The Very Verbose Debian 3.0 Installation Walkthrough

Gentu writes "Cited the general displeasure which accompanied the Debian 3.0 release, mostly regarding its dated installation procedure, Clinton De Young wrote an easy-reading but long article for OSNews going through the Debian installation step by step. Of course Progeny released recently the PGI graphical installer, but it is not as complete as the current Debian text-based installer and it will definately be quite some time before it get adopted by the project."

Comments

Ease of use

[Drunken Coward]

Instead of spending the time to create a guide through the installation, it might be a better idea to make a more intuitive installation system. That's one thing RedHat/Mandrake have over Debian. If Debian wants to increase its market share, it will have to follow their lead and "dumb itself down" a little for less experienced users.

Re:Ease of use

[kingofnopants]

dumb itself down

not so much dumb itself down but at least make a more intuitive interface, and i'm not just talking about the instalation. If they want less-than-ubergeeks to use it then they whole thing should be reworked.

Re:Ease of use

[plankers]

I think it's generally agreed that the course of action you suggest is where to go in the future. And it seems that the Debian folks agree, even if this has all been sort of a rude awakening. However, developing a more intuitive installer takes some time. In the meantime a good explanation/walkthrough of how to install Debian will help some of the people get the distribution installed. In my experience, creating walkthroughs like that also help sort out the rough spots of the process, so people who are going to work on the installation process know right where to start to have the most effect.

Re:Ease of use

[cscx]

There's nothing wrong with text-based installers. In fact, the first half of the WinXP installer (if you're doing a clean install) is text-based (50-line). However, it's well written and intuitive.

Something need not be fully graphical to be intuitive. I talking like MS-DOS editor vs VI intuitive. They just need to spruce it up, and add some better default options.

Shit, even the FreeBSD 4.5 install is monochrome text! But it's intuitive. With options like "You can configure your partitions manually, but if you have no idea what the f**k you're doing, press X to autoconfigure," or something similar to that.

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with text-based installers. In fact, the first half of the WinXP installer (if you're doing a clean install) is text-based

so you're saying that if windows does it it is alright? do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

do you have any idea how you sound ridiculous too by bringing up the discussion to this point once again?

Re:Ease of use

[mAIsE]

I agree,

Debian is a technical distribution for technical users.

I would go as far as to question if the Debian devlopers are that interested in expanding beyond the current user base.

Re:Ease of use

[Safety Cap]

so you're saying that if windows does it it is alright?

The point is that > 99% of the people are used to Windows, so creating a similar installation system will lower the learning curve and make it easier for the average user to install. Shouting "RTFM!" may make you feel better, but is hardly the way to win friends and (positively) influence people.

For a solid discussion of why design consistency (across programs, platforms, and systems) is key, check out Joel On Software's User Interface Design for Programmers. Here's the relevant part of the argument:

I've seen companies where management prides themselves on doing things deliberately differently from Microsoft. "Just because Microsoft does it, doesn't mean it's right," they brag, and then proceed to create a gratuitously different user interface from the one that people are used to. Before you start chanting the mantra that "just because Microsoft does it, doesn't mean it's right," please consider two things:

1. Even if it's not right, if Microsoft is doing it in a popular program like Word, Excel, Windows, or Internet Explorer, then millions of people are going to think that it's right, or at least, fairly standard, and they are going to assume that your program works the same way. Even if you think (as the Netscape 6.0 engineers clearly do) that Alt+Left is not a good shortcut key for "Back", there are literally millions of people out there who will try to use Alt+Left to go back, and if you refuse to do it on some general religious principle that Bill Gates is the evil smurf arch-nemesis Gargamel, then you are just gratuitously ruining your program so that you can feel smug and self-satisfied, and your users will not thank you for it.
2. And don't be so sure it's not right. Microsoft spends more money on usability testing than you do, they keep detailed statistics based on millions of tech support phone calls, and there's a darn good chance that they did it that way because more people can figure out how to use it that way.

So, if Grandma can install Windows but not Debian, there's something wrong with Debian, if Debian's goal is to become a distro that the average person will use. If Debian's goal is to be some '7ee7 h4x0r d00d w4r3z O5, then make it hard--hell, make it obfuscated. That'll show those newbie lUsers, right?

Re:Ease of use

[bogie]

Again for the billionth time, ease of use and "dumbing down" are not the same thing. Smart choices eliminate that. If fact it takes one hell of a smart person to design a install that is easy to use and yet no matter what give the user a perfectly functioning system.

Like I have posted before, the perfect product is as easy to use as turning on a lightswitch. The difference between being an expert and newbie is eliminated and the product "just works".

People need to stop spreading this myth that ease of use is for dummies. Ease of use is the ultimate goal, Period!

Re:Ease of use

[perlyking]

It is an intutive installation system. The problem is people cant be bothered using their intuition. I know many people who rather than bothering to even read a dialog box on a computer will go and find someone to ask about it. You know those "you are about to send unencrypted information" messages in browsers, how hard is it for someone to think through the message for themselves.

Re:Ease of use

[SnAzBaZ]

Do you realise how ridiculous you sound?

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, these are probably the same people who think:
"Browser? I thought I was using the interweb! Hackers must be trying to steal my credit card! I need to go find someone to help me!"

Re:Ease of use

[gonz]

I have used Debian for several years. Although having a sensible installer will encourage more people to try Debian, this is only relevant on day one. I think there are much higher priorities which affect the overall usability of Debian on days besides "Install Day". Some examples:

1. dselect is just an embarassment. When I first saw it, I almost quit right there. Ironically, what kept me going was the sheer shittiness, which (in my mind) was an assurance that it would have to be fixed soon. No luck so far, although aptitude looks promising.
2. The packages are seldom up-to-date. This is also a feature, since the stability is rock-solid. My system hasn't been hacked a single time since I switched from RedHat to Debian. But when new features matter (e.g. Perl, Samba, etc.), Debian is always several versions behind. This has been improving, and it wouldn't matter at all if the next problem was solved:
3. It's impossible to mix+match packages. Debian divides the world into three categories, roughly corresponding to "stable", "hackable", and "malfunctiony." Once in awhile the "malfunctiony" distribution will contain the newer version you want, but it's just there to tease you. If you try to install it, it will attempt to convert your whole system to "malfunctiony" mode. Instead you're supposed to recompile from the sources, but this has its own problems because it creates a missing dependency for other packages. That wouldn't matter, except:
4. The package system is not flexible. For example, suppose I compile my own Perl and install it, and now I want my custom version to satisfy the Perl dependency. The Debian answer? Create a fake package that provides "Perl" and install it. (Someone even has an automated utility for this stupid idea!) If you want to use the much superior -MCPAN, it becomes even more of a headache, because now you have lots of little fake packages like that. As far as I can tell, there is no equivalent of "provides" in rpmrc.
5. No support for chkconfig. Managing services in Debian means manipulating stupid symbolic links. This should be centralized.

Of course, I did choose to use Debian. To be fair, I should also mention its strong points:

• It's very stable.
• Upgrading packages is almost completely automatic, like Windows Update. This makes it easy to stay "current" and secure.
• It's easy to install without X-Windows (which I don't need, because my servers don't have keyboards or monitors)
• You can export a list of installed packages from one server, and then install this list on other server.
• The Debian people aren't conspicuously trying to make you their customer
• Debian is impossible for stupid people to use. This dramatically increases the ratio of smart people to stupid people on the newsgroups. :-)

-Gonz

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

chkconfig => update-rc.d

Not the worlds most pleasant interface but a bit of study reveals all.

I note that my workstation runs mostly unstable, and always has, don't have issues with it in general.

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>so you're saying that if windows does it it is alright? do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?

No Mrs. Clownboat that is not at all what he is saying. He is using the XP installer as an example of a text based installer that is very intuitive as opposed to the text based debian installer which is not at all intuitive. Isn't that obvious?

Re:Ease of use

[tapin]

Blockquoth the poster:

So, if Grandma can install Windows but not Debian, there's something wrong with Debian

You're forgetting that Grandma can't install Windows -- Grandma gets her computer with Windows pre-installed. Oh, and if there's ever any problem she pays the teenage kid next door five bucks to fix it for her.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure what the fuss is about, regarding the Debian installer. I'm hardly a "guru", but I've had no problems with the installer the last few times I've had to use it (most recently, two weeks ago). It's intuitive enough for anyone who can actually handle a clean-install of pretty much any operating system, and it's easily navigable if you don't quite get it right the first time.

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of spending the time to create a guide through the installation, it might be a better idea to make a more intuitive installation system. [slashdot.org] That's one thing RedHat/Mandrake have over Debian. If Debian wants to increase its market share, it will have to follow their lead and "dumb itself down" a little for less experienced users.

Bah, the install is just fine as it is...not hard at all if you're willing to read the docs and apply some common sense, but just hard enough to keep the lazyass n00b lamerz using Mandrake or Red Hat.

Re:Ease of use

[idontneedanickname]

Not just Debain, pretty much all distros. Right now to be useful, you have to learn to use linux over several years with someone who already knows most things to help you and which you can ask questions...

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the point is, why not make it so a "grandma" could install it.

It may take a bit of work but why not. Just pop the cd in, select easy install and go make tea until it's done.

When I first started with Linux the hardest was to figure out how to partition the drive. What will be enough? What do I need for /, /boot, /tmp, /usr, /var, /home swap ?
Do I even need all of them?
I posted the question in the news groups but either got several different answers or vague ones.

Re:Ease of use

[d_i_r_t_y]

# Debian is impossible for stupid people to use. This dramatically increases the ratio of smart people to stupid people on the newsgroups.

well that's patently untrue. i have to work with stupid people who use debian.

in my experience, the debian demographic is most strongly represented by 2 idiotypes: those who are in the older bracket who know their shit but are totally elitist about it, and those in their teens or early twenties who think they know it all and who really cut their teeth on redhat or mandrake and switched because of religious indoctrination. both groups cling to towing the debian line with a religious fervour rarely seen outside the middle east.

just get the fucking job done ffs. use whatever you find easiest. please don't give us the "debian is better" line because i've had to use both mandrake and debian, as servers, side-by-side for several years and there is ***no*** difference in stability. debian just takes (much) longer to install.

Re:Ease of use

[jfserejo]

I really don't understand what's so hard to do in debian installation? If you spend one sunny afternoon read a little bit about the process you will get a nice personalized, without "crap" Linux distro running. Of course nobody uses 'deselect' in install process... after all we've got 'apt' and 'dpkg'. After familiarized with this you will think different, and will be hard to change distro ...

Re:Ease of use

[styrotech]

It's impossible to mix+match packages.

Not anymore...

I run a mixed testing/unstable system this way, and it works for me.

Re:Ease of use

[Dwonis]

Even better man apt_preferences.

Re:Ease of use

[dwarf-thrower]

i'm a new linux user, though i am very good at windows, especially starcraft. i tried to install debain but i couldn't get my usb peripherals to work, which made it really hard. so i decided to install mandrake and got it working in about 30 minutes. i would really like to use debain because my 17yo brother (who is doing his 1st year in computer science ay uni) said that it was the most 133t distro, so i changed /etc/issue on my mandrake box to say "debain" and made a symlink from /usr/bin/urpmi to /usr/bin/apt-get. now it feels like i am finally running debain! i am so much happier now with my new, more stable and secure "box", because haXX0rs will haX0r my box and see that i am running plebian and not haX0r me because they will know that i am l33t! thank you.

Re:Ease of use

[Dwonis]

and those in their teens or early twenties who think they know it all and who really cut their teeth on redhat or mandrake and switched because of religious indoctrination.

Think I know it all? Some days. But *I* started on Slackware, went to Red Hat (5.2), got fed up with Red Hat, and switched to Debian, liked Debian, and stayed with Debian. I will probably keep using Debian until I switch to HURD (which will still be Debian).

I use Debian because I find I can be most productive with it. Gentoo is nice, but I don't want to waste time building everything. Everything else I've used simply lowered my productivity.

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU are not what it is about.

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

you should get back to writing your thesis using latex.

Re:Ease of use

[gonz]

Interesting... so it sounds like you just use APT directly, rather than relying on dselect? Maybe that's why nobody has bothered to improve dselect.

Thanks,
-Gonz

Re:Ease of use

[swillden]

I run a mixed testing/unstable system this way, and it works for me.

And I run a mixed stable/testing/unstable system; a mixed testing/unstable system; and a mixed unstable/experimental system with a whole bunch of 3rd party sources in my sources.list.

Mixing packages from the different distros is easy and you can add other repositories which are not part of official Debian.

And "malfunctiony" isn't a good term for describing unstable. It actually works very well. My primary desktop is the mixed unstable/experimental system.

Re:Ease of use

[diamondc]

If you want to mix and match perl, just install your own copy and mv /usr/bin/perl /usr/bin/perl.old ln -sf /usr/local/bin/perl /usr/bin/perl

Also by default perl modules you build yourself will be install in /usr/local

And of course, you can build your own debian packages of software.

Re:Ease of use

[bfree]

I wouldn't want to see Debian dumb down. What I would like to see is for there to be a question at the start of the installer asking you if you want the simplest install (think Corel Linux, just pick your partitions, give it a root password and choose server or workstation), an normal install which offers a normal degree of flexibility in an easy format and the traditional installer which lets you do whatever the hell you want in the nicest way they could get written in time for a release! I hope that the recent batch of distributions based on Debian (debian-jr, debian desktop and demudi, let alone the commercial options) will contribue heavily to the development of the new debian installer and bring about the sort of modular system that will allow this. In the meantime debian will remain that little bit above lowest common denominator software and as such will self-select a more technically literate userbase. The real strength of Debian however is the fact they they don't just make a distro, they port and package over 10,000 items of Free software so that others can build upon their work to provide tools to others OR they can tweak and control their own system as they require.

