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Progeny Announces Graphical Installer for Debian Woody
jdaily writes "In light of recent negative reviews of Debian in which the installer was roundly criticized, this announcement may have particular timeliness and relevance: Progeny has made available an i386 Debian 3.0 (woody) installer
image based on PGI, the Progeny Graphical Installer. This is
available at Progeny's free software archive." I've installed Debian so many times that I've just learned to cope with the installer, but this is a much needed boost.
Wheres the screenshots? :P
The first time I went to install Debian it was pretty intimidating with dozens of packages all over the place I didn't know what the hell was going on so I decided to go back to good ol' RedHat 6.2. Trusty and reliable I always say!
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
This installer has been available to the Debian developers for how long? 2 years? It's unbelievable that they haven't been using it earlier. No, they had to write it from scratch, and it is still not finished.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
... will I need a mouse to install my system ?
Fair enough it might be intimidating to a 'new' user, but its the only installer ive ever used that offers me the flexibility i need. Ive used mandrake, SuSE, lycoris, corel and red hat and with any of those distributions it is impossible to do something that the devlopers didnt think of in advance. Debians installer lets you configure your system in as much detail as you want, and install from a large variety of mediums (various network, physical etc). All in all, id be suprised to see anyone improve it, making it graphical is just eye candy, you cant provide anything 'extra', you just make it more pleasing to the eye.
I would recommend they change the name of the project. Was hardon already taken? I hope the installer isnt too graphic, whats it rated?
For those that are interested here are screenshots of PGI v0.9.6
http://hackers.progeny.com/pgi/screenshots/
man
No manual entry for
network.img from mandrake. This boot disk allows you to install from the internet WITH A GRAPHICAL installer and USES UPTO DATE SOFTWARE. Im using it right now, and Ive never looked back.
A clickable version of the above link. (Posting as a coward since I am no karma whore.)
It drives me crazy that with the incredible talent behind Debian the install process is such a pain. Installing Suse, Mandrake and RH are not harder to install than installing Windows XP or OS X. Installing freeBSD is confusing until you find a few hours after you think you mastered sysinstall a kind soul at a bsd chatroom tells you to use the ports instead.
Installing Debian (or Gentoo) is just too damn confusing. I admire what Debian and Gentoo are aiming for, but they need to come up with a no-hassle installer.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
It looks like a blatant rip off of the red hat installer.
Trying to install Debian today, gives me falshbacks to when I tried to install Slackware for many many years ago.
I went back to RedHat when I foundout with what rate new software make it into debian (that is a very low rate)
I took a look at the screenshots, and the dialogs don't seem very polished. They should hire GUI designer or something.
A picture of Tux holding a glass of beer in the top left corner isn't graphical enough for you???
I've just learned to cope with the installer.
What, are you a drooling retard ?
Do you need big shiny buttons to press ?
Debian's installer's only problem is no hardware detection,
otherwise it's the most logical and well laid out one I've seen
in linux or bsd.
kthx
thinking about natalie portman gives me a woody, then I release my "distribution". It looks a lot like hot grits, but tastes salty.
If Debian remains true to it's high standards, no graphical installer will make it into a stable distribution unless it works for every platform supported by Debian.
So, sure, go ahead, use the Progeny one... but do make it work on (Ultra)Sparc, Alpha, Amiga, Atari ST, PA/RISC, S390, whatever... not so easy, is it?
Guys, remember, there's more to Linux than just x86!
I fail to see why this is any better than the standard text installation. Worse, it requires a graphical display, so you then enter the fb/X11 compatability issues. Whats wrong with a text installer? You're only going to be looking at it for say, an hour at the very most, right?
Does the graphical frontend actually offer any significant additions over the text one?
Hm... It's probably time to move over Debian.. Hey, what's the name of that distro without graphical installer? Gotta try it...
