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

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?

[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

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 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.

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.

*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....

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.

[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.

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

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.

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.

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: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

[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

[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.