Re:Ease of use

[bfree]

Personally I use "apt-cache search" to find what I want to install (maybe grep it aswell) and then "apt-get -u install" to install it. This way I can see what else is going to be installed before going ahead and I can use standard text tools to filter the list of packages apt-cache might spit out to find what I want. Sometimes I need "apt-cache show" just to check what I'm going to get. Once you have installed your debian system, all you ever really want to do is add particular programs so why bother with the "pain" of dselect or aptitude or gnome-apt or ..... just tell it to install what you want, make sure it isn't going to go insane to do it (like installing 100 other packages or replacing your mail transport or upgrade half your system to testing/unstable) if you don't want it to!

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

My light switch just isn't cool enough though. It is too dumbed down. I miss the good old days when you had to light a lantern, or better yet start a fire with sticks!!! Dumb people can't start a fire with sticks, so the fire and stick newsgroup is WAY better than the light switch one.

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

It's impossible to mix+match packages

This isn't true - it's very easy to do! Recent versions of apt deal pretty well with installing packages from different sections. I run a stable system, but install stuff from unstable as needed by making use of the /etc/apt/preferences file. Put sources for unstable in your apt-sources and then use something like this for your preferences file:
Package: *
Pin: release a=woody
Pin-Priority: 600

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 80

This means that by default, apt will grab stuff from woody and woody will have preference over unstable. But if you do install from unstable, it will update that stuff as needed!

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm... this is true only if you want to start changing your window manager, modify your kernel, or do other tings that you can't do under Windows. In 1997, I went from my parents' Mac to my own brand new Win95 machine (the first Windows machine I used for more than 5 minutes) and 4 months later started dual-booting Win95 and RedHat 4.3. Learning to do the somple things wasn't any harder under Linux than it was under Win95.

Things arejust different. Perhapse you want Linux to be just like pirating MS Windows, but legal. If you really want that, go for Lindows. (I've never tried it, but I hear it's a poor excuse for a distro.

I haven't used Windows on a regular basis in over 4 years. Even Win95 now feel foreign to me. I vist my parents and my brother laughs watching me reachfor function keys before digging through layers of menus on the Mac. Mom calls me on average once every 3 months to re-setup her printer. My stepsister called me the other day about uninstalling klez. I'll give you a hint, it was much harder to uninstall than "dpkg --purge klez-h". Installing Office and Photoshop on my GFs new laptop was much harder than "apt-get install gimp openoffice".

If you want Linux to feel more familiar, then say that. However, don't claim it's any harder to learn. Maybe you want it to be prettier by default. That's a legitimate gripe. I also agree that Debian is a lot harder to install than it should be. However, in day-to-day use, Debian is bedrock stable and aditional software installation is butter-smoove. Don't get me started on trying to uninstall software under MS Windows.

In terms of user familiarity, I think everyone could learn a thing or 3 from BeOS. I haven't used it in over 6 months, but it felt like Linux with an autopilot or MacOS on steroids. If it had a bit more stability I might be using it right now.

Re:Ease of use

[captaineo]

This is a bad idea because it breaks the package database. Next time dpkg wants to upgrade Perl, it will overwrite your link.

Just say no to messing with /usr on a Debian system. Wait until the Perl features you need are available from Debian, or make your own deb. (it's not hard - many free software packages already come with the debian/ files)

Re:Ease of use

[diamondc]

yes.. thats true, it'll override the symbolic link unless you use dpkg-divert.

Re:Ease of use

[EvilAlien]

I don't think having a well-designed interface is equivalent to being dumbed down. Most modern operating systems have some sort of graphical user interface as their main user interface, with varying levels of text-based UI managed by the GUI. This makes most modern operating systems more powerful and capable, empowering users and allowing them to be more intelligent... not the other way around.

I don't think Debian deserves to be exclusively associated with high levels of clue in their user base. This may be a security blankey that some hold on to in order to feel elite, but I don't think it is fair or true. Red Hat, Mandrake, and other distributions with graphical installation front-ends may be more accessible to new users, but that does not mean the power users of those distributions are any less intelligent than Debian users.

Besides, if I want to feel like I'm really stretching my brain, I install Gentoo or a BSD. Debian (aside from Progeny, RIP) has always seemed like a feature-lacking Linux distro to me.

Re:Ease of use

[nandoz]

in case anyone forgot, "ease of use" is relative to the person using the software. i have no problems installing debian and getting it going, x windows or not. if you're a retard then you'll have trouble installing anything. i'm sick of listening to a bunch of windows/redhat users crying that it's to hard. RATHER THAN BASHING DEBIAN FOR IT'S INTALLER WHY DON'T YOU PICK UP ABOOK AND LEARN ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!! oh and by the way the way, debian doesn't have "market share", debian is not marketed.

Re:Ease of use

[Arandir]

Every distribution can use an idea like this. It irks me when I try an "easy-to-install" distro with no way to get an expert installer interface (like letting me tell Mandrake what video card I have instead of it guess incorrectly). On the flip side, quick-n-dirty simple installers are great for just trying out a system.

So let's have both.

Re:Ease of use

[Arandir]

No, he's saying that if Windows can reach 95%+ marketshare with an installer that starts off in textmode, then perhaps, just perhaps, a full 100% GUI installer is not the Holy Grail so many people in this community think it is.

Re:Ease of use

[Gonzoman]

Actually, I switched from using word processors to using Latex. It is much easier to use and the documents look significantly better.

I also switched from Redhat to Debian because of dependancy hell. I printed out a copy of the install howto, followed the steps and had a working system. The installer is different from Redhat, but it also allowed me to configure my system exactly as I wanted. Until another distribution has something as sweet as apt-get, I'm sticking with Debian.

Re:Ease of use

[Craig Davison]

The packages are seldom up-to-date. This is also a feature, since the stability is rock-solid. My system hasn't been hacked a single time since I switched from RedHat to Debian.

I bet that has nothing to do with your packages not being up-to-date. Old "known good" packages tend to have less bugs and predictable functionality, but are saddled with security issues. In fact, as far as security is concerned, the bleeding edge is almost always better.

A compromise between stability and security is of course releasing patched versions of older, reliable versions of software. This is why RedHat is still at OpenSSL 0.9.6b. They just keep increasing the patchlevel.

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

> 5. No support for chkconfig. Managing services in Debian
> means manipulating stupid symbolic links. This should be
> centralized.

apt-get install file-rc
emacs /etc/runlevel.conf

Re:Ease of use

[gl4ss]

yes, debians unstable is more like every other distros 'rock solid'.

and i can't understand the fuss about dselect.. it works, which is enough, by that i mean that it _really_ works, and the interface keys are easy enough to learn. and it takes care that you have the stuff that you need to run the stuff you have selected(and shows the recommended/required too).. just select the programs you wish to run and it'll take care of the rest.just about everything else would be eyecandy. imho it's better than windows update.. which _has_ let me down several times(illeagal exception while updating, so how do you update?).

and for those that want eyecandy easy-easy x86 debian, just get xandros...

Re:Ease of use

[asuffield]

I have never understood why people think that Debian developers give a damn about market share. I certainly don't. I'd be much happier if the number of stupid people using Debian would continue decrease; this would reduce the quantity of stupid mail that I get.

Gentoo has made great progress at this, having attracted most of that irritating crowd who think that compiling software locally somehow makes it better. I hope that they will continue to attract the moronic users away from Debian.

Re:Ease of use

[asuffield]

1. dselect is just an embarassment.

Interesting notion, but I think it works quite well. Effective, flexible, and a good filter for the sort of people that I pray never get as far as installing any of my packages (the sort that don't read the four screens of key binding documentation that it shoves in your face every time you do anything, until you read the documentation and turn them off).

3. It's impossible to mix+match packages.

And why, exactly, do you think that this should be possible? Library dependencies are not flexible things, and they are invariably the reason for this. You simply cannot install a package linked against a newer libc6 on an older system and expect it to work. Library ABIs are forwards-compatible until the SONAME changes, but they aren't backwards-compatible.

4. The package system is not flexible.

Actually, the answer is to create your own perl package containing a copy of perl. equivs is generally the wrong answer to almost any question; it is there for the few scenarios where it is the right one. As for the CPAN module, it (like CPAN itself) doesn't let you download and install binary packages - you have to waste time compiling stuff locally. And it generally installs things in the wrong place, because CPAN authors don't put the same degree of care into package maintainance.

dh_make_perl is a better solution; it creates a real package from the CPAN module, so upgrades and removals can be handled cleanly. Plus, like any package, you get to see what it is going to install before you let it change your system.

Of course, the best solution is to package it for Debian, or to file an RFP for whatever needed it in the first place so that somebody else might package it.

5. No support for chkconfig. Managing services in Debian means manipulating stupid symbolic links. This should be centralized.

The day I can't manage runlevels by manipulating symlinks in the filesystem, but instead have to use some wretched special-purpose utility, is the day I find out who is responsible for enforcing their ideas on me and rip out their lungs.

If people just want *alternatives*, then there are at least five or six different systems packaged for Debian that manage this stuff.

Re:Ease of use

[tarmo]

This is why even Debian stable includes the security source, which contains all security patches for reported security problems within a day or two. So using Debian stable (or testing, or unstable) with frequent security updates will keep it secure.

If you want really secure, use some obscure Unix variant last released 10 years ago. No script kiddie is going have any idea on how to break into it.

--
Tarmo Toikkanen

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, true. My sister in law went to my wife and said she couldnt use the internet anymore. Reason? Someone had changed her homepage from google and she didnt know what to do without it.

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the debian installer, it's quick, efficent and you have full control over the installation. Debian was the first Linux distribution I tried, and I manage to install it without any knowledge of linux. If you don't manage to even install it, I recommend RedHat or Mandrake.

Re:Ease of use

[Daengbo]

let alone the commercial options
O.K. I will.

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

jesus, when will you people learn?

im always hearing this "wow look at our super duper packaging system" and "apt is so cool" , but look at what your saying a minute..

1. your afraid to damage the database by adding a symlink, or modifying /usr

ffs, is it made of glass or something?

2. you have a hundred different commands to remember like dpkg-die apt-blah apt-arghhhhhh

wow, very advanced. not.

3. you cant install your own build, or the database breaks. you have to "fool it" into making it work.

when will you people learn?

SlackWare

elegant in its simplicity, you get 3 commands upgradepkg installpkg and removepkg, its impossible to break it ( believe me ive tried ), you can do whatever the hell you like in /usr and nothing will go wrong.

when youve learnt your lesson, and realised that your chosen distribution is a turkey, slackware will be waiting, like it always has been. See you then my friend.

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

This may seem stupid, but I thought the most confusing part of the Debian install as a first time user was the driver disks. I kept thinking they were corrupted and I was trying to load a driver for my network card. I probably just skipped the directions if they existed for that, but it wasn't intuitive that you're supposed to start a floppy install and use the driver disks as the disks. It just seemed kind of odd. Last time I installed it though I used a mini-CD boot disc so it handled all that for me and it went really smoothly.

Re:Ease of use

[AKnightCowboy]

Interesting... so it sounds like you just use APT directly, rather than relying on dselect? Maybe that's why nobody has bothered to improve dselect.

I've been using Debian for a bit over a year now and I've NEVER had to use dselect for anything. Occassionally dpkg to fix a broken package that was causing apt-get to malfunction, but never dselect. dselect was the reason I decided to NOT switch to Debian for so long. I tried it awhile ago, got a system installed, ran dselect to try to install some other package, didn't understand what it was telling me, and watched as it uninstalled 50-60 core packages that were required for my working system. I was a bit stunned and didn't think such a touchy package selection program was quite right for me yet. Now, I don't really blame dselect all that much, it was just complicated to understand compared to apt-get, aptitude, etc. apt-get can be a pain when you install a package that is broken and suddenly you find you can't do ANYTHING with apt-get until you go off and fix it. I had a really horrible package I had to track down and delete a postrm script since it was erroring out and the package wouldn't delete even with force options in dpkg. That's just fucked up and they should seriously think about fixing that. A force all should ignore postrm errors and just get that package off the system at all costs, or at least leave the files if it must and delete the entry from the Debian package database so you can install a different version.

Re:Ease of use

[diamondc]

Um, yeah. I'd rather keep a clean system where I know which file belongs to which package and can track dependencies. I dont like keeping the build of some 3rd party program I downloaded and installed just so later on I have to un/reinstall. I'll forget which files to delete if I don't want the program, too. That's kind of sloppy.

Re:Ease of use

[novakreo]

Yes, but 95% of the marketshare doesn't have to install in textmode or otherwise.

They just go to wherever and purchase a system with Windows pre-installed, and should it become necessary to re-install, they'll take it back there, or get someone they know (like me. *groan*) to do it for them.

A full 100% GUI installer that works would be most beneficial.

Re:Ease of use

[Craig Davison]

Security through obscurity? That's a bad idea considering that UNIXes released ten years ago:

• Will have all the sendmail bugs
• Will probably have a few telnetd bugs
• Will be using a libc with bugs that have long since been fixed in more recent UNIXes

Not to mention you'll probably want to be using OpenSSH to use the thing, and OpenSSH definitiely needs to be kept bleeding-edge to be secure.

