haven't got a reputation."
If you'd learn to walk barefoot, you wouldn't get torn feet on rocky surfaces. Millions, if not billions, of people worldwide get by just fine without shoes. You may, too. Visit http://di r.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Cultures_and_Group s/Barefooters/ for more info.
If we want to track only potato with apt-get upgrade then do we need to change our apt sources list to say 'frozen' instead of 'unstable'? I tried that and I get 404s on the frozen directories.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
As with any new software or interface, there is a learning curve. Deselect makes perfect sense once you understand how it works. It just takes a little more time, but is very effecient. Besides, Debian is not trying to just have a slick appearance to woo the less technical or patient.
I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed...
Personally, I HATE dselect. I just can't get the hang of it. Does that make me a retard? It's not exactly one of the most obvious and friendly installers now is it? I'll take apt over dselect anytime. (Or even raw dpkg and ftp if I need to)
I've installed exactly one system (bo) with dselect, and that turned into a complete disaster. it's been dpkg (and later apt) ever since.
After years of slow releases, Debian promises to bring woody out fast.
Come by Debian, and see our woodys.
With the new UltraSparc and MIPS ports, there will be woodys for everyone!
Haha. Yes!
The one thing that I've thought that separated Debian from the rest was not how SLOW the releases come, but how quickly they come.
.x releases.
.x release to .x reelase, maybe they should just use whole numbers for release versions?
A "stable" release is thoughly tested, sometimes TOO thoughly tested =) But when you have something that's critial on being rock stable, these are they way to go to start. And if there is a program that you need a later version because of mroe functionality, you can do that too.
Tou can just as easily update packages buy pointing to "unstable", or now "woody". I can get updates to programs AS THEY ARE RELEASED. I don't have to wait for the distro to update everything themselves every couple months. Or if I really need something, hunt down a package, or get teh source and compile myself. I can just type "apt-get dist-upgrade" and my system is the latest it can be.
And with the large number of packages, I can be sure that whatever piece of free software(speach and beer), that they will ALL update with that one command. And I can rest assured that although I didn't compile that myself, it's not only a safe program to run, but it's configured to correctly work on my system. How can you go wrong? The more packages the better.
So, waiting for a release for the most part is a moot point. You can install Debian whenever you want, and have the lastest of everything, or have something that's thoughly tested(MUCH more then other distros). And, "unstable" for the most part, as alot of people will tell you, is alot better then other distros
Just one thing though, Debian "stable" releases change so much from
Well, I don't agree with you about Slackware, but FreeBSD is, admittedly, a truly masochistic experience.
An installer that refuses to continue because your mouse IRQ conflicts with the keyboard is not, in my opinion, something that should be inflicted on the general populace.
Woohah. I'm impressed.
I run NetBSD on my Mac and a roll-your-own system on my Alpha. What's your point?
FUD = Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. I hardly see how my comment qualifies.
BTW, if you'd bothered to check, both comments were mine.
PS: You are truly a small-minded jerkoff. Go crawl back under your rock, scum.
Configuring the kernel doesn't do a lot of good when the installer gives you no idea of legal values for the IRQ and I/O ports. I ended up trying likely values and having to reboot every time, because the keyboard would stop responding. Not my idea of fun.
OK, let's spell it out for you:
1) How much thought does it take to realize that a statement about a distribution like Slackware, that is well known as running only on x86, and for which ports to other architectures are not generally available, as you admit, would generally apply only to x86? (BTW, I am aware of the ports in progress to Alpha and Sparc, although I believe the Alpha port is further ahead at the moment; I am also aware that they are not publically distributed, as are most other
2) Go back and read my post. Now, be honest for a moment (I know it's hard, but try): does it really look like I'm flaming Debian? I stated my personal experience with Debian (that it took me a while to get the hang of it), an opinion which appears to be shared by at least a few other people here, if you bothered to read the other posts about its installer. I also stated that Slackware had my favorite installer, for several reasons which I don't believe anyone could possibly think were trollbait.