Ok, here you have a point, but its a pretty obvious one. I think that many people have acknowledged that Debian needed a nicer installer if it wished to attract a wider group of people. The reason that its such a tragedy to many is because they recognize the quality of the distro once its installed and configured.
This comment is worthless. Yes, I use Debian. But for you to use thoughtless purjoratives against a group of people that rightly don't exist (yet), or to make baseless criticisms of a distro you obviously don't have too much experience using is both childish and troll-like.
So, maybe I bit on a troll. But I think it had to be said.
(Disclaimer: it's been over a year since I did my Debian install, and my memory is somewhat fuzzy).
The first part of a Debian install, where you make disk partitions, set the hostname etc. is similar enough to a RedHat text-mode install (of which I've done several) that it didn't faze me. I don't think that part of the Debian install is difficult at all.
The difficult part is the second stage of the installation: selecting packages with tasksel/dselect. I took one look at it and just hit "quit". That gave me a base install, with nothing else. However, there's more than one way to skin a cat: I used apt-cdrom/apt-get to install all the rest of the stuff I wanted.
I'm not saying that Joe Average would/should be happy with apt-get from the command line; I'm saying that it's dead easy for someone with only a small amount of Unix/Linux experience to use, and it's much easier than dselect. It's perfectly possible to install Debian without wrestling with dselect.
-Stephen
Debian serves a great service to the linux community.
They give everyone a look into the past of linux.
The stable release is always at least a few years behind schedule so if you install debian you feel like it's 1999 all over again!
They're like the amish of linux, always using old outdated crap that everyone thinks is cute.
"unless your confusing standard RedHat Linux with Advanced Server." is the exact point that the zealots would be making. There should not be a differnce between the distros that RH makes. It should all do everything. I can understand having the installer let you do a little more customazation, say if you just want a web server it only installs apache perl etc, but I should not have to but that should just be choices everyone gets to make when they install. I have also used RH Mandrake Debian and Gentoo. I think RH and Mandrake are great for the linux newbie or the linux geek that does not want to get as into the inner workings of linux, but I think overall they are more restrictive to your use of linux, by tieing so much to their gui. And yes I know you can still do everything by the command line but how often people actualy do that as oposed to using the fast and dirty gui, and being limited to what it lets you do. Finaly I dont think anyone will disagree with the fact that RPM has the worst dependincies detection ever. That is the reason I left Mandrake. It is to easy to get into circular dependencies, and they are to tied to realeses. It would quickly get to the point where you just had to wait for the next realese becouse you could not upgrade with RPMs to a newer version becouse fo to many circular dependincies. You do not have this prob with debian at all. Once you get it up and running apt-get takes care of all of that for you.
"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." -- Mark Twain
Flamebait, but I'll bite :)
Debian might be more difficult to install, but where did you get the "RedHat pisses all over Debian in terms of quality and usability" from?
If by usability you mean "easy to install for grandma" perhaps, if not: please explain what makes RedHat better.
And for quality? If you define quality as having a stable system with packages that don't trash eachother, and is easy to keep secure. Then you are sadly mistaken. But if by quality you mean a system with new, hot and unstested packages and late security fixes, by all means RedHat must be of much higher quality.
- Ost
---- Sig. gone.
Is there any way to just simply mix and match different disks? I'm wondering if you could install the PGI-enabled first CD, then when tasksel or whatever prompts you for additional CDs, use the other 6 in the set. I get the impression you can't, as the Progeny site talks about creating your own installer CDs (plural, not singular).
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
Do you need XFree 4.2 with KDE 3.1beta on you server? I don't.
- Ost
---- Sig. gone.
That's what you pay distributors for, y'know? Honestly, if you wanna switch from 'doze to Linux, you'll best be of on a money-making distro (or give that money to the Linux geek-friend for him setting up a system for you). /. - seems from the measily 30% of slashdotters using Linux regularly, 90% use RH with no knowlege of what's going on in the rest of the *nix world.