Anyway, you have more than "script kiddies" to worry about nowadays. There are worms out there (on the UNIX side, these exploit Apache, OpenSSL, telnetd and OpenSSH to name a few). Also, don't underestimate the average hacker. One of them might be testing their newly-developed exploit on your box.

Re:Ease of use

[swimmar132]

What does a lack of marketing activity on Debian's part have to do with not having "market share"?

They still occupy a certain percentage in the market.

Re:Ease of use

[spitzak]

Even if you think (as the Netscape 6.0 engineers clearly do) that Alt+Left is not a good shortcut key for "Back", there are literally millions of people out there who will try to use Alt+Left to go back, and if you refuse to do it on some general religious principle that Bill Gates is the evil smurf arch-nemesis Gargamel...

Actually Alt+Left was invented by Netscape and was used by their earliest versions. So if they changed it they are being even more stupid as they are not copying themselves, not to mention MicroSoft. I don't have it to test (I use Konquerer which uses Alt+Left for back) but are you sure your window manager is not eating the keystroke?

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

The RH installers have an annoying habit of crashing and burning if anything goes wrong during the process. Considering the default RH installation has everything (including the kitchen sink), there are many chances for things to fail...especially if the CD reader is flaky when hot, and it will be hot before the installation is done. This can leave the system in a broken and unbootable state, for example if the install was to upgrade from ext2 to ext3 file systems. Not nice!

A good installer should be as forgiving as possible of hardware/brainware problems. In particular, it should be broken down into small tasks that leave the minimum possible places where a crash would leave the system completely unbootable. For example, the first task is to provide a common line login (kernel, boot loader, and essential CLI utilities only!). Complete that before installling anything else! Then you can try installing CLI packages that don't need x (make, gcc, rpm, etc.). Then get xfree86 up and working (completely installed and configured on the hard disk--not just on a ram drive). Then, and only then, start installing the big graphics-enabled applications.

By doing the install in these stages, the system is bootable (and, therefore, repairable) as soon as possible. Additional function is layered on, with each level completed before starting the next. This minimizes the risk of a completely broken system, and allows for the installation to be finished manually if the install script fails for any reason.

Just my frustrated two cents' worth...

Re:Ease of use

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see Universities finding a need to "dumb down" Calculus or Physics. They simply offer programs for people who don't have the desire or the aptitude.

Why does anyone expect Debian to "dumb down?"

Re:Ease of use

[nandoz]

a market implies "sale"! moron

What about debian's own install guide?

[dknj]

I found debian's own installation guide to be extensive enough

-dk

Re:What about debian's own install guide?

[Suppafly]

I agree, their own installation guide is like 12 chapters broken into numerous sub chapters each. Although, I can make it through the installer with out written help somewhat comfortably.

Re:What about debian's own install guide?

[Anonymous Coward]

me too.

Re:What about debian's own install guide?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't.

Re:What about debian's own install guide?

[Anonymous Coward]

is this the list where 14 year old aolers sign up for porn?

me too please.

Newbs...

[CyberBill]

Yey, the more newbs on Linux the better. Just think if everyone knew how to install it, and then we could finally ditch M$ and take over the world!! Muhuhahahahahaha!!!!

Bill

Long installation manuals?

[rob-fu]

I haven't used Debian for quite some time since using Gentoo, I still think Gentoo's installation page is incredibly long. Or maybe it just seems that way because I'm waiting a really long, long time in between instructions that require compiling something.

Re:Long installation manuals?

[Anonymous Coward]

install page really long? ok next time you do a install dont consult the crib sheet.. or better yet trim tha page and hand it to someone that hasnt installed gentoo before. watch the look on their faces as they say aw fuckit and rach for the mandrake cd..

heh i wouldnt mind it if the gentoo live cd came with a text document of the cd install,desktop,and faq pages wrapped up as one.

Re:Long installation manuals?

[Anonymous Coward]

The really assinine thing about Gentoo is that a good shell script could ask a few questions up front and do away with the entire gentoo installation process.

Re:Long installation manuals?

[be-fan]

I love the Gentoo install guide. It's so detailed and verbose, anyone could follow it in their sleep!

Re:Long installation manuals?

[Dunkelzahn]

Not trolling here, but after starting to read Gentoo's installation pages, I opted out to do a Linux system from scratch instead. Maybe I'm just lazy.

Re:Long installation manuals?

[fatwreckfan]

The Gentoo install guide is great. The only problem I had with it was the lack of instructions on how to use fdisk (the first time I did it I had to play a bit), but other than that it was great.

The long part is the compilation.

Re:Long installation manuals?

[Anonymous Coward]

I opted out to do a Linux system from scratch [linuxfromscratch.org] instead. Maybe I'm just lazy.

Then you are more masochistic than lazy. I left lfs for gentoo, the latter is much easier to keep current.

Re:Long installation manuals?

[Anonymous Coward]

but then it wouldn't be l33t!

Comming a long way.

[Chris_Stankowitz]

I am in no way a linux guru and/or expert, in-fact I am about as wet behind the ears as you can get. Debian comes off as being one of those distros that you should only bother installing if you are in-the-know. I have been very curious about debian for a while now and have always went the RH or slackware and mandrake route beacause of the ease of install. I have to admit though that, A) this article helps TONS & B) debian has gotten much better for us newbs. This is a MUST read!!!

Re:Comming a long way.

[jedie]

Okay, let me be clear on this one first: this is merely *my* opinion and I too am in no way a linux guru (hell I' on a win95 machine right now :)).

Debian is in no way an uber-geek distro or anything. The installation is actually one of the best I've ever seen. This is mainly because you can choose the order in which you want to set up your installation.
If you don't know what to do, the installer gives you the most logical next step and alternatives. Switching back and forth between different installation steps is also very easy (if you screw up or forget something).
The terminal also comes in quite handy sometimes (although I don't think it's something for newbies)
The only thing that makes Debian "hard" to install is the fact that you have to use your keyboard to navigate (tab, arrows, enter) instead of pointing and clicking. And if you would just take 5 minutes to master your keyboards navigational keys, you'dn notice it's not such a daunting task afterall :)

Same goes for configuring the system after initial boot. Debconf will help you trough it all, with almost every ease of the graphical configuration tools on other distros. Although the package selection can be a pain in the ass, but then again, you could just select tasks, instead of individual packages.

I think the main problem is that some people don't like the Debian installation/configration because ncurses looks "old" :)

right solution, wrong problem?

[Dionysus]

I don't think the problem is walking through the installation. I had a friend, who have never installed Linux before, install Debian two weeks ago. He had no problems following the onscreen instructions (just click next, basically).

The problem is, as many people has mentioned before, the automatic (non-existing one at that) hardware detection. We weren't sure about what kind of network card he had (as in which chipset to use), and we were doing a network installation (just boot up from disks), so that was a huge problem. Finally, we just tried all the drivers, one by one, until the right one didn't fail on load.

Everything else was pretty easy.

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[Otter]

Same criticism, additional problem:

I've run into the driver selection problem, as well as difficulty picking up my existing ReiserFS partitions. But those I could get through as long as I had a second box with a network connection up so I could ask in #debian.

The showstopper for me was what this writer seems to call 'tasksel'. No doubt one you know how Debian packaging is categorized (and once you stumble into the right keys to expand and collapse trees) it's perfectly obvious how you use it.

A clear explanation of how that step works would be more important than a lengthy/verbose explanation of the whole process. Although, given that the author of this new HOWTO recommends just not using it at all, a simple explanation may not be forthcoming.

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[calamon]

I have tried recently to install debian "Woody" on my own for the first time and coming from the perspective of a ex-PC/Mac user, now a dedicated initiate to the Tao of Linux, I think there is room for improvement of Debian in a number of areas, primarily respective to the beginning stages, though not limited to it, in addition to both installation and intuitive hardware support as mentioned by Dionysus.

Now I won't harp on the negativity, because overall, I have found both Potato, Woody and Sarge to be rock-solid, and many of the KDE and Gnome applications are comparable to their Windows and Mac equivalent office and system utilities. As a matter of fact, when it comes to system utilities, in fact with basic to moderate knowledge of Debian, one can easily administer many powerful capabilites, such as Apache, samba, perl, gimp, MySQL, and much more. Okay now I'll get back to topic.

I had trouble with my video chipset not being supported by the default kernel and needed to get a different one, either by downloading a different binary, or compiling it myself (soon, maybe, but I don't trust myself to do that yet). I also had trouble with a set of Debian install diskettes that kept giving me a "Malformed Release file" error. I had base install image diskettes, that after downloading and imaging all 20 onto diskette found out the the gzip archive was corrupted. I had difficulty determining the cause of the problem. After installation, configuring the network was over-simplified and should allow for more interaction with other installed packages

Now, I think these could be resolved with the following additions or changes:

1. A searchable database of known errors/problems in installation, including links to possible solutions
2. "WTF?!? Has anyone ever seen this $#!+ before??? What am I gonna do now?"
3. An in-line utility for probing hardware during installation process that was more intuitive.
4. "Whatcha got in the case, Lil' Mr. Writing-code?"
5. An self-explanatory introduction to the installation that was modular in selecting packages based on specific functions, as well as one that offers exact recommendations based on the system's primary applications.
6. "What do I need to create a desktop publishing computer?"
7. I feel it would be more efficatious if debian distributions were packaged by method instead of version. I had great difficulty locating the files I needed in the midst of files I didn't need.
8. It might be an interesting prospect to have multiple pre-configured installations for such purposes as print-server, bridge-gateway, mail-server, developer workstation, multimedia studio, graphic arts, and/or firewall and have versions based on pre-package hardware like say the Compaq Presario or Dell Inspiron. Something like the themed starter decks for MtG:CCG.
9. "Hmmm...I think I'll install Debian/Thunderbolt-i386em, because I want to setup exim, apache, php4, mysql, and perl in KDE on this POS e-Machine."

Well, that's a bit more than just $0.02, but as far as getting solutions, I'm going to be looking into a error databse for debian... maybe the developers have something like that, if not, who wouldn't want one? (Wanna help?)

~Calamon

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[swillden]

Finally, we just tried all the drivers, one by one, until the right one didn't fail on load.

This doesn't address the general issue, of course, but it's a very useful tidbit for your future information:

If you're trying to figure out what driver to use for a semi-unknown card, you can often get some really good hints by running "lspci". It just lists everything that the PCI bus reports on it. "lspci -v" gives a bit more information. I find that 99 times out of 100 I can just look at the information reported and narrow down the list of possible drivers to just two or three.

After that, of course, modprobing them one by one is the simplest way to figure out what's likely to work, but it's a lot easier with a smaller list.

Failing that, I've resorted in the past to writing a little 'for' loop in bash to just load every driver in the directory, then running 'lsmod' to see what managed to load. Something like:

for i in *.o; do insmod $i; done; lsmod

...executed in the directory with all of the network modules is butt-ugly, has numerous problems... and very often works like a charm ;-)

Not newbie-friendly, though. But for me, like many I know who were around during the bad old days of Windows driver hell (Win95 to early Win98), I have a visceral fear of automagic hardware detection, and I would *much* rather just configure it myself, thank you. That way I know what is getting loaded, and when, and why.

Heck, I even tend to configure my kernels with everything as a module just so I can tell what drivers are being used and what aren't.

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[Dionysus]

You're suggestion is fine, once you have it loaded, but this was during the installation, before the actual installation had taken place (I think after you have partitioned your disk). I know you can drop out to a shell, but the point, I think, is that you shouldn't have to.

I never really had problems with Windows installation, so I can't really say anything about that. I do know that when I used RedHat, most stuff (like the network card) was autodiscovered. And as long as you have an option to confirm it, I don't see a problem with that.

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[swillden]

the point, I think, is that you shouldn't have to.

And I wasn't disagreeing with that point, just giving you some ideas for the next time you find yourself in a similar situation.

I do know that when I used RedHat, most stuff (like the network card) was autodiscovered. And as long as you have an option to confirm it, I don't see a problem with that.

I'm just excessively picky; it's not the fact that the card is automatically discovered, it's the fact that I don't like the way the installers configure them to get loaded up. And the problem really isn't with autodiscovery/configuration on install, it's the fact that RH, Mandrake, etc. want to do discovery again every time the system boots, so if I fix the configuration the way I like it, chances are kudzu is going to come along and muck it up after each power failure.

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[Dwonis]

There's one driver you shouldn't load. I can't remember what it's called, but it fits the wildcard "[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].o". It will load whether or not you have the card, and then it will cause subtle instability.

At least it did for me.

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[swillden]

8390.o? That's the only one that I can find that fits your pattern. You're right that it does in fact seem to load on my sytem. Doesn't cause any immediately obvious problems, but I unloaded it quickly anyway.

Thanks for the info.

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[cpeterso]

RH, Mandrake, etc. want to do discovery again every time the system boots

That's probably so the OS can detect new hardware the user might have added. Of course, you have a good point that the OS should NOT overwrite configuration settings for pre-existing hardware. It should just recognize new hardware.

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[T-Ranger]

Uh:
#/sbin/chkconfig kudzu off
You are allowed to manualy configure nice automated systems as well. And while kudzu is of questionable worth (I always turn it off, its especially annoing with machines that may or may not have mice attached..) I think that it is a prime example of Making Easy Things Easy And Hard Things Possible.

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[JohnFluxx]

Offtoic: If you get "unknown device" for some things when you do "lspci" then get a new pci.ids file from sourceforge.

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the hard part is being worked on: automatic hardware detection. The "discover" library is based on similar library from Redhat and Mandrake.