3) You jump all over me because you ran out of crack/are in the middle of PMS/your girlfriend didn't put out for you last night/whatever, and then run around screaming that I'm a troll. I then state that the troll description could be more accurately applied to you, and you begin ranting that I'm insulting the opinions of all ACs. Let me state this clearly so that you do not misunderstand yet again - I am referring to you, as an individual, and not to all ACs.
Now, was that clear enough for you?
That was the bizarre part. The most likely cause was my general lack of clues about FreeBSD, but disabling the mouse (PS/2) caused the installer to freeze later on in the setup. Damned if I do, damned if I don't...
This is getting pointless (not that there was ever any point to your posts to begin with, but...)
Except *that* isn't even true. Debian and FreeBSD run on my PC98 box. Slackware doesn't. Ditto for my VAIO that RH installs on, but Slackware doesn't. And then there's SGI's Visual Workstation....
Well golly gee. Fancy that. Considering the PC98 is a different architecture, that's hardly a surprise. I'm surprised that you couldn't get Slackware running on a VAIO; it's running quite happily on mine. Visual Workstations won't work properly without rebuilding the kernel, so Debian/RH/Slackware/etc. are all pretty much useless out of the box anyway.
Since you decided to choose this topic, then why don't you see if you can install RH or Debian (since these seem to be your favored distros) on a PC110 using a flash card for the root partition, a Type II PCMCIA HD, and a PCMCIA NIC. It worked with Slackware; you don't have a hope in hell of getting RH to install on that kind of setup without doing an awful lot of the work yourself. I haven't tried Debian, but I suspect that the current versions would run into memory problems (only 8MB RAM available; you might have more luck with 1.3). Strangely enough, the PC110 isn't a different architecture, unlike the examples you gave; it's a full PC/AT compatible.
By my count, there are five posters in this thread, all of whom thought you meant other architectures.
Strange way of counting you have; there appear to be either three or four people besides myself that posted under the thread from my original post, at least one of which is you, one who criticizes both you and me, and one who agrees with my comment about Slackware. Where are you looking? Or is it just more voices in your head?
Slackware is, IMNSHO, one of the easiest distributions to install - simply because it's very, very hard to get yourself into a situation that you can't get out of.
I've had RH and TurboLinux (bletch!) stop in mid-install more times than I can remember. Debian took me forever to figure out (this was, admittedly, the 1.3 release, I believe). The graphical installers of the latest distros just annoy me. But Slackware works every time - and there's always some way to shoehorn it onto whatever hardware you have.
I'm running Slink with a 2.2 kernel right now. Had to replace a very small number of tools that were kernel specific (xosview, for example).
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
As a long-time Debian user myself, I think that it's great that potato has finally gone into release after so many delays, but it looks to me like the exact same thing as last year is happening: slink (debian version 2.1) was released in early march, with the 2.0 kernel, even though the 2.2 kernel had been available for some time.
Considering that the 2.4 kernel should be out in the near future (another month and a half or so) and the freeze is quite likely to last at least that long before a release is made, how long before debian catches up to the newer kernel series?
Will there be an updated potato using 2.4 after the new stable kernel is released, or will we have to wait another year to catch up again?
--Cycon
(Incidentally, I have been using potato as the OS on my primary without any problems for months now, but it's the servers that I have to manage that I'd rather see kept up to date...)
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
You don't actually run a system with the vendor-provided kernel, do you? I have 2.2.13 running on slink and potato systems just fine -- in fact, the potato system is using 2.2.13 with the ext3 patch.
Of course compiling and replacing the distribution kernel is non-issue, but the problem with having an entire distribution released with an older kernel is that you lose the ability to add in and use certain features that are only available with the new kernel.
For instance, a linux firewall is controlled by ipfwadm for the 2.0.x series kernels, ipchains for the 2.2.x series kernels, and there will be a new system (whose named elludes me for the moment) for the 2.4.x series of kernels. In order to administrate a newer kernel you need different tools, and therefore different packages.
A better example perhaps would be USB support in the 2.4 kernel. With a release based on the 2.2.x series of kernels you lack USB support for items which may be of use during an install -- such as the keyboard, or mouse (for setting up X graphically). I may be wrong, there may be a patch for USB kerboards under 2.2.x, but I think you get the idea of where I'm going by now.