Yet I don't get the heavy RH bias on
Anyway, you want a graphic installer? I recommend SuSE and for good reasons too.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
And for those still think apt-get is hard to use, try aptitude.
Who cares for state-of-the-art version if you just need a rock stable server?
Why is everybody whining about the disadvantages with a graphical installer?
Ok, so the text-installer *works*, but that's just bearly. You will have to work a lot of things out by yourself, specially when it comes to hardware detection.
As it is today, it seems like Debian is only for people with an already extended knowledge about Linux, and these people wants to keep the difficult ancient text-only installer to "keep the newbies away" from Debian, and make it a distro for the experts.
This is not the right way. Linux should be for *everybody*, not just those who can understand the way-too-difficuly installer.
The best would of course be to have both at graphical installer AND the text-only installer. Then the hardcore Debian users could still use the text-only installer since they seem to like it so much, and we mortals could use the nice GUI installer. Then both partys would be happy.
Why isn't it so already?
I know you can still do everything by the command line but how often people actualy do that as oposed to using the fast and dirty gui
Many of us running RedHat Linux on a server with only console access. All the non-developmental servers I use or have used, had the X packages and anything related to them removed.
I dont think anyone will disagree with the fact that RPM has the worst dependincies detection ever
If that's your main technical criticism of RedHat's distribution, then you might want to check out a BSD. They have excellent package dependency detection, and a better text installer to boot. OK, the OpenBSD installer isn't too hot when it comes to partitioning, but that and the shitty attitude of certain OpenBSD coders is why I run NetBSD as my first choice of OS.
I think RH and Mandrake are great for the linux newbie or the linux geek
And how many companies do you know that are running Debian as their Linux distribution of choice? I understand that Slashdot are, but they are a geek (god, I hate that word) novelty. All the businesses I have worked for in the last five or six years choose either RedHat, SuSE or a BSD.
Chris
I haven't had any problems with the Debian installer , but I can understand it can be daunting to a newbie. Allthough I've seen Debian installations done by people not too acquainted with Linux (but they did have experience with other OSes (sp?)).
Anyway, I'm confident the Debian developers will come up with a decent installer by the time Sarge is promoted to stable.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
I'd recommend Slackware because it's not right that you have to install a distro over and over again. I should work period : )
(for the people who think Debian is god or whatever, this was merley a joke, sure he can be installing debian on a lot of boxen and still be installing it a lot of times. However, true geeks now I'm right eitherway : p GO SLACKWARE!)
This was my biggest bain when I installed Debian earlier this week. I got through the install just fine (having installed Slackware, Redhat/text-mode, etc etc in the past), but when it came to using it I found all the software out of date. When I attempted to install a more current fluxbox package, my libc was out of date; and libraries are the only thing I want my packaging system to take care of for me.
There is a mass amount of 'testing' and 'unstable' packages, but I could not figure out how to get apt-get to look at them. apt-setup does not ask you which level you are willing to brave, and it should.
Sure, stable is great for a server, but can't I get something a little more current? How do you do it?
The space unintentionally left unblank.
How are you supposed to know that the easiest way to install Debian is to quit the installation program halfway through?
Thanks for the tip though. I'll try that next time.
By far the worst installer ever conceived by the mind of geek is the BSD installer. I have installed FreeBSD on scores of machines over the years, and I can say without reservation that it totally stinks. On my machine, a Dell 4100 Dimension, 1GHz, 40GB, I had to do at least 25 red-button shutdowns and reboots to get the friggin' thing to continue its task, from the beginning, of course. This installer NEVER writes the XFree config correctly, and more often than not, it takes no account of accounts, which meand a first boot into a passwordless and useless interface. I believe that FreeBSD is the best OS out there, but the installer is by far the worst. Many times, I have thought just how lovely it would be to stuff the 1st CD up the developers ass sideways......
I have had similar probs with Debian, however I must say that they were user errors concerning XFree*^ and not the installer's fault. But in FreeBSD..... it is definately the installer that suX that causes ALL the probs.