Description: hardware identification system
Discover is a hardware identification system based on the libdiscover1 library. Discover provides a flexible interface that programs can use to report a wide range of information about the hardware that is installed on a Linux system. In addition to reporting information, discover includes support for doing hardware detection at boot time. Detection occurs in two stages: The first stage, which runs from an initial ramdisk (initrd), loads just the drivers needed to mount the root file system, and the second stage loads the rest (ethernet cards, sound cards, etc.).

I don't remember installing BeOS5 ask anything about my hardware, so if the automatic hardware detection can id a lot of them, the problem is basically solved - and it can be used to LOAD DRIVERS AUTOMATICALLY. The only hard part are certain infomation like static ip address, dns server that would be much harder to derive from your system.

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[ivan256]

#/sbin/chkconfig kudzu off

That's lovely. We're supposed to know about that how? First you have to figure out that kudzu is what is pissing you off (not hard, but stupid name). Then you have to figure out that this "chkconfig" thing is what you use to turn it off. I never have the patience to figure out what redhat has utilities for. I alway just delete the symlinks in the init directories, or rename the init script in init.d to break the symlinks.

If you have unusual hardware it's just as much a pain in the ass to install redhat as it is to install debian as it is to install windows 2000*. All this bickering about how much easier one is over the other just proves that everybody thinks their OS of choice is the easiest.

*(Well, windows 2000 gets special mention, because if you have hardware that is required for boot but not supported by default there is both no shell to help you figure out what it is and no method of installing the drivers other then pressing F6 in the designated 5 second window (would a menu selection have killed them?) and supplying the drivers on a floppy disk (no other media types allowed). That means that if you only have one machine, it has no OS on it, and your SCSI/IDE-RAID driver came on a CD-ROM it is literaly impossible to install windows 2000. Yay Microsoft! It gets my vote for the most obnoxious OS install procedure behind Netware 4.)

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[ArsonSmith]

If you're trying to figure out what driver to use for a semi-unknown card, you can often get some really good hints by running "lspci". It just lists everything that the PCI bus reports on it. "lspci -v" gives a bit more information. I find that 99 times out of 100 I can just look at the information reported and narrow down the list of possible drivers to just two or three.

I wish that whoever was maintaining the pci data base the lspci used would add a field for what module driver is used for that hardware. Make for great hardware detection, atleast on the pci bus.

Re:right solution, wrong problem?

[Dwonis]

That's the one. I wish I could remember what it did to the machine - it was very subtle -- I suppose this is why people should document things. Oh well.

Re:market share

[jmobley]

Increase its market share? Debian developers don't get paid for all the hard work they do. Why should market share matter?

Besides, the installer is not that difficult.

Arg!

[labratuk]

...the PGI graphical installer...

AAArrrgggh! RAS syndrome!!

(RAS: Redundant Acronym Syndrome)

Re:Arg!

[Idarubicin]

Look, if you really want to be picky, you could also note that "definitely" is misspelled in the original post.

I'm Canadian, so my posts may look a little off to some--but definitely is still definitely spelled "definitely" in the Great White North.

Re:Arg!

[MrEd]

RAS syndrome!!
That was the joke, right? ;-)

Re:Arg!

[HishamMuhammad]

But of course...

I can't believe how this reply got to Score 4... it must have been moderated by people who didn't get the real punchline.

Long installation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they just add a microwave pocporn bag in each box.

i386 Is Not Enough

[John Hasler]

> Of course Progeny released recently the PGI
> graphical installer, but it is not as complete as
> the current Debian text-based installer

More importantly, it's i386 only.

Re:i386 Is Not Enough

[Anonymous Coward]

PGI also supports ia64, not just i386. Work is underway on a PowerPC port too.

Re:i386 Is Not Enough

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it isn't. It does support ia64, and powerpc is under development. Granted, this still isn't enough to replace boot-floppies.

Jeff Licquia
Progeny employee (but not speaking for them)

What RAS really stands for

[Oliver Newland]

reticular activating system

For lazy people, it's a function of the brain.

Re:What RAS really stands for

[Anonymous Coward]

For lazy people, it's a function of the brain.

For lazy people concerned with correctness, it's a structure in the brain.

Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux...

[fortinbras47]

I've run Mandrake, Debian, and Redhat. Currently I have Redhat 8.0 on my main box as it just makes everything fairly simple.

On my house mail server, that's a different story. I'm running Debian on an old P133. Debian made it really easy to install a totally stripped down system and exim configuration beats the *#@$* out of sendmail configuration as far as I'm concerned.

The debian install isn't bad at all if you're FAMILIAR with linux and know what you're doing. People complain it isn't as nice as Mandrake install. Guess what, Debian is put out by hobbyists and not by a commercial company. The focus is on functionality, NOT GUI interface design.

Debian isn't shooting for the average Joe Schmo linux desktop user. I think Debian is great for systems when you want TOTALLY cutting edge (unstable gets updated all the time and installing new packages over the net is a breeze), when you want just a few precisely chosen packages, or when running headless.

My largest complaint about Debian isn't about the installer per se, it's about X windows and fonts. Basically, I apt-get install gnome etc... and I have no idea what is up with the font situation. It use to be that you didn't even have truetype and had to fuck around for hours to get basic truetype working. I have no idea what the situation is with anti-aliasing and gnome 2.

But watch the criticism of Debian. Debian is a free product that is remarkably functional. It literally amazes me that anything in Debian works at all (and for the most part, everything does *with a lil tweakin*). Unless you start paying money for Debian GUI development, watch your tongue :P You're not ENTITLED to completely free operating system with a nice graphical installer!

Wow.

[mindstrm]

I mean, if you can't figure out the debian installer, perhaps you shouldn't be using debian.

It's not a hard installer, as far as installers go. I don't see what the big deal is.

Re:Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, shoot the messenger and mod him as flamebait ...but the poster speaks the truth! n00bs, lamers, and posers who don't wanna read the docs and don't wanna get all the nfo on their hardware before they install need to stick with commercial distros

What about O'Reilly

[Suppafly]

Why isn't there an O'Reilly book entitled "Installing Linux in a Nutshell" or "Installing Linux for n00bs" or something. The picture could be a drooling idiot or something.

Re:What about O'Reilly

[Anonymous Coward]

he does its called "MacOSX the missing manual" :)

I didn't think debain install was too bad

[Goalie_Ca]

The problem with people today is that they've been babied for too long. It is not difficult to learn how to install an OS. Hell, you might actually come out of the process with some knowledge. People who do learn how to do things have much less need for tech support and have many fewer problems. Companies should stop wasting their time trying to oversimplify everything. It's like holding a teenagers hand as they try to cross the street. Its totally unecessary and lets people remain total n00bs.

Debian & the Happy Gentoo User (RTFM Syndrome)

[Plug]

As has been said a hundred times before (I'd link specific comments, but check back to any other thread about Debian), Debian isn't a distro for new Linux users. It can be, but that is not it's main purpose in life. If I were asked to summarize Debian's main purpose in life, I would say "to provide Linux on some more obscure hardware platforms and to put the F back into Free."

People say Debian's installer sucks for people who don't know what they doing. I had trouble the first time I installed Debian. I can whisk through the installer with no problems now.

I installed Gentoo some months ago for a LUG demo. The installation process ate my Windows partition (because I was an idiot and typed mke2fs /dev/hda2 instead of /dev/hdb2), but otherwise, I followed my 13 page printout to the letter and not only did I have an installed system at the end of it, I knew how the installation worked. I knew all about partitioning and filesystems and swapfiles and hopefully someone who has never seen these things before will know what they all are at the end, as opposed to someone who hits "Enter" (or worse, clicks "OK") multiple times.

Putting the installer into X or gtkfb will sure make it seem a bit more friendly for new users, but unless it's backed up by a great set of administration tools for package management etc such as Red Hat provide, you're just fooling people into thinking that they can get by without knowing anything.

I think something like what has been produced here is what Debian needed more than a graphical installer - this page will instill the sense that "if you read the instructions, complex tasks become simple" into people, and that's what really counts.

If you're going to change something about Debian, change dselect. It's horrible. It needs to be changed. I haven't used dselect since I learnt how apt worked, but sometimes it would come in useful if it wasn't so god awful!

RTFM is a damned sight easier to say to someone if they have a decent manual available. Lets hope this guide can fill that void.

Re:installers my arsenipples

[Anonymous Coward]

you forgot..

blah blah BSD!

bla bla CowboyNealOS...

Uhhh

[Com2Kid]

• A couple of the things I won't cover in this tutorial are configuring a USB mouse

Does somebody somewheres not know the definition of plug and play?

See, there is this USB port thing, and you, err, plug stuff into it, and, uh, well, heh, it is supposed to kind of, err, work.

If USB mice require configuring then there are more serious problems here then just the lack of a graphical installer. . . .

Re:Uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

umm guess you found a flaw in gentoo too.

Re:Uhhh

[AntiFreeze]

USB is hardly plug and play under any operating system other than Windows.

Up until relatively recently USB support was a pain in the ass under Linux. Tools for dealing with USB devices are still in their infancy, and if something doesn't work the first time around, it usally takes a lot of tweaking to get things working.

usbutils is a good package, but you still have to learn it before you can just go ahead and plug in a usb mouse or joystick or cablemodem and get it working.

In other words, at least for the moment, dealing with USB devices is best left to a Linux USB-Howto (there are a few) and not to a specific installation guide.

Re:Uhhh

[Magila]

Congrats! You just totaly missed the point of the original post. You souldn't need a USB-howto. It should be that you plug in a USB device, point at some drivers, and it works. Windows has managed to do this, Linux hasn't but it better if anyone is to take it seriously as a desktop OS.

Re:Uhhh

[m0i]

USB devices are PnP, given that USB service itself is installed/configured. And on Debian, load those modules:
input
mousedev
hid
usbcore
usb-uhci
buy putting them in /etc/modules and running /etc/init.d/modutils, and you'll be set. The remaining step is to actually plug the thing in the port, as you mentionned :-)

Re:Uhhh

[Com2Kid]

• USB is hardly plug and play under any operating system other than Windows.

Err

*looks over towards MacOSX*

Re:Uhhh

[AntiFreeze]

I agree completely. The point is, Com2Kid was saying it was a deficiany in Debian which should be fixed. I was saying that it wasn't specific to Debian at all. So you're correct, it should most certainly be addressed, but I didn't miss the point of his argument at all, I was simply stating that his argument was directed at the wrong issue.

Re:Uhhh

[AntiFreeze]

heh, point taken. But you know what I meant =]

Re:Uhhh

[Com2Kid]

I never said Debian in my post, in fact I avoided mentioning any particular group so as not to get a -1 flamebait or -1 troll mod. ;)

Re:Uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

err, this is linux dude. Many (especially those that use Debian) use linux because of the fact that you do have to configure everything. Windows puts in the usb-uhci, HID and whatnot into their OS by default and you can't get rid of it. I believe that RedHat and Mandrake also put it in by default (but it's linux so you can get rid of it). Debian is from the minimalistic-distribution paradigm. It doesn't put ANYTHING on there that you don't ask. PnP and USB are really bells and whistles, so it leaves them off unless you specify to put them on. This leads to a lean-mean system. No cruft at all. This makes Debian purists happy, so why trash it?

I set up a little printer station running linux where you plug your usb camera in and it finds it (PnP style), downloads the pictures and lets you choose which ones to print. What I don't want is for someone to come up, plug a mouse or keyboard into that usb port and have their way with my little machine. So, I took debian and didn't install that. Problem solved with NO extra work at all. PnP isn't something you always want. 99.9999% of people want to PnP their USB mouse, but for those of us that don't.....that option is there too. Choice my brother will set you free.

Re:Uhhh

[AntiFreeze]

Well, the context of your argument led me to believe that you were referencing Debian.

Moving on, apparently we agree on the subject.

By the way, do you know any good ways of removing one's foot from one's mouth?

Re:Uhhh

[Com2Kid]

• By the way, do you know any good ways of removing one's foot from one's mouth?

Nah, I just usualy accuse those around of being "one of them dang trolls" and move on. ;)

Re:Uhhh

[Arandir]

It's not even plug and play under Windows. If it's a mouse, then yeah. But if it's not, nine times out of ten you have to install a driver. Installing a driver is NOT plug and play.

Plug and play is taking your brand new USB device out of the box, plugging it in, and having it work instantly.

Re:Uhhh

[Arandir]

You missed the point too. When you buy a USB device and then point at some drivers, those drivers are NOT provided by Windows. They are provided by the manufacturer.

As long as the manufacturers write Windows drivers, and users write Linux drivers, USB support on Linux will always be behind Windows.

p.s. I think the whole idea of drivers is wrong. A separate driver for each device means that there is no standardization.

Re:Uhhh

[Com2Kid]

• You missed the point too. When you buy a USB device and then point at some drivers, those drivers are NOT provided by Windows. They are provided by the manufacturer.

True, to an extent. There has been a push in the Windows world recently to move more towards device independent drivers, but unfortunately some (many) manufacturers are not cooperating. Even today many digital cameras do not plug into the computer as USB mass storage devices and instead need to access their contents through some funky software program.

Re:Uhhh

[P-Nuts]

USB is hardly plug and play under any operating system other than Windows.

USB is not even always plug and play under Windows. I was setting up a USB scanner on a Windows machine, which kept failing to be recognized as anything other than an unkown USB device, even though I was installing the drivers from the CD.

I got it working eventually by trying removing the entry from device manager, and plugging the thing in and out a lot. And I never even understood what I did differently.

I realize that it isn't necessarily Windows' fault, and more likely the fault of a dodgy driver, but Windows isn't exactly too helpful in the cases where it doesn't go according to plan.