Simply put, I by no means wish to critisize the debian project for any issues that have aroze in getting potato out the door, I think everyone there is doing an outstanding job, considering the volunteer-based nature of the distro (as opposed to the corporate-funded efforts of Redhat, SuSE, Caldera, etc.) -- However I *do* think that having the latest kernel permits certain conveniences as far as default packages and installation set-up goes.
--Cycon
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
Hurd is not currently versioned as Potato. The binary-hurd-i386 directory in the potato dir is a symlink to sid (the kid next door). It's for ports which aren't even stable enough to be unstable.
>Well, I don't agree with you about Slackware, but FreeBSD is, admittedly, a truly masochistic experience.
What was so hard about it?
(I've never even heard of any keyboard/mouse conflicts...You did configure your kernel, right?)
--Kevin
=-=-=-=-=-=
"...You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals/
so let's do it like they do on the Discovery channel..."
I thought Debian is install to install, but personally I think OpenBSD isn't much worse... installs fast too. (even on a 486) and net performance is definitly better for some strange reason... I don't know how they did it... I only use it as gateway/firewall !
(MRU/MTU maybe ?)
New things are always on the horizon
Under unstable, there is a rather alarming frequency with which things break (does anyone out there have a successfully installed emacs19 or emacs20 from the past four months?), though usually this just means that the upgrade doesn't install.
:-), and have had hardly any problems. Most problems are subtle, and are fixed within a few hours quite often, or a few days at the most. The only real problem I had was that my X-server configuration got screwed up, but I believe that was due to me answering the question about replacing the configuration file, during install time, incorrectly.
:-) */flamegard off*
Really? I've been running Debian unstable for the past 6 months or so (with a 28.8
*flamegard on* Besides, real men use vim.
The really amazing thing about Debian though is that I can upgrade like mad, and still leave my system running. I upgrade almost daily, and right now have an uptime of 41 days, and it's that short due only to extended (a few hours) power outages. A friend of mine who runs a small ISP upgrades his debian-unstable box while 100 users are logged in. Mind you, he's conservative about what he allows deselect to upgrade, but I think that's pretty amazing.
It's not a contender for proprietary distributions such as Red Hat
What, exactly, is proprietary about Red Hat? Everything they do is GPL'd back into the community. Do you mean more *comercial* distributions?
uh.. if it's static linked it'd be bigger tho..
The "undo" i was referring to is how in dselect if you push +, then decide you don't want to install it after all, you can hit _ and it'll be in the state it was before the +. +, -, tab, i couldn't get capt to do the same thing without pressing R and resetting all changes i'd made. i would've thought that to be as trivial to add as anything else.
The grouping by priority i like mostly because i'm used to it from dselect. What would be really nice would be to pick first sort by status/priority/availability/section/whatever/none , then second within those groupings sort by status/priority/availability/section/whatever/none , third yet again, and last by name/download size/installed size/whatever. dselect does some of this, but it isn't very clear and you can't change the default (or if you can, i've never found how)
All in all, it's good that so many package selection programs are available, so people who hate one can use another.
-----
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
So I guess hurd will not make it in with potato. It really is sad as the project has a lot of promise but very very few developers. If you feel like looking around, check out my system. telnet titan.mplex.cx - it only has 16M of ram and the hurd loves ram so it may not like it if a lot of people check it out. Still, it should drop you to a user shell that you can move around in and explore...
Its not elitism. Some folks decided to make their own distribution. Some other folks like to use it. If you don't, thats fine. Besides, there's no need for every distribution to be easy to install and idiot proof. They're all linux.
Thats why there are a bunch of distros. If you want an easy installer, use one of the distros that comes with one. Me, i like dselect.
Maybe I'm alone on this one, but i find Debian's installer to be pretty good. Sure, Red Hat's got that l33t installer, but who gives a crap when it doesn't work right? (Hell, i had to install RH 6.1 manually because the install was messed up.)