Rien n'est plus beau que le creux du 0.
But if by quality you mean a system with new, hot and unstested packages and late security fixes, by all means RedHat must be of much higher quality
Do you or your employer (assuming you actually work), actually use Debian for mission critical systems? As I said in another post, how many companies do you know of who trust Debian as there Linux distribution of choice, (and no, a site like Slashdot is not a representative example)? The only corporate settings where I have heard rumour of Debian being used, is where it's been slipped in as a file server on the quiet.
All the Linux using companies I have worked at have followed a similar path in selecting their distribution:
Based on those criteria, the choice (made by programmers, not managers) has always been RedHat unless option one applies. And no, as a contractor I didn't have any input on those decisions.
Chris
edit /etc/sources.list, replace stable to testing/unstable, apt-get update.
(testing and unstable do not have security update)
There should not be a differnce between the distros that RH makes
There's a good reason for maintaining different versions of RedHat. The Advanced Server version is left at a stable release level for a longer period of time. The releases occur approximately every 12-18 months so you get a stable platform and can focus on planning migration and upgrade cycles. For example, Advanced Server 2.1 is based on RedHat 7.2 and was released in March 02. I predict v3 sometime H203 when gcc has gotten stable on RedHat 8.X.
Also its got new features borrowed from a development build of the 2.5 kernel, such as asynchronous I/O, optimized SCSI and process scheduling and can scale up to eight processors from the non Advanced server version's max of four.
I'm personally trying to persuade my boss to stop pushing RedHatX.X and start getting Advanced Server on more sites. I'm dreading the widespread upgrade from 7.3 to 8 that my boss is sure to drop in my lap in the nice quiet time between Christmas and New Years....
"I'm tired of all this 'Aren't humanity great' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes" - Bill Hicks
** sigh ** it should be /etc/apt/sources.list
If you can't figure out how to install it...you don't need it
Plus, Debian doesn't have a multi-Gb default install full of crap, contrary to some other distros ...
How are you supposed to know that the easiest way to install Debian is to quit the installation program halfway through?
I cheated and did some research about dselect, apt-get, dpkg etc. before starting the installation. For someone coming to a Debian installation without prior knowledge, you're right, it's a total mystery that there's more than one way to install packages.
-Stephen
The installer in Woody is already a lot better than the one in Potato, but still lacks the sort of flexibility most people need. Adding hardware detection using Discover and Mdetect would preconfigure hardware-related packages, but still leave the flexibility to partition the disk, etc. just the way we like it. For those who want a graphical installer, there's a PGI-based install CD too. Thanks Branden! This is just what we need to show the corporate world how easy it is to adopt Debian! :-)
PS: The Woody CD-1 image found on most European mirrors appears to be non-bootable. Even if I boot from floppy, the installer constantly complains that some packages on the CD are corrupt. Meanwhile, the non-US Potato rev.7 CD-1 always boots flawlessly. Could anyone fix this?
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
last time i checked, slashdot was the perfect example. after all, slashdot is the site that tends to SLASHDOT OTHERS. You will probably never know who really uses debain in teh back end, b/c debian is a commercial venture that waves the PR flag "we just sold 1000 seats to American Airlines, buy our stock and make us rich"...
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Hardcore Linux guru's are respected because they can pull off anything in Linux. Well I say this: it's about time the Hardcore Debian hackers show the world what they can do and create an installer that can put distros like RedHat & Madrake to shame.
Just my two cents,
Yuioup
> The difficult part is the second stage of the installation
No, no, I don't think so. The people complained about Debian not because of tasksel. After all, tasksel is just a bit more difficult than Redhat "install type". They complained it because there are so many things that Debian don't configure, and don't provide any interface to install other than reading HOWTOs.