Re:Uhhh

[Pius II.]

I'll gladly look over to slackware-current and BeOS on my Athlon XP and Mac OS 9.2, YellowDog, DebianPPC and SuSE PPC on my iBook...

But I shudder when looking at my dad's x86 (Win2000): don't even try to use PnP on the mouse, it won't work at all. So it all goes to show, YMMV.

Re:Uhhh

[Anonymous Coward]

*looks over towards MacOSX*

Heh, I plugged in my older USB scanner into a Mac and it doesn't work. When I looked about 6 months ago, there was no decent scanner support for Macs yet unless you bought from one of the handful of models it supported (barely). I really hope they work on that so my Canon scanner gets supported.

Re:Uhhh

[spitzak]

"point at drivers"???? I'm sure Grandma can figure that out!

Re:Uhhh

[fishbowl]

> You souldn't need a USB-howto. It should be
>that you plug in a USB device, point at some
>drivers, and it works.

I'm with you, provided you strike that "point at some drivers" clause.

Re:Uhhh

[fishbowl]

I have never managed to get the full combination of GPM, XFree86, and USB Mouse working together.

Come to think of it, I'm not even sure I've ever gotten gpm to work with a USB mouse, much less repeating to (or merely shared by?) X.

I really like 160x64 consoles; there really isn't anything else that's exactly like it -- not in Windows full screen mode, not in X, not anywhere.

Re:Uhhh

[psamuels]

I have never managed to get the full combination of GPM, XFree86, and USB Mouse working together.

Don't bother with GPM repeater stuff. Just load the modules listed in the parent post, then tell your gpm conf that you have /dev/input/mice as a 'exps2' mouse, and tell XFree86 that you have /dev/input/mice as a 'ExplorerPS/2' mouse. The kernel will funnel your USB mice through /dev/input/mice and you will be happy.

In kernel 2.5, the input layer has been extended to deal with most other mice as well. Same instructions as noted above, except that you may have to load different modules (psmouse.o for PS/2, sermouse.o for serial, etc) - the original mouse type doesn't matter, the kernel should auto-detect most mice and emulate the same Intellimouse Explorer PS/2 protocol for any of them. Good stuff - Vojtech Pavlik worked hard to pull Linux up to the Windows 95 level of mouse p-n-p and deserves a little recognition.

I really like 160x64 consoles; there really isn't anything else that's exactly like it

I used to do 160x60. No more - now I do 144x72. (What a GeForce 3 was meant to do.) Spent a couple hours hand-tuning TextConfig to get that last hertz of vertical refresh, too. That and my Model M keyboard are the two reasons There's No Place Like Home, even with ssh and gnuclient.

Re:Uhhh

[fishbowl]

Thanks for the info.

TextConfig, huh?

SVGATextMode still works? With Geforce cards??
I thought stm was dead. I also often think I'm the only user left who still wants text consoles.
The bottom line is, svga text consoles are the fastest, most stable, simplest, and have the best fonts of any of the options for consoles (my opinion.)

I'd really like to see your TextConfig. Will it work for any NVida card, or just your Geforce?

Re:Uhhh

[psamuels]

Thanks for the info.

I should point out that the instructions I posted should work for kernel 2.4 - but I do not remember what kernel 2.2 has in the way of USB mouse support, or indeed any USB support - I seem to remember USB was pretty skeletal back then, but I could be wrong.

The bits where I referred to kernel 2.5, I haven't tested - I can't boot 2.5 on this box, but I did read through some of the input layer code, in order to understand mouse protocols for another project. (Found a gpm bug in the process - gpm and the kernel disagree about a small detail in the imps2 and exps2 protocols..)

I'd really like to see your TextConfig.

Emailed, for lack of any <aol/>s. (:

Re:Uhhh

[danrees]

Actually, in Woody the Debian project has fixed this problem. /dev/input/mice is now set up by default and the administrator simply has to modprobe the appropriate usb related kernel modules. Of course, the admin needs to know what modules to pick... :)

Hard?

[mbrod]

I would really like to hear an example from anyone as to exactly what in installing Debian was hard for them. I think it is easier than any other system, honestly.

Sure someone new will not know what the drive partitioning means and could impact. For that they should have a 'default: I have NO idea what this is' option on that. But all my hardware was detected except the network card and from experience I do know how to do that. Maybe they should put an app in there to try and auto detect them better. So other than selecting the network card to use by hand the rest is hitting enter ??

Re:Hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think it is easier than any other system, honestly"

No offense(really I mean it) but your either in complete denial or have never used any of the other modern distros. The fact that you would even question why anyone thinks Debian is hard to install shows your pretty much completely out of touch with the vast majority of users.

Re:Hard?

[suppo]

Here are my recent re-installation recollections (recently moved from unstable to testing via re-install):
1. Kernel module selection is a pain. How about being able to select a group of modules vice just one at a time. And if you hit enter once too often on a selection, the installer goes to the next section without being able to restart kernel modules (gotta reboot to re-enter kernel module selection).
2. Add better hardware detection.
3. Better integrate help screens.
Background: I'm a MSWindows-free, non-computer field desktop user of debian testing and unstable for 6 months after using Redhat/Mandrake for 4 years. Still use Mandrake on a laptop because of ease of installation and hardware detection.

Hard installer as a screening tool?

[fortinbras47]

Could the "hard" Debian isnt (true or fabled) act as a filter, like a hard Operating Systems class is to cs majors? If a linux user is intimidated by the thought of a non-graphical, fairly technical debian install, they'll probably not be happy with the administrative tools debian has. The "hard" install may be saving them from horrible frustration further down the line. Just a thought :)

Redhat's administrative tools are graphical and there's really no good analogue in Debian.

Re:Hard installer as a screening tool?

[Plug]

Yes there is. vim. ;)

Debian's installer isn't designed to be hard, nor is it Debian policy to screen out idiots using the installer. More the point, Debian is designed by people who know Linux, and swayed in general by people with a clue. They have never had a problem with their current installer. PGI was designed by Progeny, a company founded by Ian Murdock to sell Debian as a (desktop?) solution to the sort of people that would want to see a graphical installer on it. (It has now become a solutions provider - "The Linux Platforms Company".)

The new Debian desktop distribution will mark a change to all of this, I'm sure. It will provide a place for documentation writers and usability experts to become Debian developers. This is the distribution that will see work done on an installer, which will probably either replace or modify Debian's current installer. But I don't want to see it removed entirely.

Re:Hard installer as a screening tool?

[Anonymous Coward]

nor is it Debian policy to screen out idiots using the installer

It should be....it seems to be rather effective at it!

LOL...

Debian Installation Procedure

[Anonymous Coward]

This guide aims to ease the user new to Debian through the somewhat complex installation procedure. Print this guide out, sit back with your favourite beverage, and let this guide do the hard work for you!

Step 1: Equipment checklist First up, make sure you have the following items at hand:

• Debian 3.0 installation CDs
  
• Hardware no more recent than Intel 80486
  
• Unfathomable elitist attitude
  

Step 2: Beginning the installation Start by removing any NVidia or ATI 3D accelerators from your system. They are not supported and only used by RedHat running faggots or those pathetic newbies who download binary drivers. Also remove any sound cards because you can't set those up automatically, and only Mandrake-using ass-punching gayboys use sound cards anyway. You might need to install without a keyboard or mouse if you have one of those retarded USB devices also. Only SuSE-loving goat fuckers have USB keyboards. Real men use XT keyboards, and because we're installing Debian, we're real men. Right? Place the first CD in the CD-ROM drive (it's where the Lindows homosexuals keep their coffee mugs), and boot the machine up.

Step 3: Hardware detection No fucking way. We're not like those cockgobblers from Caldera. Move on to package selection, and deal with the fact that your SCSI, IDE, mouse, video card, sound, CD burner and DVD drive don't work yet. They will eventually...after spending hundreds of hours alternating between scouring the internet for helpful scraps of information from other true Debian heroes, and righteously hurling abuse and scorn at other non-Debian Linux users over the poor quality of their installers.

Step 4: Selecting packages to install Debian comes on lots of CDs, but doesn't really contain anything much useful or up to date. That's the way we like it. Screw those Mandrake using cunts who giggle like cum slurping retards about their fresh new RPMs. Not having anything up to date means there's no time wasted installing anything from CD!!

Step 5: Updating the distro with apt-get. Ahhh apt-get. Wonderful apt-get. Marvellous apt-get. apt-get apt-get apt-get. Is there anything sweeter than apt-get? Only the smug feeling of righteousness that comes from watching your RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSE using friends stick their cocks in each other's mouths while trying to deal with RPM hell. RPM HELL I TELL YOU!!!! Alrighty...since the installation CDs were 2 years out of date, fire up your 2400 baud modem (no support for high speed serial ports or ethernet, sorry), and download all the updates for 2 weeks. This will give you time to think up new and conceited insults to hurl at your next-door neighbour, who installed Mandrake 9.0 off the front cover of "I Take It In The Ass" monthly in about 30 minutes without any prior Linux experience. He sucks. He's not elite like you. w00t!!

Step 6: Using Debian 3.0, and the warm afterglow of always being right in the face of overwhelming Linux homosexuality. Cool. You've got your new Debian 3.0 box up and running! Now it's time to get out in the internet and start punishing all those scrotum-swallowers who don't understand that Debian is the only true Linux distribution. Start with some rabid zealot posts to Slashdot...the moderators are all fucking retarded and so are most of the readers, so they're easy targets for your righteous Debian-fuelled fury! After you've had a bit of experience typing in 'apt-get rulz RPM sux0rz' a few times, you're ready to take lynx out into the big wide world and let everyone know that you're among the few, the proud, the hard core, the 3733+, THE TRUE GNU/LINUX USER. Go out and make a RedHat user suck your cock. They'll like it and you've earned it!!

Next week: FreeBSD installation and tuning for people fed up with the rampant homosexuality and bestiality of Debian users.

Re:installers my arsenipples

[/dev/trash]

You forgot: bla bla bla ... I installed a Stage1 on a 56k modem.

Notepad it

[EverDense]

Last time I installed Debian, I wrote about 20 points of installation instructions in a notebook. The instructions are simple, and let you quickly set up similar systems without needing to search online for more information.

Soon I'll be creating a webpage, so you too can run an open-relay EXIM server.

for the thrill of it , ofcourse

[jedie]

I for one would be happy to see that something I "created" becomes popular. Afterall, isn't that one of the main reasons those guys do it?
And many of them also have some ideological views (like breaking the monopoly of a certain software giant)

I think their market share actually DOES matter to them.

(I agree on the installer though)

Re:for the thrill of it , ofcourse

[jmobley]

Good point. For some reason "market share" and "user base" are not easily interchangeable in my mind. :)

I would personally be quite happy if everyone and his brother were using Debian.

Re:for the thrill of it , ofcourse

[The Trix Rabbit]

Good point. For some reason "market share" and "user base" are not easily interchangeable in my mind. :)

It's probably because you've been brainwashed into being a Communist by this website.

Re:for the thrill of it , ofcourse

[jmobley]

No, I get enough brainwashing at my job. Thanks. ;)

I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

Remote Access Service

Re:I don't think so

[LighthouseJ]

Or:

• 
  IEEE Robotics and Automation Society
  Radar Absorbent Structure
  Radar Altimeter Set
  Radar Augmentation System
  Radial Arm Saw
  Rail Accessory System
  Random Access Storage
  Rates And Services (Pacific Gas & Electric Company)
  Readiness Assessment System (GCCS)
  Rear Area Security
  Rebellion Against School
  Record Association System
  Recursive Acronym Syndrome
  Reference Assembly Sequence
  Regimental Aid Station
  Regimental Aviation Squadron
  Registration Authority Support
  Registration, Admission, and Status (ITU-T Recommendation H.323)
  Reliability, Availability & Serviceability
  

http://www.acronymfinder.com is your friend.

Re:I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

acronymfinder.com is your friend

C'mon, that's like cheating. Play by the rules, post one acronym and let someone else have some fun.

Re:I don't think so

[LighthouseJ]

slashdot is a source of fun? I didn't get that memo, perhaps you didn't put a cover sheet on it?

Re:I don't think so

[Anonymous Coward]

Why must you insult him? That's always been your problem, hasn't it? Even in the schoolyard you would never get along with the other kids.

Re:I don't think so

[Sri Lumpa]

Yeah, and he forgot "Rien A Signaler"; non-english acronyms are fair play, right?

Re:Debian & the Happy Gentoo User (RTFM Syndro

[Anonymous Coward]

dselect is way better than apt - you just need to read the help file the first couple times you use the program until you know the useful hotkeys.

And what's with all the Gentoo newbies who endlessly spam every 'Distro does something!' thread?

How to install an operating system

[chazR]

Installing an operating system is easy:

Insert media

Boot

Enter hostname and IP address [NON DHCP SYSTEMS ONLY]

Done.

If it's harder than that, get a better operating system.

I know some Linux distros aren't there yet, but some are (stand up Suse and Red Hat).

OS/400 has been like this for over twenty years (except the IP stuff - LU6.2, SNA, oh the memories)

Solaris is just like that.

Installation is a difficult, but solved problem. Before you start whinging about different device drivers, incompatible IRQs, horizontal sync rates and other inanities, ask yourself why IBM, Sun, HP, Microsoft et al. have solved the problem.

If you want real geek cred, make the hurd work, or add an optimisation to gcc. Or, possibly, build an installer for Linux. Working through a difficult install is a waste of everybody's time.

Thank you and good night.

