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Debian-Installer Alpha Released
robstah writes "An alpha release of the next generation Debian installer (Debian-Installer) has been announced. Debian-Installer is an actively developed replacement for the older and now rather delapidated boot-floppies installer. This alpha release is available for i386 only as ports to other platforms are not yet significantly mature. Volunteers are requested to test this new installer and help contribute to Sarge, the next release of Debian GNU/Linux." Now's the time to complain if you want to be heard.
I'm installing Mandrake on a laptop right next to me as we speak.
Yes, you can install Mandrake from a command line.
Not sure about the performance on a lowend machine, however. . .
Sig.i>
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
Yes, i have a RedHat8.0 installed on a p133 laptop, and the GUI install ran great, without any problems! Window Maker is running Awesome from it. (GNOME2 and KDE3 arnt a practical solution for it)
RedHat also has a custom install mode. Its between selecting custom packages and letting anaconda (the linux installer) taking care of everything by itself.
You can select certian packages from a category menu simmilar to the windows component add/remove in windows. This way, I can select to install vi and not X/Emacs and half other apps that i dont want, while making sure that importnat libraries will remain without me accidentally removing a critical and neccesary default application, because really, very few systems will need the extra 500MB that you might free by going package by package, and then end up installing half of them later, when most app's require them.
count the processors pgi supports and then the processors debian supports.
That's the beauty of open source - you can reinvent the wheel as many times as you want. Yo leave it up to the end use to pick the wheel that rolls the best.
Progeny's installer (known as PGI) doesn't work on non-x86 archs (it may work on PPC, but not on the majority of the arch's that Debian supports). From what I understand, there's no movement towards porting it to other arch's, either because it's difficult or people aren't interested in doing so. Anthony Towns (the Release Manager for Debian) basically just wants a working installer, and debian-installer is what people are actually working on.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
There's not much to see yet, it's only a text-based install right now. S-Lang and GTK frontends are in the works though.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Is herec e/2002 /debian-devel-announce-200212/msg00002.html
.iso and details about this release/filing bugreports.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announ
Including links to an
That may be correct if you're not familiar with Linux, but if that is the case, one will find that reading the installation manual helps. It's a very detailed document that covers just about everything and every possibility; compare that to the quality of documentation that other distributions provide.
It's been said many times: Debian isn't for newbies. However, I recommend Debian to newbies if they want to learn Linux and not be hand-held through the installation and configuration processes. There's not much to learn when your idea of filesystem allocation is a bar graph, and you're not even presented with the names of the kernel modules you can choose.
It's not just about running on low spec machines. Keeping the installation simple (in terms of internal design, not UI) eliminates many problems and allows you to do many flexible things. Things break less. Hardware auto-detection and other forms of hand-holding is probably why my last Mandrake installation froze indefinitely (8.2, in VMware); I've had a similar experience with a recent Redhat version (on a non-emulated machine).
In short, I don't understand why the existing installer gets so much flak. I'll admit dselect stinks for too many reasons to list here, and I find tasksel to be over-generalized. Therefore, I recommend that people search for packages they want, and install them with apt-get after the installation procedure.
The only remaining challenge with installing Debian is that you understand concepts like partitions, filesystems, kernel modules, etc. If you do, the installation is a breeze (although I've been through it many times). If you don't, the installation manual covers all of this.
Anything I'm overlooking?
Developers NEVER have enough people testing and reporting quality feedback. So again, if you use Debian at all, please help out.
http://people.debian.org/~blade/XFS-Install/
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
I think gentoo comes with it by default... although there is no installer per say, so you just format it whatever you want it...
Mandrake (9.0) gives you the option in the installer.
debian-installer uses discover for autodetection, and has for more than a year already, so that part is quite well taken care of.
Debian-installer is an old project, it will soon be three years since the first commits into the CVS repository.
PGI is nice and everything, but does not use debconf, it is monolithic, which means that it's a lot harder to rip out a part of it and replace with something else (say you want EVMS or LVM instead of normal partitions). This is quite easy with debian-installer.
In addition, there is the issue of PGI not being ported to anything but i386 and PPC. d-i already works on hppa, and is getting into shape on s390 and ia64.
Since debian-installer uses debconf for interaction, it will be quite easy to support automated installations as well.
--
Tollef Fog Heen (d-i hacker)
go get it @
/etc/apt/sources.list
./
./ ./
/ pkgs .// pkgs ./
./
./
...etc
...etc
...), rebuilt for debian/woody (Added 2002-12-4, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by zack(AT)debian(DOT)org
./ ./
o ffice/ woody main contrib
D ebian/woody ./
./ ./
D ebian/sid ./
www.apt-get.org
please be kind, not my server
I added all the verified servers as to not hog the main server too hard, enjoy
for the video codecs I recommend http://marillat.free.fr/
just remember too run apt-get update after you updated you're
also why not try synaptic, a nice easy to use apt-get frontend
Repository list:
* (Verified) GMonsters, a multiplayer networked monster raising game. (Added 2002-12-3, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by reeve(AT)ductape(DOT)net
Packages: gmonsters-client gmonsters-server
deb http://gmonsters.sourceforge.net/debian
* (Verified) Latest version of the Nessus scanner client and daemon. (Added 2002-12-3, last checked 2002-12-8)
deb http://www.srce.hr/~joy/nessus1.2/
deb-src http://www.srce.hr/~joy/nessus1.2/
* (Verified) Several packages maintained by Robert Jordens that appear here before being uploaded. (Added 2002-12-3, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by robertjo(AT)phys(DOT)ethz(DOT)ch
Packages: xmms-ladspa, aconnectgui, alsamixergui, remstats, libgtk-canvas, ardour, gnuift
# Robert Jordens
deb http://n.ethz.ch/student/robertjo/download/rj-deb
deb-src http://n.ethz.ch/student/robertjo/download/rj-deb
* (Verified) Packages to run kernel 2.4.x on Debian potato (Added 2002-12-3, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by Adrian Bunk
Please read lynx http://www.fs.tum.de/~bunk/kernel-24.html
deb http://www.fs.tum.de/~bunk/debian potato main
deb-src http://www.fs.tum.de/~bunk/debian potato main
* (Verified) Packages for woody (Added 2002-12-3, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by Adrian Bunk
I have prepared some packages that update some packages that are not or only in an older version in woody. I try my best to avoid problems with both installing these packages on a Debian 3.0 and upgrading with these packages installed to Debian 3.1. Please read http://www.fs.tum.de/~bunk/packages/
Packages: e.g. gcc 3.2, Kernel 2.4.19,XFree86 4.2.1, updated versions of Freeciv, GNU gs, Mozilla, SANE, Wine
deb http://www.fs.tum.de/~bunk/debian woody/bunk-1 main contrib non-free
deb-src http://www.fs.tum.de/~bunk/debian woody/bunk-1 main contrib non-free
* (Verified) Here you can find the devel version of the not-to-minimalist window manager a.k.a ION. ION is a keyboard-driven window manager that prevents windows from being hidden by others. It a kind of GNU/screen software but for the window manager. In ION windows (or programs) are called clients and the clients are managed through frames (Emacs users should know what this means). Give it a try. I promise you'll never look at other window manager. (Added 2002-12-3, last checked 2002-12-8)
This package is a candidate to integration into sid.
Packages: ion-devel
deb http://kanin.dsv.su.se/ ion-devel/sid main
deb-src http://kanin.dsv.su.se/ ion-devel main
deb http://kanin.dsv.su.se/ ion-devel/woody main
* (Verified) psbind: Transform PostScript files to save trees and reduce guilt; klimb: A bike route planning program for the San Francisco Bay Area; fmt2: An optimal text formatter for traditional Chinese text; nph: A modern client and API library for accessing PH servers. (Added 2002-12-3, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by ccshan(AT)eecs(DOT)harvard(DOT)edu
Packages: psbind, klimb, fmt2, nph
deb http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~ccshan/debian
* (Verified) A mirrow with an unstable packege of WineX light for example (Windows Emulator wine with Microsoft DirectX support). (Added 2002-12-3, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by marc(DOT)leeman(AT)advalvas(DOT)be
deb http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~mleeman/debian unstable/
* (Verified) Various packages, mostly software written by myself. (Added 2002-12-3, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by Christian Garbs
Packages: wondershaper whatsnewfm japana makesig kenny tentakelcoder
deb http://www.h.shuttle.de/mitch/stuff
* (Verified) Husky project: Portable FidoNet software (for woody) (Added 2002-12-3, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by pavel(AT)collage(DOT)etel(DOT)ru
Packages: bsopack, fidoconf, hpt, hptkill, hptsqfix, hpucode, htick, nltools, smapi, sqpack
deb http://husky.sourceforge.net/debian stable contrib non-free
* (Verified) Husky project: Portable FidoNet software (for sid) (Added 2002-12-3, last checked 2002-12-8)
Packages: bsopack, fidoconf, hpt, hptkill, hptsqfix, hpucode, htick, nltools, smapi, sqpack
deb http://husky.sourceforge.net/debian unstable contrib non-free
* (Verified) Woody backport of lifelines packages (Added 2002-12-4, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by bubulle(AT)debian(DOT)org
By the lifelines package maintainer
Packages: lifelines lifelines-doc lifelines-reports lifelines-reports-pt
deb http://www.perrier.eu.org/geneal/lifelines-debian stable main
deb-src http://www.perrier.eu.org/geneal/lifelines-debian stable main
* (Verified) Samba 2.2.x woody packages (Added 2002-12-4, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by bubulle(AT)debian(DOT)org
Quota and ACL support is added. The base for this work are the official 2.2.3a packages. Be careful : official samba packages maintainers have deliberately chosen to skip ACL support due to "libacl1 instability" in woody, according to them. The packages work for me, that's all I can say..:-)
Packages: libpam-smbpass libsmbclient libsmbclient-dev samba samba-common samba-doc smbclient smbfs swat winbind
deb http://www.perrier.eu.org/samba-debian stable main
deb-src http://www.perrier.eu.org/samba-debian stable main
* (Verified) Woody backports of Cyrus IMAPd 2.1, and all required dependencies. (Added 2002-12-4, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by hmh(AT)debian(DOT)org
It is as official as an unofficial repository can get, since I am the maintainer of the official packages...
deb http://people.debian.org/~hmh/packages woody/
* (Verified) Contains packages and tools packaged in heanet. (Added 2002-12-4, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by colmmacc(AT)heanet(DOT)ie
deb http://apt.heanet.ie heanet contrib
* (Verified) linux.piter-press.ru/debian (Added 2002-12-4, last checked 2002-12-8)
Packages: anjuta, fookb, wmcliphist
deb http://linux.piter-press.ru/debian unstable mine
* (Verified) http://debian.a3.nl/ (Added 2002-12-4, last checked 2002-12-8)
Packages: caudium, flow-tools, mailgraph, autopgp, freenet, pgp4pine, apg, arla,
deb http://debian.a3.nl/debian a3 main
* (Verified) http://ftp.3logic.net/local/ (Added 2002-12-4, last checked 2002-12-8)
Packages: Apache-RUS
deb http://ftp.3logic.net/local/ woody apache-rus
* (Verified) http://debian.theracingworld.com/ (Added 2002-12-4, last checked 2002-12-8)
Packages: pppd-mppe, amavis, razor, spamc,
deb http://debian.theracingworld.com/ local main contrib non-free
* (Verified) Samba-TNG repository (Added 2002-12-4, last checked 2002-12-8)
Packages: samba-tng
deb http://samba.cadcamlab.org/debian/ woody/
* (Verified) OCaml 3.06 related packages (compilers, libraries, tools,
deb http://people.debian.org/~zack/ocaml woody main contrib non-free
* (Verified) Open CA (openssl certificate authority) (Added 2002-12-5, last checked 2002-12-8)
Packages: openca, selinux, heimdal
deb http://snoopy.apana.org.au/~ftp/debian/ unstable main
deb http://snoopy.apana.org.au/~ftp/debian/ stable main
* (Verified) Some packages that I never uploaded or that asked for removal. More info at: http://people.debian.org/~amaya/ (Added 2002-12-5, last checked 2002-12-8)
Packages: enlightenment-conf: The Enlightenment window manager configuration tool arp-fun: Arp-fun, an ARP Spoofing utility
deb http://people.debian.org/~amaya/debian
deb-src http://people.debian.org/~amaya/debian
* (Verified) Debian packages for MythTV for woody (Debian 3.0) or later. (Added 2002-12-5, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by mdz(AT)debian(DOT)org
Packages: mythtv, libmythtv-0.7, libmythtv-0.7-dev, mythweb
deb http://dijkstra.csh.rit.edu:8088/~mdz/debian woody mythtv
deb-src http://dijkstra.csh.rit.edu:8088/~mdz/debian woody mythtv
* (Verified) Backport of lame to woody. (Added 2002-12-5, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by mdz(AT)debian(DOT)org
Required for MythTV.
Packages: lame, liblame0, liblame-dev, lame-extras
deb http://dijkstra.csh.rit.edu:8088/~mdz/debian woody lame
* (Verified) Backport of xmltv to woody. (Added 2002-12-5, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by mdz(AT)debian(DOT)org
Required by MythTV
Packages: libtk-tablematrix-perl
deb http://dijkstra.csh.rit.edu:8088/~mdz/debian woody xmltv
* (Verified) irssi cvs snapshot built for woody and sarge (Added 2002-12-6, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by debian(AT)selfdestruct(DOT)net
Packages: irssi-snapshot
deb http://selfdestruct.net/debian woody main
deb http://selfdestruct.net/debian sarge main
* (Verified) Openoffice.org woody backport (Added 2002-11-25, last checked 2002-12-8) - maintained by debian-openoffice(AT)lists(DOT)debian(DOT)org
Packages: openoffice.org
deb http://ftp.freenet.de/pub/ftp.vpn-junkies.de/open
* (Verified) Unofficial cr.yp.to packages for Debian sarge (Added 2002-11-27, last checked 2002-12-8)
Packages: qmail, djbdns, daemontools, ucspi-tcp et al
deb http://smarden.org/pape/Debian sarge unofficial
deb-src http://smarden.org/pape/Debian sarge unofficial pape
* (Verified) Unofficial Mozilla 1.1 for Woody (Added 2002-11-27, last checked 2002-12-8)
deb http://people.debian.org/~otavio woody mozilla
* (Verified) [NOTE: replace "us" with your country code]. Latest KDE debs for woody. (Added 2002-11-27, last checked 2002-12-8)
deb http://download.us.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/latest/
* (Verified) Unofficial cr.yp.to packages for Debian woody (Added 2002-11-27, last checked 2002-12-8)
Packages: qmail, djbdns, daemontools, ucspi-tcp et al
deb http://smarden.org/pape/Debian woody unofficial pape
deb-src http://smarden.org/pape/Debian woody unofficial pape
* (Verified) Unofficial cr.yp.to packages for Debian potato (Added 2002-11-27, last checked 2002-12-8)
Packages: qmail, djbdns, daemontools, ucspi-tcp et al
deb http://smarden.org/pape/Debian potato unofficial pape
deb-src http://smarden.org/pape/Debian potato unofficial pape
* (Verified) colortail, paralogger, xfonts-ansi (bright, outcast, peq, shine, zaber, zone) (Added 2002-11-27, last checked 2002-12-8)
deb http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ddamian/deb/
deb-src http://mywebpages.comcast.net/ddamian/deb/
* (Verified) various packages such as mplayer,acroread...for unstable, testing and stable source packages are also given. (Added 2002-11-27, last checked 2002-12-8)
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main
* (Verified) [NOTE: replace "us" with your country code]. Latest KDE debs for sid. (Added 2002-11-27, last checked 2002-12-8)
deb http://download.us.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/latest/
and much more @ www.apt-get.org
enjoy
> I've never minded the old installer
You shouldn't. The problem of the old installer, addressed by the new d-i, is the problem of developers, not end-users. In particular, it is too difficult to make the process of creating boot floppies automatic. That made Debian stable to always release late. Perhaps this time (or rather, the next time) they really can make it to meet expectation (in release date).
The ISO supports it fine: First make sure you select all the NIC modules under the packages to install (7,9,10) Then, under configure network hardware, choose no to select the driver yourself and then enter pcnet32 for the module to load - Bingo.
There are so many here that expects Debian installer will address the "very difficult to install for newbies" problem of the old boot floppies. So many that it becomes very compelling to reply every of them about the bad news for them. But then it will waste so much time, that I'd better just write it top-level.
Debian Installer (d-i) is a developer's project. The problem addressed by d-i is the problem of developers, not end-users. You will be very disappointed if you expect a very nice GUI install when trying out d-i. It simply won't make it any more newbie-proof than the old installer of Debian. At least, not now.
The problem addressed by d-i is the difficulty for developers to create boot floppies. It is difficult to create boot disks, no matter what is the distribution. For other distributions where half of the time of the developers is allocated to new installation and where nobody sees any part of the distribution when it is "work in progress", this is no problem. But for Debian, most developers install it once, and never install it again because it is so good in upgrading. For other distributions, installers are the first things they work on when creating a new version. For Debian, it is the last thing that gets started. Not to mention: they must be built manually, e.g., to try making sure that the floppy size is small enough, to remove some files of packages if it doesn't fit, etc. The effect: installation never get well tested.
The d-i project is the study about why creating boot floppies are so difficult, and tries to resolve them so that they can be created automatically. Everyone should really try to read the second half of the "Woody retrospective and Sarge introspective" mail posted by the release manager here . This will give you an idea about what are the issues involved.
So why you should care? First, it will be the installer that you will use. Second, this will be the basis where future improvements to the installers will be made, not the PGI or whatever installer. Third, once it is ready, you will be able to get testing installed directly rather than having to install stable and then upgrade basically all packages to testing (or unstable). For now, test if you can.
According to my fellow hackers, hppa works, s390 is getting there, ia64 is getting there, alpha, ppc and m68k have started, Sparc isn't begun yet, nor are mips, mipsel, arm. The porting efforts for cool projects like Debian GNU/NetBSD and the Hurd haven't really begun.
Here's how I do a bare-bones RH install... I've done this on 486's even with RH8.
1. At the bootup screen, select "text mode" install
2. Set up your partitions, etc.
3. When you get to the "Package Selection" screen, choose either "workstation" of "server" as appropriate.
4. Do *not* opt to select individual packages
5. *Unselect* everything
6. Proceed
This leaves you with a bare-bones install between 90 - 150 mB, depending on the RH version.
C|N>K
The Knoppix autodetection is awesome. I have a cheap monitor/videocard that I have never been able to get working properly at resolutions above 800x600 in any distro, and no matter how much I played with the Xfree86 settings.
Knoppix booted and perfectly autodetected every bit of my hardware. X came up perfectly, so did sound. It worked immediately on first boot! I believe it's all GPL so why not include a lot of the stuff they worked on. It would make debian much better.
--I tend to agree with you. Ppl have been spoiled by GUIs that take up too much memory, are slow, and more prone to have bugs. (And I'm not just talking about the installers, either.)
--SuSE 7.3's GUI installer was a PITA. I *always* opted for text mode, sometimes "Expert mode" as well - because I couldn't get a reliable install experience using the GUI.
--I switched to Knoppix because it was the best Linux experience I'd seen since Mandrake 1st edition came out to compete w/ RedHat. Plus the promise of apt-get was too good to pass up.
--My current install is b0rked tho. I can't get apt-get update / upgrade to work anymore (craps out with a memory error and can't parse some dpkg files) so I'll have to reinstall using the latest ISO and knx-hdinstall. So much for perfection...
--I also have a download of Libranet 2.0 (the free-beer version) to try out, so maybe I'll do that one 1st.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??