See how sound is unconfigured, CD-RWs can't be written to, firewall accessible only to people with a text editor and time reading the long iptable doc, and even things as basic as setting date and time has no interface other than firing date and hwclock.
Don't get me wrong, Debian is now in everything I use regularly, and I love it the current way. After all, I don't have to do a system install until the next time I buy a new computer. But it is undeniable that Debian is not the easiest thing to put into your computer.
"Everybody I know likes RedHat so it must be the best!"
Nice logic.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Does anyone really need XFree with KDE on a server period? X and KDE aren't really stable enough, imo. So, running them, on a server, probably wouldn't be a very good idea.
Thanks, I'll try it out (saw the comment below this but replying here to make more sense).
I still think this should be better implemented or documented. Part of apt-setup would be the best place, IMHO.
The space unintentionally left unblank.
And how many companies do you know that are running Debian as their Linux distribution of choice?
You might want to check out http://www.debian.org/users/.
There are only very few questions that the installer really, really needs to ask the user, and for those, a text interface should be sufficient.
Having done a Debian as my first shot at Linux for our company - I have to say that the installer gives WAY too many options that require you to be pretty familiar with the hardware you're running. I ultimately was able to ask questions and get things fixed, but our average user doesn't want to have to learn that much about their hardware.
.03 worth...
Red Hat was much simpler, and did a better job at probing and giving me reasonable defaults. It still had some goofs - but I was able to get the system running at a baseline so that I was fixing things "within" the system rather than from the outside.
Getting the installer "right" with reasonable guidance for the newbie, and options to override for the expert, seems to be one of the seemingly simple but incredibly difficult things that most distributions still need to get right.
Of course, the other thing I would like to see most distributions understand is that many people are bringing Linux into a Windows world. So having support from the install for Windows networks (mapped drives and authentication) would make it much easier to put on more desktops.
My
Am I?
Liberty.
im gentoo user now but when i used debian i found the installer adequate for installing. it was graphical enough (i tried the woody testing installer). just because it has pretty buttons doesnt make it any better.
My point exactly.
Apache, mysql/postgresql, tomcat etc. are all available in up to date *secure* packages. What more do you need?
- Ost
---- Sig. gone.
A graphical installer is all good and well, but it's essentially the text-based version at a higher resolution.
What we need is more enhancements to the 3.0 one -- i.e. better hardware detection, more linear structure, easier questions etc. Text mode is fine, as early RH installers proved.
Oh, and as for dselect: as others have pointed out, you don't have to use it. I've installed Debian 2.1 and 2.2 on some old laptops recently, and I just quit out of it straight away and use "dpkg -i" for whatever files I need.
Maybe I've been in the Debian camp too long but...
Linux has a graphical user interface? Is that like Macintosh or something?
What is music when you despise all sound?
> I've installed Debian so many times that I've just learned to cope with the installer,
:)
> but this is a much needed boost.
Why, do you have THAT many computers, or are you one of those "There's no sound, just reinstall" kind of guys?
The only time I reinstall is either if a disk has crashed completely.
The step by step process is extremely simple to follow, even the first time. Sure, hardware autodetection could be a plus and I have never found a use for tasksel and tasksel's idea of what can be useful for a particular task, but I really don't understand why Debian frightens people so much. Agreed, the first time use of dselect requires to read the help screen at least once to remember a handful of keys, but that's all. After that one can enjoy the bliss of installing whole packages and dependancies in very few keystrokes.
But on the other hand, maybe I love Debian too much to see any faults in it.
PGI does support ia64 as well as i386, and developers outside of Progeny are working on powerpc. The design is modular, to minimize the work required to make it functional on other architectures (although "minimize" should not imply that it's easy).
We hope to have ia64 CDs available shortly, but given the relative market shares of the two platforms, we wanted to make the i386 images available without waiting for ia64.