Re:How to install an operating system

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like you haven't installed any of the systems you mentioned.
I don't mean doing a "restore" from one of those recovery CDs.

Re:How to install an operating system

[ianezz]

If it's harder than that, get a better operating system.

Well, to be honest, you should include also:

• timezone (Unix clock is UTC)
• root password (default passwords are evil, right?)
• locale
• keyboard layout for the console

These can't be deduced by looking at the hardware.

Re:How to install an operating system

[Anonymous Coward]

They "solved" the problem you say?
It's PROPRIETARY HARDWARE.

They know before hand the entire domain of hardware you can "put" on the system. That's the benefit of paying $$$$$$$$$$ for proprietary hardware and all drivers came with it.

As far as I am concern, everyone you mention supply proprietary hardware except MS. I have drivers problems on every version of windows, they only solve it partially with providing generic drivers, driver certification and pure monopoly.

Re:How to install an operating system

[jaeson]

As long as you're including extras, what happened to installing security updates?

Default OS's are rarely secure out of the box.

You'll need it only once..

[m0i]

because once Debian is installed, you can go thru upgrades without reinstalling, as it's the case for most other distributions. And if you have to install it more than once, you'd better understand the various steps for later recovery.

Re:To Not Correct is to Spread Ignorance

[stor]

It's a very simple word to spell too. Just think "definite" and add "ly".

Spelling Nazis sux0r but this particular word is misspelt a bit too often on Slashdot.

Cheers
Stor

easy install good for hardcore techno geeks too

[DrKirwin]

It's not really a matter of noobies vs. geeks, or intutive vs. non-intuitive, is it? It's a matter of automation.

Most modern installers automatically detect hardware settings and proceed accordingly.

Why would an ubergeek prefer to enter in chip information any more than a noobie?

And why would a super-intuitive interface (if there is such a thing), or at least a conventional one, solve the problem of the installer not figuring it all out automatically?

Finally, would an ubergeek reject Debian if it were as easy to install as Mandrake or Redhat? Is that all there is to Debian that makes it a distribution of choice for geeks?

I thank you, and wish you well.

[Anonymous Coward]

One day, you will move on to solid foods. Shortly thereafter, the discomfort you currently have in your nether regions may ameliorate. You may, with good fortune, even gain some control over your bodily functions.

Until that happy day, we thank you for your charming contributions to this forum.

PGI is *not* the next gen Debian installer

[salimma]

The Debian project is working on its own installer - check here for its status.

This installer is modularised, using udebs (micro debs) to extend its functionality. Currently bootable on i386 and s390 but probably not usable to do a complete install yet.

The Progeny-developed discover tool, similar to Red Hat's kudzu, is being used for hardware autodetection by the installer. But the Progeny installer itself seems to be not very useful to create a fully-fledged installer - it does not even have support for non-ext2 filesystems!

Re:PGI is *not* the next gen Debian installer

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be debs, not udebs

Re:PGI is *not* the next gen Debian installer

[Ian Bicking]

I don't quite understand why they aren't using PGI. I browsed the PGI site some, and it looked like a solid, simple tool. It's not a complete installer from what I could tell, but an installer meant to take a system from blank to a very minimal install. With some work on debconf and aptitude (or one of the many other dselect replacements) it seems pretty complete -- all the pieces are there, they just need to be put together.

Sure, PGI doesn't support non-ext2, but from the documentation that didn't seem like a design issue, just an implementation issue.

Re:PGI is *not* the next gen Debian installer

[asuffield]

As usual, there's more than one candidate. Both d-i and PGI are in development, and sarge will release with whatever works at the time. Even if that is neither of them.

Re:PGI is *not* the next gen Debian installer

[salimma]

Extensibility is rather important I think. How about supporting LVM, RAID, having console and/or framebuffer front-ends...

Remember this is Debian. Although, yes, with the current state of affair they should have blessed a Progeny-installer set of images as well to help newbies, Having to deal with selecting rescue disk and base install images even when installing from the CD is rather.. ridiculous.

I must confess I am currently running Red Hat myself. Watching Debian closely though, esp. Debian Desktop - when they get the menuing system sorted out (heard it's a major mess now, and let's don't talk about their KDE3 packaging) I might give it a try again.

By that time apt-rpm probably has repository pinning as well.. hmmm :p

Re:PGI is *not* the next gen Debian installer

[novakreo]

Because it only supports i386 so far.

Debian has also released ports for m68k, sparc, alpha, powerpc, arm, mips, hppa, s390, and ia64, in addition to the upcoming hurd, bsd, sparc64 and sh ports.
Debian ports page

Spelling Hurdles

[alue]

Debian's installer was a huge hurtle for many people, who would otherwise like to try it.

I kind of want to hurtle this story through a spellchecker.

Re:Spelling Hurdles

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between a spell checker and a grammar checker is a hurdle for some.

Re:To Not Correct is to Spread Ignorance

[Daleks]

Spelling Nazis sux0r but this particular word is misspelt a bit too often on Slashdot.

You spelled misspelled as misspelt.

Re:market share

[atam]

I believe that most volunteer developers created something in the hope that someone will find it useful. So high market share = more people are using it should be their goal as well.

There is a bizarre idea...

[dasunt]

In open source, a lot of people will vocally voice their opinions that projects should be similiar to each other.

Debian is a great example of this. You frequently hear complants of a non-graphical installer, usually with the comment 'but my $preferred_distro has a graphical installer!' I haven't looked at the exact reasons why debian doesn't have a graphical installer, but an educated guess would take into effect the roughly dozen hardware platforms debian supports and the fact that debian will do things in ways that usually won't break - autodiscovery has the potential to cause problems. Plus, this is the distro where I can stick a few floppies into a machine, do a tiny install and skip tasksel and dselect, then apt-get apache, sshd and iptables, and have a small, fairly secure webserver without ever needing to download x.

The other complaint is that debian should have up to date packages. Debian's philosophy isn't to ride the bleeding edge, its to make sure everything works, and that stable is named stable for a reason.

I see a lot of this going on in the open source movement, and its just wrong. If Debian wants to be a better Redhat, the developers should join the Redhat team. Same with other projects. If mySQL tries to be postgres, even if it succeeds, we will have lost something. However, if mySQL strives to be a fast SQL database for websites, then we will have two good databases, both with a different purpose.

Each project should have a purpose, a goal, and it should be different from the other projects. Else there is just duplication of efforts and time lost as each project reinvents the wheel.

newbies don't bother

[GoatPigSheep]

If you need a long instruction document just to install an OS, then you can bet it's not going to be easy to use after!

Stick to Mandrake and the other user friendly linux distrobutions... although none of them are as easy to install as windows it is still not very hard.

Re:newbies don't bother

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ. My last Windows install ended up destroying my entire hard drive, and I've installed it many, many times before. I'm not incredibly familiar with debian, but I've installed 5 other distros and I really must say installing Linux is just not hard at all. SuSE is extremely easy, Red Hat is easy (though not as easy as SuSE), Peanut Linux (minimalist distro www.ibiblio.com/peanut) is very easy to install with no graphical installer. The hard ones in my eyes are FreeBSD and the like. They're definitly able to be done, but I would defintly advise against this for those new to the non-MS/Apple OS's (Apple OS's meaning OS8/9/X/etc, not darwin). I personally feel that Windows is a pain in the ass to install whereas Linux is incredibly flexible.

*easy Debian install recipe*

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

-download and burn Libranet 2.0 -install Libranet 2.0 -modify /etc/apt-sources/list to your liking ( testing, sarge, unstable ) -apt-get upgrade -apt-get dist upgrade -rejoice that you're running Debian! Seriously, it is that easy. I'm running Libranet 2.7 upgraded to Debian Sarge on my desktop and it's a dream. Accelerated nVidia drivers run well especially on UT 2003 and all of my peripherals ( wireless optical Intellimouse, networked printer, etc. ) work great. Not to mention apt-get :) Now if I could just get Return to Castle Wolfenstein running....

Re:*easy Debian install recipe*

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you heard of line breaks?

Re:*easy Debian install recipe*

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently he doesn't have those secretarial skills you're so proud of.

Re:*easy Debian install recipe*

[Anonymous Coward]

The Loki installer is still floating around somewhere. Works like a charm in gentoo. And yes, RTCW plays real, real nice in linux (if you don't mind losing EAX.)

802.11b support?

[Razorviro]

Is it very easy to set configure a 802.11b PCI NIC in Debian? I got it to work in RedHat 7.3, put it was kind of a pain in the ass.

A good start but...

[lspd]

I was just asking for this same thing on Debian Community.

This is a nice start, but it leaves a lot of hurdles for a new user to overcome.
(1) DMA still needs to be turned on for the hard-disk.
(2) It may sound heretical, but most folks will want the Nvidia OpenGL drivers (this is a real pain)
(3) /etc/fstab will need to be edited if the newbie wants to see his Windows partition.
(4) printing...
(5) As mentioned in the article, most people use KDE or Gnome.
(6) CD-RW and DVD

(7+) I'm sure I've missed something. Just thinking back to the last time I set up a desktop system, I seem to remember adding my user account into a number of different groups to get things working properly.

Anyway, this isn't a bad article...it looks like a great place to start, but I think any newbie moving from Mandrake to Debian following these instructions will be left completely pissed off that their machine is now incredibly slow (1 above) and can't play a game like Chromium (2 above).

Re:A good start but...

[Sharth]

now what was i going to say here... oh yeah.

No distro can add the Nvidia drivers becasue nvidia won't let them. so nyah! /etc/fstab doesn't have to be edited if a user remembers to add them by clicking add previously initialized partitions.

cd-rw is as easy as editing lilo and adding append="hd?=ide-scsi". not that hard for a newbie? It's in like every install manual in existance.

printing is a pain :)

so... because "Most" people use kde / gnome, we should default to that... Hey, wait! I use blackbox! Most people I've talked to DON"T use kde or gnome. There are a lot of windows managers out there. lets compare others to kde / gnome. It might be even, or we might have more for those others. But it's not too hard to run a apt-get install kde or gnome now is it?

groupadd i belive adds users to group, not to sure personally.

Debian doesn't start off perfectly, but once it runs, thats all it does.

Re:A good start but...

[lspd]

Please don't take my comments the wrong way...You're preaching to the converted, but I really believe these items are essential to a newbies guide to installing Debian.

The problem with Nvidia drivers is much worse than with the commercial distros.. A newbie would have to (a) figure out how to install the kernel source, (b) figure out that the kernel .config file is in the /boot directory and doesn't come with the source, (c) figure out that he needs to "make oldconfig" (if he is used to "make menuconfig" as I was, he'll need to discover "apt-get install libncurses5-dev"), (d) deal with the regular Nvidia installation problems. Yes, I know this is all Nvidia's fault, but it's much more complex than "urpmi NVIDIA*.rpm" and should really be mentioned. I don't have an ATI card, but I would bet that their binary drivers are equally problematic.

My CD-RW experience required not only editing lilo.conf (obvious as you mentioned), but also adding:

alias scd0 sr_mod
pre-install sg modprobe ide-scsi
pre-install sr_mod modprobe ide-scsi

Somewhere in the /etc/modutils/ directory, then running "update-modules". (Perhaps I brought this upon myself by recompiling the Kernel, but I don't believe that is the case.)

But the worst of all is not mentioning hdparm... A fresh Debian install crawls without UDMA enabled. It's a configuration issue, not an install issue, but it should certainly be mentioned. Don't Mandrake, RedHat and SuSE take care of this during the install?

Like I said though, I do think this article makes a great starting point for an "Idiot's Guide to Installing Debian." It would be even better with screenshots illustrating the different steps. It just needs to go further into initial configuration.

Re:A good start but...

[nitehorse]

Hmmm. Gentoo includes the nVidia drivers. :)

(Gentoo is source-based, in case you didn't know. but having nVidia-based X with the SGI GL is a few 'emerge's away, and requires zero screwing with config files.)

-clee

Re:A good start but...

[Gonzoman]

The last Redhat distro I used was 7.0 and it didn't setup UDMA for my drives. A little tweaking with hdparm did the trick. With Debian, the first thing I did was to compile a custom kernel, so I don't think I checked the drive speed after the install.

Re:A good start but...

[Cariboo]

I'm posting this from a debian based distibution that does include the Nvidia drivers, auto-detected and setup my CD-RW, printer setup is easier than in Windows and usb was truly plug n' play.

You have to remember that most newbies are more then likely coming from Windows, and as we all Windows users generally do not rtfm, so you can throw that suggestion out too.

It's too out of date.

[FyRE666]

I think the biggest problem Debian has is that the "stable" version is absolutely ancient! I gave it a try a month or so back, and after taking alook through the ftp site, though it best to pick up the stable ISOs.

Needless to say, I reformatted the result and resinstalled RH8 after about 5 seconds of finishing the install, after watching the 2.2.x kernel boot in Debian. I mean, how old is it; 2 years?? That's a 100 years in tech-time!

I'm not a nooby by quite a long way, and I'm guessing a lot of other people trying Debian out will make the same mistake and pick up that old build. I mean, it's not going to attract users when they essentially have to upgrade every single package on the machine after the install to get a reasonably modern version up and running...

Re:It's too out of date.

[Turmio]

You're right, default kernel is 2.2.x based but there's 2.4.18 based installation kernel too. With newer PC's you can choose which image load from the CD or if you're computer doesn't support that, you can make boot floppies w/ 2.4.18 as usual. And even if you installed it with 2.2.x, just apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18 afterwards if you don't want to compile your own kernel.

Re:It's too out of date.