I now mainly use Macmillan Deluxe (Mandrake) on my laptop. I can't stand RPM, I would actually rather download and compile source than use RPM.
At least dpkg tells you what other packages you need, instead of what files (What package is libxyz.o in?). apt-get will even offer to download them for you! dselect is pretty hard to get used to (so I didn't use it). I really like kpackage and gnorpm though.
iv got a 2.0 installation running how long would it take me to upgrade to 2.2?
Those People Who Are Crazy Enough To Think That They Can Change The World Probable Can
[1] Debian releases are code-named after characters from the movie Toy Story. Woody is the main character, the cowboy action figure.
However, after seeing Toy Story 2 wouldn't it make more sense to name the next release after Wheezy the penguin?
Debian is an immense proof that free development always produces things at better quality than non-free development.
Why do we always think that just because something is free it is better? That is just the kind of closed mentality that open source is trying to change. This is always that, foo is always bar, faster is always better.
I would think that people who comment on an industry where the only continuous theme has been "nothing lasts forever" would at least see the stupidity in "free development always anything."
Debian is the leading edge of free software distributions. It's not a contender for proprietary distributions such as Red Hat or Suse. Far from it. Debian is an immense proof that free development always produces things at better quality than non-free development.
The sheer size of software on potato and the stability it displays is incredible. Debian has managed to be the distribution for a variety of tasks, including development, and on many architectures.
--exa--
Neither is their development open... That's what I meant.
--exa--
And that's it. Because it employs this particular feature of scientific method in development, free software achieves at better quality. Bug fixes, if you would like. Though often more than that.
So, it's not that it's better because it's free. There *are* some downsides to free software, for instance you can't always get good docs for everything... that kind of boring stuff tend to get skipped by coders. Whatever, it's that the free development has *again* produced something better compared to non-free counterparts. Take potato, and compare it to Red Hat. Number of packages. Support. Development. Packaging system. Source packages. Testing. BTS. CONFIGURABILITY! Ready for both novice and advanced tasks. Programming languages, libraries, dev. tools, editors, SGML, whatever I can think of is in Debian. Tested, verified, official Debian packages. That's what I'm talking about. Debian is of course better than any other distribution.
--exa--
my reply is always the same: i should not have to "learn to install software" or "learn a package manager" -- in my opinion, these are things that should be essentially transparent to the enduser.
ITYM "end-luser".
Well said those colleagues of yours! Plain and simple: if you are unwilling to learn how to use something, and properly at that, there's nothing we can (or should) do for you, so don't waste our time and go back to pestering M$loth Support.
Seriously, there's nothing that gets to me more than unwillingness. Inability, need a helping hand, those are FINE by me, and will get all due sympathy. Unfortunately, unwillingness also gets due sympathy too - nil!
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Anyone notice? Potato is not only release 2.2 of Debian GNU/Linux, it's also the long-expected version 0.3 of GNU/Hurd (the first of Debian GNU/Hurd). Check the binary-hurd-i38 6 directory. Admittedly, many (if not most) Hurd deb packages are actually binary-all packages (and some are plain useless under the Hurd) — one Hurd developper jokingly said the Hurd would take its revenge by committing a lot of Hurd-specific binary-all packages.
True, the Hurd is still far from stable now (and moving this tree from frozen to stable will sound something like a joke), but this is an important landmark nonetheless.
Oh no, you mean that potato is going to come with dselect?? If I had any sense I'd upgrade to RH 6.1 instead of potato.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Actually debian wont install at all on certain types of hardware. I've never had a problem with installing slackware on a 386SX-16 with 4mb ram and a 40mb hdd using text mode custom slackware floppy install. however debian hamm installed ok on it, but newer debians refused to due to space limitations. This is silly - why the heck cant we select base install packages in debian ? i'd love to upgrade my machine with a newer debian but the installer is too automated. and dont get me started about the fact debian has dynamically linked every godammed binary they have in there. WTF do i need to have so many libraries for ?
One of Debian's primary goals is system *stability*. This is boring for the technically competent home user, but utterly critical in the enterprise.