Other recent developments at Progeny include the release of Discover 2.0, a cross-platform extensible hardware identification library and tool; Progeny Graphical Installer (PGI) 1.0, which contrary to its name is properly an installer creation system; and the announcement of Platform Services, a subscription service that makes it easier for companies to develop and maintain Linux-powered products and services.
Do you notice that more and more of the review spent their time on installation process ? I have even the feeling that review are just for the installation process.
:) ). I was frustated: none have a clue on daily usage. The install process is well described but ... just few words to almost no word on desktop/usage experience ... Problem of reviewer skill or lack of time ? Does users really spend their time reinstalling their distro (Windows habit too hard to drop :) )?
I am a 3 years Debian user (Redhat and Mdk before). Recently, I wanted to have a look on other distro in order to see the global improvement and how they perform in daily desktop usage.
To save time, I started to have a look at all this review on RedHat and Mdk (I use debian unstable everyday so no need for a review
I still can't get over these complaints that the Debian installer is hard. It requires that you know a little bit about your system. So what? All the guys I've seen in my lug know their machines in and out. So a newbie should be the only one to have a problem with it. Generally if a newbie has done any respectable amount of research they will find that Debian is not a newbie friendly distro. They'll find tons of people pointing them towards SUSE, or Mandrake, or Red Hat. Even with it's reputation of being hard on newbies, if you look on places like linuxnewbie and the like you'll find that there are tons of newbies that installed Debian with little or no difficulty.
With a week of linux experience in Mandrake I successfully installed Debian first try. I've done it several times since then. The only thing I can see is that people are put off by screens that don't have pretty little modern guis. That's the only reason I can fish out of people that find deselect so hard(who are generally the same ones who dislike the debian installer).
I'm happy that the people that wanted a gui have gotten a gui. Now they have to get around the programs like aptitude, dselect, or maybe even use a *gasp* terminal.
And yes, I do work and we use debian on some of our production servers and all of our development servers.
Others seem to like it as well: You could also check out www.debian.org/users
And by the way, NASA uses Debian for their Aeroshark and Ziti clusters. They have put Debian in space as well, but the link seems to be rotten...
- Ost
---- Sig. gone.
From http://www.hp.com/united-states/linux/about_linux_ hp/partners.html:
Debian is one of the major distributions supported on HP Business Desktops and servers and is used internally as a development platform.
Frogs are primitive animals - so the occasional extra toe is not that unusual. But this is very unusual.
One of the reasons I became a Debian user a year ago is because I got tired of all the *Pretty* install screens every distro was trying to come up with... Finally I found a GNU/linux distro that allowed me to install linux the way I wanted it to be installed ( ex. base package set, reiserfs)... Not only that, it has a far better package management system than any of the others could ever dream of... All I got to say is, if you don't understand what the hell you are doing in the first place either RTFM or go find another distro and leave this one alone!!! I don't want a linux distro dumbed down for the *average* user, the market is already flooded with enough *PRETTY* distros for you to pick and choose!
"Everybody I know likes RedHat so it must be the best!"
Nice logic.
Nope, or else it'd be Windows 2000 as that's the most popular OS among people I know. Anyway, what makes your opinion any better, I assume your a Debian user? The reason all the companies I worked at chose RedHat was because it was the one that met their technical needs. Now crawl back under your rock - I'm sure there's some more files you need to apt_get to keep your l33t system upto date.
Chris
Doesn't HP use Debian quite a bit?
The same company that gave us HP-UX. Mmmm.
Chris
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh. wait, you mean the release called Woody.
Sigh
... is called Xandros or Lindows or even Knoppix. There are probably others. I say let the Debian developers make their distro how they want it and let those concerned with money-making worry about making it user-friendly for J. Random Luser.
These look very nice. Much better than the text based installer. But the biggest shortcoming of text based is dselect, IMHO. WHere are some screen shots of the package selection? That's the important part. I've known a few people who got through the paritioning, etc but then gave up at dselect.
Random is the New Order.
Does anyone really need XFree with KDE on a server period?