[Bystander]

Maybe if you had taken some time to read the release notes for the latest stable release (Debian 3.0, aka Woody), you would have noticed that 2.4.x kernel packages are available for installation. Woody was released on July 19, 2002, so a "month or so ago" you were already 2 months behind the curve. By your clock that appears to be about 8 years in tech-time, so you seem to have some catching up to do.

One of the beauties of a good packaging system is that you don't have to upgrade everything just because one component changed. Debian, through its use of package dependencies, is particularly good about telling you which set of packages need to be upgraded whenever you upgrade a package or add a new package to your system. This helps prevent random system breakage that can be caused by inadvertantly changing something that other packages rely on. This is perhaps the biggest advantage the Debian package system has over an RPM-based system.

You could also contrast this to Windows, where even minor updates to Internet Explorer require downloading an entirely new version of the whole installation package for IE. Or the need to constantly replace your version of Windows every year or two if you want to keep up with the latest incremental changes, no matter how insignificant they might be. Yet, despite this, I don't see Windows having much of a problem attracting users. I think the reason is that many Windows users never bother to change the version of OS they're running from the one that came installed with the machine. How many people do you think still run an original version of Windows 98? In being able to keep components up-to-date without unnecessarily reinstalling huge portions of the system while not breaking what works, Debian has Windows beaten hands down, and also compares very favorably with other Linux distributions based on RPMs.

Re:It's too out of date.

[frozencesium]

um...if you want to live on the bleeding edge and have all the perks of debian...why not just install "unstable"? there are several good iso's out there for this purpose. oh, and debian's unstable still tends to be rock solid. i've been running it on my desktop for months with kde3 and such...not a single hickup...

the only problems i've had are the occasional broken package while apt-get upgrading, but those were all fixed in 24 hours or less.

-frozen

Re:It's too out of date.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Debian is fanatical about stability. The 2.4 line of kernels for a long time were not considered stable enough for the "stable" flavor. You can now get the bf-2.4 install floppies from the bf-2.4 (or something like that) subdirectory of the ftp directory were you got your standard install floppies.

I admin a RH webserver, and I have to manually go in and tidy up rpm dependancy breaks all the time. Debian-unstable will usually fix these for you within 24 hours. If you're looking for stability comparable to RH, then use Debian-testing or Debian-unstable. If you want OpenBSD-like stability, then run -stable. (For the love of Gub, why doesn't Debian or OpenBSD have a way to check signatures on all of the official ports/packages?)

Re:It's too out of date.

[FyRE666]

Debian, through its use of package dependencies, is particularly good about telling you which set of packages need to be upgraded whenever you upgrade a package or add a new package to your system. This helps prevent random system breakage that can be caused by inadvertantly changing something that other packages rely on. This is perhaps the biggest advantage the Debian package system has over an RPM-based system.

Erm, RPM does this too. If you attempt to install/remove a package it'll warn you about dependency problems. Of course, you can just ignore these and --force it to comply, but unless you're sure you need to do this it usually leads to serious problems later.

I tend to use RH's up2date now too, which runs in the background checking for new packages and security fixes, downloads and installs them (if I wish), and hasn't caused a single problem.

Problem isn't installing, it's configuring

[cras]

I've never had any problems installing base Debian plus the few packages I want, but configuring everything to work well can take a lot of time. X, truetype fonts, fixing wanted modules to load automatically plus all the little details you notice only after using it a while.

I don't know if configuration is any better with other distros, and it's not that difficult with Debian either once you know/remember how to do all the things. Configuring the fonts were quite a pain until I learned about msttcorefonts package..

Re:Debian's apt-get installer is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I'll bite.

The instruction sets and optimal instruction ordering of the different x86 chips *are not identical*. Basic 386 code is *not* optimal. There is a reason why gcc supports eight different specific x86 cpus.

Redhat uses standard 386 code. This is obviously suboptimal. Mandrake at least compiles for the P2 and up, but this still doesn't give the best performance on that new P4/Athlon.

there are these things called drivers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardware doesn't run itself--you need drivers to do it, even for USB. Companies are forced to write their own drivers for Windows, otherwise nobody will use their stuff. We have to write the drivers for Linux, because it isn't worthwhile for most companies to do it--or at least that's what they think.

Besides, its not just USB. *Any* mouse other than a standard 2-button one needs configuring for X to be able to use it to its full potential.

Re:there are these things called drivers...

[Com2Kid]

• Hardware doesn't run itself--you need drivers to do it, even for USB.

MS has this thing called the Generic HID driver, it allows for darn near any analog input device to be plugged into the computer and work somehow.

TWAIN, scanners;

VESA, Video (though really a new 2D API needs to be made up and widely implemented. . . .)

Monitor refresh rates and such can also be communicated automatically to the operating system.

Now Linux can, to one degree or another, do the rest of those just fine (no idea about TWAIN support, then again, TWAIN is not exactly the best standard in the world. . . . icky icky baaa d standard), the USB mouse should come come naturally.

Actually I think that USB mice should be in the same place that PS/2 mice are supported at, the BIOS. (heya, USB keyboards are supported in the BIOS. . . . heh)

Then again, I do not actually own a USB mouse sooooo;

just mostly the idea that adding a USB mouse is such a hassle that the author of the walk through omitted it. Even if manual configuration is necessary, it should not be that long to explain.

Re:there are these things called drivers...

[psamuels]

just mostly the idea that adding a USB mouse is such a hassle that the author of the walk through omitted it. Even if manual configuration is necessary, it should not be that long to explain.

It's not hard. In fact, Debian's stock XFree86 config file already includes the necessary support (I think - I'm running sarge, not woody) - you shouldn't have to touch it. Just make sure your kernel supports it. This consists of loading three modules: usb-uhci (or other host USB adapter driver - depends on your hardware), mousedev (general kernel support for mice) and hid (for any USB "human interface device" including mice).

Restart X - or possibly not even that - and you should be good to go. (And yes, once mousedev is loaded, you should be able to unplug / replug your USB mouse without X even noticing.)

Re:hard install good for byte-pervs

[noshellswill]

Sure it is pad're ... the Debionite byte-pervos are EMOTIVELY INVOLVED with a tool that has no more (or less) value than, say, an enema bag.

blah

[gritz]

it's not that hard to install debian. i've only been using it for a about a month or so and did an basic install the used the internet to install x and everything else needed. blackbox, gkrellm etc.

Re:Canuck, you missed a good opportunity to be qui

[Anonymous Coward]

Then what? You retards couldn't find us on a map, nevermind stay sober or avoid shooting each other long enough to actually do anything. We're as safe as an american excercise bike, because you couldn't identify that either.

Take the Debian Quiz

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian Quiz

give newbies on-line help

[bozojoe]

I've been using Debian for years now, each version gets a little better. I dont think a redhatish GUI interface wil make it any easier to understand. Putting in on-line help(at each step) and a more wizard(help me Im an idiot) like interface will do the trick for newbies.

Can I axe my corporate exchange server yet?
BozoJoe

Re:Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux

[swillden]

I think Debian is great for systems when you want TOTALLY cutting edge (unstable gets updated all the time

Just to head off the obvious incoming criticism (no KDE 3 in unstable, GNOME 2 just hitting unstable, etc.), allow me to point out that the state Debian unstable has been in ever since the developers got serious about the Woody release is an anomalous situation, and it'll be corrected soon. The Debian development process has been going through some major growing pains recently (my box reports that it has over 11,000 packages available to it, and most of those are available in 11 architectures -- *whew*!) but things are getting sorted out, things are getting automated and I expect unstable will soon be the leading-edge distribution it has traditionally been. It may not quite keep pace with the source distros (Gentoo, etc.), but I think it's a very reasonable choice for those who want to stay on the leading edge but don't have time for the bleeding edge.

And, FWIW, I'm posting this from a Debian unstable box running KDE 3.0.3 with all the goodies. Getting KDE 3 running involved adding one line to my sources.list and running an ordinary update.

Re:Canuck, you missed a good opportunity to be qui

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the typical Canadian inferiority complex rears its ugly head.

The average American doesn't care where Canada is. When the time comes to teach you socialists a lesson, there will be enough of us who know about where you are located. It's not like the world will do anything else to stop us. Russia, China, and the EU are no threat to us!

Canada means as much to the average American as does the mating habits of the Brazilian anaconda.

Re:Debian & the Happy Gentoo User (RTFM Syndro

[swillden]

If you're going to change something about Debian, change dselect. It's horrible. It needs to be changed. I haven't used dselect since I learnt how apt worked, but sometimes it would come in useful if it wasn't so god awful!

Try aptitude. It's far better. It still suffers from the my-hell-this-list-is-huge problem, but making 11,000 packages not seem intimidating is a daunting task. Part of Debian's problem vis-a-vis Redhat, etc. is the fact that Debian packages so much more stuff. That's a fact that makes for a huge list of packages, but a huge list of well-integrated components is a *good* thing. So use aptitude, use it's search feature when you know part of the package name and use 'apt-cache search' when you're not sure what you're looking for, and life will be a bliss never known by users of other distros... ;-)

Re:Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux

[dipipanone]

I've run Mandrake, Debian, and Redhat.

I started with Debian, because it was the only distro that worked on M86k's, and I was running an old Mac at the time.

I went from there, to MkLinux, then LinuxPPC, then I broke down and bought a P3 so I could run an up-to-date distro.

Next came the RedHats, up until 6.2, which got rooted, and so went to secure distros like Trustix and Immunix. Then I tried Mandrake, which I liked a lot because Immunix didn't seem to be developing and I liked all of the cool toys that came packaged with it.

Currently I have Redhat 8.0 on my main box as it just makes everything fairly simple.

Me too!

Just installed it this weekend, and I love the slick new version of Gnome, and the wonderful implementation of up-to-date (which has to be easier than apt-get or dselect.)

While I've always thought it was a brilliant server OS, RedHat 8 is the first distro I've ever thought was robust and full featured enough to use as a primary desktop OS. None of the earlier distros that I used ever seemed quite there, but I can do real work on RedHat in absolute comfort, without that irritation that some little bit of my hardware or software just doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

Yes, huge f'in PITA.

[LinuxHam]

I still don't know my way around dselect at all, that's a car crash. I'm guessing that you mark desired packages with dselect and then do an apt-get dselect-upgrade to execute those installs. I've tried apt-get update followed by apt-get upgrade and still get different results from running dselect, not making any selections, and then running apt-get dselect-upgrade. I think dselect detects some critical packages that really should be installed and marks them for download.

I tried to get a Gnome desktop today. I couldn't do an apt-get install gnome. I got gdm, and I got nautilus and x-window-system installed. I finally get X to start, but all the windows, applications, and terminals were all stacking up at 0,0. So I installed sawfish. Then I added nautilus to /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc but it didn't start. So I added it to the ~/.xinitrc for each user, and that worked. The windows and apps were still coming up without a window manager, so I added sawfish ahead of that, but it still didn't work.

I finally decided that I wasn't even anywhere *near* newbieland anymore for troubleshooting efforts, and just did an apt-get install kde kdm and it worked fine. All that to get a goddamned desktop.

And some burrs in my ass each and every time are having to install less, make, gcc, nano, farking with seventeen different libstdc++-dev, aclocal and whatnot and finally getting pissed off when I still can't run make because a version on some file is backlevel and apt-get reports that its up to date.

I even tried to put together a PHP-Nuke box using Apachetoolbox. What was THAT for?!?

I started with Slackware 7 years ago, and passed my RHCE nearly 18 months ago. Debian *is* a huge f'in pain in the ass. If I had a customer that wanted to do static web pages with Apache or run a bunch of Samba servers to keep costs down, Debian seems great, especially with cron-apt installed. They push stability and maturity. Those are about the two most stable and mature products in the Linux arsenal. Anything else will get RH boxes with Red Carpet. Especially when the first customer wants to pilot Linux on the desktop. Of course Debian doesn't play there.

For those who don't know, Red Carpet makes adds and removals (and dependency checking) worlds easier. It kicks the crap out of dselect, too, unless you're some kind of dselect guru.

Re:Yes, huge f'in PITA.

[Spy Hunter]

I never use dselect. I tried for a while, I really did. But it is pointless. Now I just use "apt-cache search" to find the package I want and "apt-get install" to install it. Works like a charm.

I don't know why they even include dselect, it's worse than useless. It encourages you to mess with the dependencies manually, which is a pain and totally unnecessary in 99.9% of cases. If you don't mess with the dependencies yourself, they Just Work (tm). Aptitude doesn't look any better either. Until they get away from the "every software package in the entire world in one giant tree widget" approach they're never going to make any progress with an easy-to-use menu-based package manager.

I think what Debian really needs is a program that streamlines the process of finding the package you want, because apt-get already has the installing part down. Debian needs Google for packages. Not another program that simply lists every debian package ever made.

Re:Yes, huge f'in PITA.

[sab39]

1) They include(d) dselect because for historical reasons it was part of the dpkg package, and therefore not uninstallable without also losing the core of your package-management system. This has been fixed in recent versions of dpkg and dselect will be optional in the next release. Aptitude will be installed instead.

2) Maybe aptitude isn't the ideal solution, but it's certainly better. If for no other reason than that it has sensical (opposite of nonsensical) keybindings...

3) dselect was only an optional part of the install for woody and aptitude will be an optional step for sarge. Tasksel is offered instead. Tasksel is about as easy as it gets. Of course, experienced users will pick no tasks and install things with apt-get afterwards.

Re:Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux

[tester13]

I thought Debian's contributors wanted feedback. If something is free and sucks, it still sucks.

Note: I am not saying that Debian sucks, just that people have IMO very valid concerns about its installer. Why not voice them?

Uhhh... What?

[ilctoh]

See, this USB port thing is a, err, piece of metal and plastic. And these things you plug into them, well, they, um, err, also are metal and plastic. And that big box known as a computer is, (can you guess?) metal and plastic. What you need are those, um, whatja-ma-call-it thingys. I think they're called drivers.

Re:Uhhh... What?

[Com2Kid]

• See, this USB port thing is a, err, piece of metal and plastic. And these things you plug into them, well, they, um, err, also are metal and plastic. And that big box known as a computer is, (can you guess?) metal and plastic. What you need are those, um, whatja-ma-call-it thingys. I think they're called drivers.

See that thing called a user sitting in front of the screen? Guess what he does not give a royal frig about?

USB gives ways for the OS to detect WTF has just been plugged in, allowing for the user to do something else besides baby the OS.

Re:Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux

[swillden]

Is that the best you can do?

Dude, that's like tooling around the ocean with a rusty wrench hanging on your line -- sure, something *might* bite, but it wouldn't be worth catching anyway.

Where the FAQ says they are

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh.

Re:Where the FAQ says they are

[Anonymous Coward]

Where? In sid? In sarge? No, then go fuck yourself and get back to work.

My name is bil and I use Debian.....Hi bil!

[Uteck]

I have bounced from Red Hat to Mandrake, and gave Debian a try. The installer can be a pain if you have odd hardware that is supported by Linux. You just have to keep tring the install untill you find the right combo of drivers. Or, use Libranet. The installer is still text based, but it will auto detect hardware most of the time. Using Libranet 2.7 I installed a whitebox I bought and it found and detected the NIC and video card the first time around. The only thing it did not like was the SIIG ATA133 card for the the extra hard drives and the onboard sound.
I have installed Libranet on a few machines and only had a few problems with M$ specific devices, and onboard sound cards. The 2.7 version has default options for people that do not understand disk partitioning and is even on a bootable disk! :O

Fuck Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

It's too fucking complicated. I've installed the big D a few times, but NEVER have I gotten X to work right. NEVER.

Now I read everybit of this install guide (I even have the O Reilly book) and fuck it, its too fucking much.

Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Just mail a snapshot of yourself to them, and their artists will start right away on the cover art. As soon as they stop laughing.

Re:installers my arsenipples

[abdulla]

Question is, what if your not a man?

I dont text based installers

[sujan]

I recently installed FBSD 4.7 and the text based installer simply rocks. I bet you dont need a graphic installer just a text based installer but it has got to be more intuitive.

Re:I dont text based installers

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont text based installers

Is Engrish your first language?

Re:I dont text based installers

[sujan]

No it is not. Thank you for asking.

Re:Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux

[BJH]

Because most people, rather than saying something like "I think it would be better if you added a 'restore original bootblock' option to the LILO config screen in case someone accidentally screws it up", tend to file bug reports along the lines of "HEY FAKKOORS, you're YOOSLESS POS OS FAKKORED UP my HARD DRIVE!!?!? WTF!? LOLOLOL", which tends to be of little use to developers.

Verbosity is sometimes the only way...

[Jon Abbott]

...to get the job done. When a friend and I co-wrote the "Linux Installation Project" a long time ago, we explained practically every step necessary to installing RedHat 5.0 or Slackware 3.4. We figured that explaining anything less than every step would mean that somebody would get lost in the process somewhere.

Spoiler alert!

[tve]

This walkthrough will give away all the secrets to the textadventure that is the Debian installer.

Re:Spoiler alert!

[MullerMn]

It is dark. You have been eaten by a grue.

Its called "Not Invented Here"

[NaCh0]

Its no fun when someone else did the work for you. Remember that debian prides itself in being for the developers.

Re:Its called "Not Invented Here"

[Ian Bicking]

But Progeny is about as close to Debian as anything but Debian itself. They share founders, they share a commitment to free software, they shared a core operating system at one time... and I've never really heard anyone in Debian say anything bad about Progeny. I don't buy that at all.

Re:Its called "Not Invented Here"

[salimma]

And the X maintainer is working at PGI :) Branden Robinson, of the (in)famous 'Have a nice cup of coffee and shut the F**k off' message when bugged about availability of X 4.1.0 :)

Oh weird, his X Strike Force site is down.

Re:Its called "Not Invented Here"

[shaka]

Oh weird, his X Strike Force site [debian.org] is down.

No, it's not.

What if you aren't fourteen?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to blow your cover, Junior, but dropping everything for three months of sixteen hour days, to concentrate on something that doesn't keep the Magic Fridge full and the Magic Light Switches responsive, isn't an option for most people who are old enough to need to shave every day.

"Linux: If You're Wondering 'What's Linux?' You Can Fuck Right Off."

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Uhhh (You've got a nice flame going)

[Anonymous Coward]

I certainly didn't need to configure my usb mouse (using debian/woody/ppc). In fact i didn't have to
configure the pci usb-card either. So i guess this thread is pretty much null and void.

Re:Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux

[asuffield]

Unstable has never traditionally been "leading edge", although in more recent years some packages have become so; this is largely the fault of newer developers who forget the adage:

You upload stable software to unstable.

Unstable is where the next release is constructed. No more or less than that.

it IS being reworked!

[Xtifr]

If they want less-than-ubergeeks to use it then they whole thing should be reworked.

Yes, and it is being reworked. Not so much because we think it needs to be "dumbed down" as because the existing system is fragile, and takes too much work to tune for each new release. Tweaking and banging on the old system has added months to each of the last couple of releases.

The new system (d-i, or debian-installer) is in heavy development, but wasn't ready in time for Woody.

Why I bother to use aptitude

[Xtifr]

Once you have installed your debian system, all you ever really want to do is add particular programs so why bother with the "pain" of dselect or aptitude or gnome-apt or ....[?]

Well, as a recent aptitude convert, I can give a partial answer to this. Aptitude keeps track of which packages have been installed purely as dependencies. Any "auto-installed" packages (marked with "A" in the display) will be automatically removed if you remove the package(s) that depend on them. (And you can set/unset the "auto-installed" flag manually if you want or need.)

Furthermore, you don't actually need to use the fancy aptitude interface -- you can treat it as (essentially) a replacement for apt-get, i.e. you can say, "aptitude install foo", and it'll install foo, plus its dependencies. However (and this is where it gets good), you can later say, "aptitude purge foo", and it will remove foo and its dependencies[1]. No "pain" involved for an experienced apt-get user, except learning to type "aptitude" where you used to type "apt-get".

Plus, unlike apt-get, aptitude will take notice of suggestions and recommendations. You can configure how it treats these. I find life much happier with aptitude treating "Recommends:" as a dependency and ignoring "Suggests:". This is much less annoying than apt-get's habit of simply ignoring everything except actual dependencies. (And, if you're the install-everything-just-for-luck type, you can have it auto-install all of the suggestions too.)

[1] except those dependencies in use by other things, of course.

Fair points.

[chazR]

Timezone - yes. Or get it to look for an NTP server.
Root password - Whoops. Should have thought of that.
locale - Yup.

Keyboard layout should be possible from a hardware probe + locale settings.

My main point is that it shouldn't need a fifteen-page installation guide. So many things described are inherently automatable.

Re:Fair points.

[psamuels]

Timezone - yes. Or get it to look for an NTP server.

Uh - are you sure NTP provides a timezone? I thought it just provided the One True Time.

You forgot the bit about arranging hard disks, partitions, and boot sequence. Unless you are IBM or Microsoft and believe that nobody would ever try to install your product as the second OS on a machine. (Well, Microsoft thinks you might, but only if the first OS is also from Microsoft.)

You also forgot the bit about choosing your install source / mirror. Again, if you are IBM or Microsoft, you just punt and assume the machine has a CD-ROM drive and the user wants to use an installation CD - as opposed to the department file server, or the Internet at large, or a USB ZIP drive you are carting around for the purpose.

Re:Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux

[LinuxGeek8]

The focus is on functionality, NOT GUI interface design.

So how do I set up a raid or lvm install on Debian?

Re:easy Debian, also known as

[Anonymous Coward]

You want the truth? You can't handle the truth. Yeah, I'm talking to you, fanboy moderators. Libranet is Debian made easy. It works. What's it to you?

And you don't *have* to pay for it, either.

Re:Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux

[Richard_at_work]

You dont, but its very easy to get either working. I myself had a LVM ext3 system about 30 mins after finishing the install.

Re:Install isn't bad if you're familiar with linux

[barawn]

You think this is a normal thing? Really? No, it's a special-purpose thing, and one that you really should know how to handle doing if you are doing it. Installing to a normal ext2 partition and migrating to RAID partitions is safer (and more robust), in my opinion.

So can you? Yes.

Here you go.

Wow, that took long.

YES!

[incripshin]

... and don't forget about having help along the way. It would be nice if the install could be like it is in RH's install where it has that help on the left that you can scroll through each step of the way. Then again, sometimes in the RH install, I had a question that the help didn't answer. ... So like Red Hat's but BETTER! That seems like a lot.

microsoft ad

[elecuanime]

I was surprised to see an add for microsoft business solutions in a slashdot article about Debian installation. Is this the first of many? http://m.doubleclick.net/viewad/721454/network336x 280.gif If times are getting this tough, the administrators might think of other types of fund-raising campaigns.

[OT] sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, madam, I am drunk. But in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. --Winston Churchill

You sure you got it right? The way I heard it was:

Lady Astor: Sir, you are drunk.

Churchill: Madam, you are ugly. And in the morning, I will be sober.

Granted, that doesn't quite fit in 120 characters, but it's a lot funnier, don't you think?

8390.o considered harmful?

[psamuels]

That's the one. I wish I could remember what it did to the machine - it was very subtle

Weird. That's just a helper module used by several other network modules, for cards based on the 8390 or similar chips. I didn't think 8390.o by itself did anything until other modules were loaded.

BTW: for new x86 machines, getting the right network module is mostly a matter of trying (a) 3c59x (b) eepro100 (c) 8139too (d) tulip (e) 8139cp. If it's gigabit, try (a) e1000. The NIC market has really consolidated over the years, just like the CD-ROM interface market did.

In any case, PCI autodetect is a long-solved problem. Kernel modules have embedded tables saying which PCI devices they support - you just have to extract that info and compare it with your /proc/bus/pci/. (This table is comparable to the one in the OEMSETUP.INF that comes with Windows drivers.) That is probably the one major deficiency I see in the stock Debian installer. (As an end-user. I know developers find a lot of faults with it from a maintainability standpoint, which is why they are replacing it for sarge.)

How Linux PCI driver plug-n-play works today

[psamuels]

I wish that whoever was maintaining the pci data base the lspci used would add a field for what module driver is used for that hardware. Make for great hardware detection, atleast on the pci bus.

The equivalent facility already exists. Look on your machine, /lib/modules/kernel-version/modules.pcimap . It is generated from tables compiled into your modules, and it gives enough information to identify the driver(s), if any, that believe they can handle any given PCI device. Parsing this information is an exercise for the reader, or for the distribution installer.

If you want to see where this data comes from, look in the kernel source tree. include/linux/pci_ids.h defines symbolic names for most supported (and some unsupported) PCI vendors and devices, in C symbol format. (A similar list, but in human-readable description format, is in drivers/pci/pci.ids, which is basically a copy of /usr/share/misc/pci.ids, which is used by lspci.) Then, in your individual driver files, look for a table starting with a line similar to

static struct pci_device_id xxxxxx[] __devinitdata = {

This table should be followed by a declaration

MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE(pci, xxxxxx);

which flags it so that depmod, the module dependency calculator, can find it and add its contents to the modules.pcimap file.

Duplicating all this in pci.ids would IMHO be inappropriate - that file is not in any way specific to Linux. Since the driver itself has to know what devices it supports anyway, this list logically belongs in the driver source.

Re:How Linux PCI driver plug-n-play works today

[ArsonSmith]

Duplicating all this in pci.ids would IMHO be inappropriate - that file is not in any way specific to Linux. Since the driver itself has to know what devices it supports anyway, this list logically belongs in the driver source.

Maybe this is parseing code that should be added to lspci, maybe witha -m option it could list devices detected and modules associated with that particular hardware. hmmm, I've been needing a project lately.

Re:How Linux PCI driver plug-n-play works today

[psamuels]

Maybe this is parseing code that should be added to lspci, maybe witha -m option it could list devices detected and modules associated with that particular hardware. hmmm, I've been needing a project lately.

Hey, go ahead - sounds potentially useful. However, note that this work has been done already, at least three times:

• the kernel autoconfig work by Giacomo Catenazzi (sp? - well, in any case he's "cate % debian ^ org", which I can spell), which did a hardware scan of your system in order to customise a kernel build, as far as possible, for the current hardware. This was adopted by ESR for his (in)famous CML2 work, but I don't know if it has been maintained since that died. I don't remember whether or not he figured out how to use the embedded PCI tables, since those haven't been compiled yet by the time autoconfig runs.
• libdetect, the hardware detection library used (I think) in kudzu for red hat.
• Greg Kroah-Hartman's hotplug package (look around on sf.net) does pretty much the same thing as well, for hot-pluggable hardware - which these days includes PCI and PCI-like (CardBus) devices on a number of platforms.

Before reinventing the wheel, you might look at the existing wheels. Not that I have done so, mind ... I'm even too lazy to google for links for you. (:

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[alpg]

This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard
dying... but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft,
pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it.
-- Alfred Bester, "The Stars My Destination"

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