Potato will lose little by not providing the new kernel by default - it is easy to upgrade your system later. However it keeps a kernel with a year's worth of field testing on it. Bugs undoubtably still remain, but it will be many months before 2.4 is as stable as 2.2 today.
The same thing applies to XFree86 4. By staying with the current XFree86 3.3 version Debian will lose some new features, but it will have a well tested X subsystem. If things go well people can upgrade later, while corporate users aren't affected by 4.0 (relative) flakiness.
Finally, an analogy I often use is to hiking gear. The whole purpose of hiking gear isn't to "look cool" (although that's always nice), it's to get me into the remote backcountry *and back.* That's why I might test out new gear on local trails, but I use ratty old gear when I'm going to be many hours away from help. The cost of a shoe falling apart isn't $100, it's a bloody foot torn to shreds by hiking barefoot in the Rockies for miles, so I stick with things I know are reliable even if they're slightly outdated.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I truly commend Debian for keeping with a good versioning system. They've kept with a good system while others such as SuSE, Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, etc. have crept up to such high obscene numbers as 7.0. It disgusts me ;)
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
I personally love dselect. It's text-oriented so I don't have to worry about having X installed if I want to install X (which I had happen with RedHat once) and although it's a little clunky, it's not all that that hard to use.
Oh, and your mileage will absolutely vary WRT to how hard it is to install. I can have Debian installed and running in less than an hour on most computers. Yes, it asks you questions that you may not know how to answer. However, knowning how to answer questions like that is why I get paid the big bucks.
Actually, I belive the Sega logo is much older than the Debian one.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I agree with you completely. If he wants an easy debian install, he should try corellinux. It doesn't get any easier then that. No need to use dselect, or get-apt, it can all be done in the GUI.
note: this was not meant to piss off debian fans, I am one myself
Maybe they can call it "Fries"
On the off chance... are you a Sympatico (DSL) subscriber? Their transparent HTTP proxy is very badly broken -- the guys that run Sympatico HSE are morons -- so APT gets confused with list/package inconsistencies.
If you specify chsmc.bellglobal.com:80 as your proxy in your apt.conf file and set your cache time to zero, then potato updates will come down smoothly. It took me a while to figure this out.
I've been using debian since bo (1.3), and found it even then, having never sat at a linux console before (though i'd had shell accounts on slack for some time), it was still relatively easy to install. At the time I was doing it with a friend, as I was advised and advise myself, never install linux alone the first time. apt was introduced in hamm or retroactively in slink, i can't remember. (i went straight from bo->potato after being lazy for a while, with apt.)
; }return(0);}
I find dselect/dpkg and now apt to be a very easy, self-explanatory set of programmes. But linux itself isn't yet for the clueless. You need to have some understanding of computers before you install it and that won't change for probably another year.
RedHat attempts towards it, but its too difficult in redhat to upgrade and install packages and dependencies for new users who've never heard of freshmeat.
#include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1)
OFTC: By the community, for the community
Why didn't you just disable the mouse?
It isn't really needed for the install.
-bugg
Er, it's not. It could be said that Sega is using the Debian logo :) Debian went through many weeks (if not months) of discussion as to what our new logo should be. It was finally decided that the "swirl" with the bottle should be the official logo, and that the plain swirl is the logo that can be used by anyone. Then, Sega went and stole all our good planning.
As I type this I have gotten 293 MB of the iso image for 2.1r3 using rsync. Actually I already got the entire 599 MB of files from another ftp site, and rsync is verifying them and getting diffs. Oh well, I learned how to use rsync at least.
I learned, for example, that if you make a spelling error with the name of the target iso file (e.g. "bianry-i386-1.iso" instead of "binary-i386-1.iso") before you start rsync, it pulls down the entire file, all 610MB of it, from the rsync server, so when you look in the directory you find two 610 MB files. I think that kind of defeats the purpose of using rsync, which is to conserve bandwidth on the rsync server...oops duh sorry guys.
Yrous, WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Just to reassure everyone that there is no such thing as the last minute to get people to upload: ;)
here is a graph of the number of files in Incoming!
Seriously, congratulations to all package maintainers.
