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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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]

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

[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?

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.

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?

[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.

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?

[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?

[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!

[MrEd]

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

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]

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)

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!

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.

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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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 ??

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.

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)

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

[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.

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 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?

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

[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

[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

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.

*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....

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...

[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: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.

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: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: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: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

[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?

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.

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

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: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.

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.

Re:Spelling Hurdles

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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.

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.

Re:Its called "Not Invented Here"

[shaka]

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

No, it's not.

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: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.

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.

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.