While maybe not KDE, Terminal services would REQUIRE both a server and some form of X. That would necessitate both "Production" and "Graphics". This is a "Valid" solution in many low budget orginazations and is not "Wrong". While it may not be appropiate for all installations, it is not inappropiate either.
Damn logic, always screws up arguments.
Listen genius. The reason they use RedHat is because RedHat is a COMMERCIAL entity with which you can make COMMERCIAL support deals, have work contracted to, get nifty stickers and logos on your product's boxes, have your employee idiots "certified" so even more cretinous idiotic customers are impressed by their "diplomas" etc, etc. It has NOTHING to do with product quality and EVERYTHING to do with business. Next time before you start drooling check out the other technical excellence example, Microsoft
Great idea! Lets hold up pogress on 99% of Debian installs to insure compatibility with platforms that make up a a ridiculously low amount of the installed base.
Why not? Debian is a "by the users, for the users" kind of noncommercial distribution. Compatibility with minority architectures may not be important to you, but it is a stated goal of Debian, and it is something that the developers and packagers wrangle with on a regular basis.
Branden Robinson, the XFree86 maintainer for Debian, has XFree86 running on more architectures than the XFree people themselves officially support -- his packages are the "de facto portabiltiy standard" for XFree86.
If you think progress is being "held up", then contribute to development on the arches you want supported, and let the developers who want to work on the minority platforms do so. Because they're not going away any time soon.
Jay (=
Thanks, Progeny! This is what free software is about. Debian provides a great base system, which works incredibly well for those who use it. Progeny has other ideas for it, so they extend it to work better for their target audience.
It's hard to complain about that.
Oh, except, it's stifling innovation, and commercialization. I forgot. Damn.
FINALLY, the biggest reason why i dont' use debian is its installer. Make a mistake and you get to restart everything
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill
Well that's my problem then, I usually think with something else...
it seems like everyone is making comments about package selection and hardware auto-detection, what about having a GUI installer fixes that? its graphical not better, instead of picking my modules from a text list, i scroll through that list with my mouse, with some cool background logo. how does that make the install easier? i think what everyone is asking for is a easier install, related to dselect, and you can do that with a text-based install.. my 2 cents
Well I know what's wrong with the debian installer--it doesn't work. A couple of years ago I got to reading the social contract and all the rest of it, and then I spent eight (8) frustrating hours trying to get potato installed on a vanilla k6 machine. It bombed in a different place every time, always with some lame error message like, "you shouldn't be here, this a bug," or words to that effect, and crashed. When I finally gave up and re-installed redhat 6.2, it went on with no trouble in about fifteen minutes.
Now you're probably thinking either I didn't know the hardware or didn't understand linux. Wrong on both counts. I built that machine myself and knew all the hardware, and at the time I had 7 or 8 years unix/linux experience. Fact: it was not possible to get even a base install onto a vanilla machine. Verdict: The installer is an instrument of the devil.
I agree with debian's philosophy as per the social contract and would would love to switch to it, but I think I'll stick with redhat and slackware until that awful installer gets replaced with something that works.
Since Debian typically only needs to be installed once and dist-upgraded thereafter to keep current, why not use the PGI-based installer?
Even if you find the upgrading capabilities inadequate, the next version of Debian will have a better installer than the current one.
Can be a royal PITA, and Dselect isn't the only problem. Some of the install questions are pure greek to the average linux newbe, and many current users of other distros. Dselect's UI is often user hostile.
..... I've managed to install Bo, Slink, Potato, and now Woody. I suffered with Dselect on the first two, found apt-get a refreshing change with Potato, and later used gnome-apt. Now if deb-config would get cleaned up.....
But
I still wouldn't use any other distro.
I basically agree. I installed Debian stable about two weeks ago, and believe it or not, I was completely new to both Debian and Linux. I didn't even have any experience of partitioning a hard drive before! You can't get more "newbie" than me, and if I can install Debian so should anyone with an average IQ...