I personally love dselect. It's text-oriented so I don't have to worry about having X installed if I want to install X (which I had happen with RedHat once) and although it's a little clunky, it's not all that that hard to use.
I assume your talking about the graphic RedHat package manager. There is a text version (named rpm.. go figure!), so to install X all you should have to do is 'rpm -i X-etc.etc.etc.rpm' and its in, you don't need X to install anything with rpm.
K]ÏMWý©±Îï$ [½5>VÎG Û 1 ر/M îåMA$ÚT
Maybe I'm to stupid, but I tried to help a friend last week to install his first linux box.
Since I knew Debian is said to be "hard", I decided to install a Suse with him.
Too bad. After 2 days trying, I decided to use a Debian (2.1r4) and we were done 20 Minutes later.
He's quite happy now.
And who uses dselect anyway ?
Have you ever heard of apt ?
ciao
Anti
On the other side of the screen it all looked so easy.
I've been wanting to play with Debian for some time (I usually run RedHat because it stays fairly recent and usually works) but running slink was like being stuck in the stone age. I hope the Debian fellows have some kind of plan for more frequent updates, or at least more in line with the rest of "the Linux world." (i.e. not having your stable distro using Kernel 2.0 with glibc 2.0 when 2.2 and 2.1 have been out and stable for almost as long as your distro.)
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Since it's unstable you may have to play with your woody before it works.
What'll they do when their woody freezes?
Is that enough?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Nothing beats a good distro. which debian is. of all the distros ive used, i think debian is the most suiteble. and of all the distros ive used, i think that debian would be the one id want to have my children.
I remember them saying in a slashdot interview that they were going to implement a new system of keeping packages in stable release up to date with the release of potato (question #5 in that interview). Does anyone know what the status on that project is?
hehehe kewl, thats exactly how I install it too.. and I agree that dselect sucks. and before I get flamed for saying that, I spent a few weeks trying it out. the first install took over 2 days, admittedly on a slow computer.. I fell asleep in front of the machine about 4 times during the install..
872835240
... That this is the reason there are multiple distros.
If Debian's tools are too primitive for your tastes, go with RedHat. Me, I think they're a happy medium between the (from my perspective) anal RedHat procedures and the super-chaotic Slackware/tarball approach. Now, why hasn't Debian cleaned up each and every one of their UI and install issues? Let me spell it out for you:
DEBIAN IS OPERATED, MAINTAINED, AND ADVANCED BY VOLUNTEERS.
RedHat has a nice business going, same with Caldera, etc. Debian is just about the software. Because Debian maintainers haven't chosen to target its installation and maintenance software at those who know very little about Linux, it does not mean that they're elitists - they've just got their priorities straight. Get it all working, and working well, then make it pretty. If you think their installation process is too hard, go ahead and write a better one, volunteer to maintain it, and I'm sure they'll include it.
Oh, and quit your bitching about dselect. apt has been around for quite a while now, and works quite well.
---GEC
Bow-ties are cool.
Don't forget, with the kernel being 2.2 (2.3 devel), it must be -obvious- that Linux is just old 2.x technology. *snicker* Someday people might learn that version numbers don't mean much, really they will..
It's good to see another new distro going out. Is their really anything more to say?
You're reading Slashdot. Of course you like Linux and pc hardware
Hm. I don't consider Debian hard to install at all. I just use apt-get for everything and avoid dselect. In my experience, it has been the easiest to install by modem, and is best because I am not tempted to install anything I don't need. Rather, if I need it I install it (using apt-get of course).
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Mmm.. right... that's why windows is everywhere, because Debian's default installer sucks.
Get a grip, man. Debian isn't Linux. It's a linux dist. If the installer were the only thing about the distributions that keeps it behind Microsoft, why are Suse and Redhat and Corel just as far behind? Your whole statement (if you pardon my saying so) is just stupid. Linux as it stands, is not meant for the average consumer. It's just not built like that. So stop complaining about how debian makes Windows the dominating OS.
"How do I know it's really you?" "Uhh... because." "Yeah, okay."
The problem I see with the debian version numbers though is that they can get mixed up with the kernel version. Or atlest that happened to me. But I like low version numbers much better than the big ones.
I am using Redhat right now because I was unable to use roadrunner with debian and dhcp from stable. If I update to dhcpcd 1:1.3.17pl2-5 it works like a champ, but nothing else does because of the problems I ran into because of the libc6 (>= 2.1) requirement of the package. Can anyone tell me if dhcpcd 1:1.3.17pl2-5 will be included with the new release once it is completed. Like a lot of people run into with windows... this is the only program keeping me using Redhat!
Myself, I prefer Debian and always have. Some folks have trouble getting it installed -- so what? The *nix operating systems have never been the easiest thing in the world to learn, and probably never will be. That't not elitist, that's the way this particular tool works. If you want raw power and lots of flexibility to make your computer do what you want done, Debian is awesome. If you want your hand held, your nose wiped, your diapers changed, and then to be nominated for a Nobel prize, stick with windoze or an Apple.
Personally, I hope that Debian remains as it always has been: The most stable distribution of Linux there is, and one that trades ease of use for extreme flexibility instead of the other way around. But what do I know? I'm just a user.
It's a good thing that tomorrow never comes, because most of us are stuck in yesterday.
Who really cares if Slackware is 24.5 or 7.0? And how much does it really matter?
All the best,
Robert O'Connor
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"And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."
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Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
You don't actually run a system with the vendor-provided kernel, do you? I have 2.2.13 running on slink and potato systems just fine--in fact, the potato system is using 2.2.13 with
the ext3 patch.
If _you_ want to wait around for someone else to update some weird "kernel package", that's fine with me. But I'll continue to download the latest source and compile it myself, as I've always done.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Or capt, as the command goes...
The latest version does have an updated interface, which allows you to select a package and then expand it into branches of dependencies (and sub-branches of dependencies-on-dependencies).
I'm on an ethernet connection at school, so I can't comment on how it handles slow connections. A friend of mine uses it with a modem, and he has a script which downloads all updates at 4am and caches them, allowing him to peruse and install them later.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Here's what I've been doing, and it's worked great for me on every machine so far.
:)
:) I then apt-get a few very important packages: less, compiler, assembler, and console-apt. Console-apt is invoked by using "capt" at the command line, and it's a million times better than dselect. Hit "?" if you need to know the key commands.
I install the base system as slink, usually from floppies (many machines don't have CD-ROMs, because they really don't need them). I go through the whole config. process as usual, except that I switch to a virtual terminal to use fdisk instead of cfdisk.
At the point where it first puts me into dselect, I immediatly quit. I hate dselect, and have only tried to use it once...never again!
The first thing that I do is to edit my apt sources file to use the FTP links, and also to include non-us and KDE. Of course, I also change it to use "potato" instead of "stable".
Then:
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
This will take a while
This system has made Debian installations very easy and fun for me. Every now and again, I do an "update" followed by "upgrade", to get all the latest packages.
I hope that it works for you.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
It's not really a matter of "installing a new system". RedHat gives you this feeling by having you shutdown your computer, boot from the new distro floppy, and do an "upgrade install". And it's certainly a lot better than, say, installing Win98 as an "upgrade" to Win95.
/etc/apt/sources to point to the new FTP directory. Now, whenever you update your packages, you'll get them from the new directory. It's a much smoother process than anything else I've ever used. This is a testament to its great package management system.
:), it asks you:
With Debian, the difference in which version you use is in which FTP (or HTTP) directory you choose for your package source. To "upgrade", you simply change your
When Debian upgrades a package, if it notices that you've changed any files (such as edited configuration files, which is to be expected
1. Keep your version of this file? (default)
2. Install the version from the new package?
3. Show the difference between the 2?
This is only a small example; it's really quite nice. Debian is also nice to use in the same manner as you (eg, install the base 28M system, and compile everything else yourself).
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
But I have little patience with the installation or package management of previous versions.
I am constantly ridiculed by my friends who use debian, who say i lack the patience to learn to install debian, or learn the package manager.
my reply is always the same: i should not have to "learn to install software" or "learn a package manager" -- in my opinion, these are things that should be essentially transparent to the enduser.
i would like to switch to debian, cuz it just seems to "represent linux" in many ways.
have they done anything new with the installation or pkg management since 2.1?
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
1) Choose a DSL/Cablemodem provider that ISN'T fascist! There is no reason why you can't do DSL with Linux.
2) There is plenty of hardware support. You just have to be a little careful about the hardware that you buy. My laptop works great with Debian linux.
3) You shouldn't buy products from companies that make proprietary hardware standards and won't release the specs.
4) More idiot linux users are not going to speed up the develolpement of USB in the kernel.
Linux users don't have it that bad. If you would stop being such a bleeding edge, mindless hardware fiend maybe this will all make sense.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
It seems to me personal pride has taken over this thread. I believe the original post was to announce the freeze of potato not a debate on how good or bad dselect is. As linux users we all have our preferances. You need to realize its all GNU/Linux not Debian vs RedHat or Slackware. Some people like rpm while others prefer apt. Who cares this is the most mindless thread i've had the pleasure of reading. Way to keep the Linux comunity together guys.
ctrl+shift+S
As far as the Cable/DSL ISPs go, that's an easy one to remedy. Simply point out to the ISP that they're trying to force you to use windows, and that Microsoft just lost this arguement. If you have to point out that you read and post on slashdot...and ask if they've ever heard of the slashdot effect.. Plain and simple, it's been proven by the DOJ that they CAN'T require you to run windows anymore. I use an @home cablemodem now..about a year ago the rules and restrictions were a mile long as far as what you could and couldn't do/run on their lines...now it consists of "Please don't hack from your cablemodem".. Hardware support isn't too bad...it's not that the userbase is the problem - it's the hardware industry's fault. How long has it taken for nVidia to give out specs for their Riva chipsets? What? they STILL haven't? USB - How long did it take to reach an agreement on a standard? DVD - c'mon...we've seen what happens when someone tries to opensource THAT code... Laptops are the same issue...go ahead and try and ask IBM for specs on the MWave devices...their response will make you laugh.. The problem isnt' the userbase..The userbase does one thing and one thing only in terms of industry relations - they get the name of the product known. When it was reported that Linux had a reported userbase over 12 million stong, that got the name known. Since then it's merely been companies wanting to keep their technology for themselves so they don't have to worry about someone making their hardware cheaper and better. It's all about profit. In time that will change, over the next few months as we see what the DOJ has in store for Microsoft (interesting move by Bill, btw...now even after the split he'll still be in charge of the software), and as we see how well the more commercial distros fair in the real world, we will reach a point at which hardware manufacturers CANNOT ignore the linux and OpenSource community, and most (if not all) the walls will drop. Fascinating times....Fascinating...
> Linux has to lose the elitism and make an idiot
> proof installer if it ever hopes to displace
> Microsoft.
Why do you want to make it easy for idiots to use linux? Idiots will suck the life force out of the linux movement.
Seriously though, the only advantages to having a large user base are (1) hardware support and (2) games. And I think those problems are being helped more by insane ipos than by a large pool of resident idiots.
What do *you* want that a large user population can give you?
Ryan Salsbury
When the world runs out of silicon you'll wish you had marbles under you eyebrows. If you want to be prepared during the new millenium you better start stockpiling high tech materials NOW. Silicon, carbon fiber, etc. You never know when we will run out.
Ryan
If a hardware vandor release a driver that was binary only and only worked with redhat 6.0 kernel 2.2.5 on intel, nobody would stop bitching. Most users would still pester their tech support, spoof their polls, and badmouth them on slashdot. However, if the majority of linux users had the same binary only mentality of windows users they might be satisfied. Hardware vendors would be able to placate the community with shoddy binaries just like they do with the windows community.
Lowering the standards for linux users will lower the standards for linux software.
Ryan Salsbury
The comments above remind me the stupid and unconstructive little verbal war that always occurs when MacOS and Windows people talk. Linux users shouldn't behave like Windows folks. It's a shame....