So far, my message is this: You shouldn't let yourself be intimidated by the detractors, or the idiotic "experts" that say that Debian is only for them, if you're interested in trying out Debian. Sure, it was a bit confusing at times, and the documentation at debian.org wasn't geared to an ultra-newbie like me, but I still wouldn't characterize the basic installation as "very complicated" or "extremely difficult".
Basically, the only part where I did have a problem was when I was supposed to select a module for my NIC. Stupid me, I thought I was only supposed to select the name of the NIC (in my case "CNET PRO200") from a list! Heh. So I had to stop and search Google to figure that one out. (BTW, if someone is having the same problems as I: It uses the *Davicom* chipset; and you're supposed to choose the "dmfe.o"-module, if I remember it correctly. HTH! ^_^) This is the sort of stuff that I would like to see go away. A GUI installer isn't as high on my wish list as improved *hardware detection* and better documentation geared to the newbie's. (For example, I still haven't gotten around to fixing the sound, but then again, I've been very busy and haven't really made an effort yet.)
I did use tasksel to install X, but not more (I didn't want to install a bunch of useless stuff), and I skipped dselect; which IMO *is* very confusing and difficult in comparison to apt-get -- a very newbie-friendly and extremely powerful tool. Which leads me to ask: What's the goddamned point of dselect? It seems completely unnecessary to me.
Anyway, to sum everything up: Installing Debian isn't as difficult as some people say, but it is obviously not easy compared to other distros (from what I've heard), and there's room from lots of improvements. I do hope that the people who contribute will concentrate on making Debian more newbie-friendly. I believe this is vital if Debian wants to attract more people who in turn will contribute and improve Debian further. Remember, even the experts have been newbie's at one point!
Not to flame anyone here, but haven't we had enough moaning and complaining about "userfriendly installs". If you want user friendly, use windows, or use the monkey installs from Mandrake and Redhat. (Monkey install: so simple that a monkey typing with left hind pinky randomly could still get the install right).
I thought linux installs turned sour when Redhat started doing graphics. Debian is actually nice to install with the text-based system. I know that linux should be friendly for people who are starting. But while making things easy, does that mean we have to make them brainless? The most recent Redhat install was a dismal abomination of mindless incompetence. Instead of giving you normal options and control it tried to do everything for you the way the distro designers thought you want it. Hello, people. MS has already done this.
The graphical install is just more people whining and trying to be liberal minded - we should respect users who are starting. Yes. I agree. But I'm not a user who's just starting (not a demigod, surely, but I've installed linux once or a dozen times). I would like an install program that is actually powerful. You know, like allowing me to do what I want in the way I see fit, rather than restricting me to what someone else thought. Oh wait....that's a design goal of unix, isn't it? Anyone else see the contradiction here?
Again, beginners should be able to pull the installs off. That's why there's brilliant inventions like FAQ's, Install Guides, and Documentation. How about reading those?
There is a difference between giving users choices and pestering them with unnecessary questions. I can make most choices easily using admin interfaces that are much better than the installer once the basic system is up and running. And the few choices I might occasionally have to make during the install, I can make with Control-Alt-Fn and typing at a console.
DO NOT DUMB DEBIAN DOWN!!!
That is exactly what asking a lot of questions during the install is: dumbing down Debian. People who know what they are doing don't need to be asked those questions (they already know what to do), and people who don't know what they are doing shouldn't be asked those questions.
MS only runs on a much more uniform set of hardware, and vendors do often provide MS with better driver support than they provide Linux. And most installs do work most of the time. But even then they don't correctly install everything - if you've got newer hardware, you need to install driver disks for it, and if you're running one of the Administrator-oriented OSs, such as Win2000Pro, you can get into issues with user permissions - either you can't install something as a regular user, or you become Administrator to install it and the permissions get set in a way that you can't use it later when you're logged in as your regular user account again.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks