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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 working on it right now. I needed a new distro to mess around with anyway. I had always heard that the Debian installation was just a complete mess, so this is a step in the right direction. Hearing even slight news like this is enough to make me try it out, and I'm sure it'll help convince other people too.
Sig.i>
With my current install, I had to install on ext2, then copy / to another partition, make XFS-capable kernel, create XFS on the original / partition, and copy it back... It's a mess.
fp?
This is really great news for the Debian developers and the Debian userbase. Debian is a great installation but has one of the more complicated, unfriendly installers out there. This first puts off people changing to Debian from other dists. and secondly stops linux newbies trying out Debian.
Hopefully this installer turns out to be as easy to use as installing Redhat, but hopefully will stay non bloated and run on low spec machines. Just out of interest has anyone ever tried the Mandrake or Redhat graphical installers run on a low spec machine? Does Mandrake include a command line only option like Redhat does?
This, I am really happy about.
Most Linux users at work love Debian from what they have seen on my laptop, but are intimidated by the installer, and what they have heard about it (ie. time consuming, tricky). Therefore, they won't use Debian...
They would rather just put in a Mandrake, or Redhat CD and click a few mouse buttons and off they go with a new system, in less than 1/2 an hour.
This is great news, and I will be keeping an eye on this. Soon enough, I'll make sure to push Debian onto other people once the installer reaches a significant level.
Well done and congratulations to all involved in the Debian-Installer project!
I never had any problems with the debian installer, and I sure like what it left me with. I have Debian running on i386, mips and sparc. The sparc and mips platforms both have NFS root installs. In both cases I found myself pleased with the ease of install, although I did have to muck around with scripts, etc. But I expected that with 'weird' arches and installs.
I have heard disses about it though, mostly from newbie types. As distrubutions go, I would like to see it easier to use for people who might not know their way around a linux box.
Most of the complaints I've heard (and identified), deal with documentation, though. As I don't feel like doing a new install of Deb to test it, can anyone offer any insight as to what kind of improvments have been made? The article is kind of weak on that point.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Can someone explain ? is this Yet a New Case Of Reiventing The Wheel ? I thought that the Progeny (Debian based) installer : http://hackers.progeny.com/pgi/ was very nice and GPL too ?
Why is there a need to reinvent the wheel over and over again ?
What most people are going to think of when they see this is that this will make Debian's install more friendly. While this is very likely to happen, there are going to be other major benefits to this project.
The main one is that this will completely replace the old boot-floppies software that previous releases were based on. boot-floppies was, by all accounts, a major pain to deal with. For the release of woody, the installer was supposed to be re-written, but people complained and it was decided to "just" update boot-floppies once again for woody so that the release could get out the door quickly. This update took an extremely long time, so woody took a lot longer to release.
Sarge is largely waiting on debian-installer to be in good shape to release. No one, and I do mean no one, is willing to work on boot-floppies any more. I've never personally looked at the code, but I know it's just not worth it. debian-installer is modular and will provide the ability to have multiple frontends. The only one in place right now is the text-based frontend, so it's even uglier than the boot-floppies UI right now, but GTK and S-Lang frontends are in the works. Either way, the modularity of the new system will hopefully make it easier to update for new stable releases. boot-floppies was really holding things back there, much to everyone's dismay.
The other thing of note is that the entire installer is based on the debconf system (well, a rewritten C version of it actually), which is Debian's standard configuration backend. There are multiple frontends, like Gnome, Dialog (curses), and text-based for it, and it's in heavy use in Debian right now. It's a good system that's worked well, and using it in the installer will encourage even more standardization in an already fairly coherent distro.
As for this alpha, it only supports i386 right now. I don't know how far along the porting efforts are to other arch's, but a new Debian release won't happen until it's been ported everywhere that it needs to be. Still, the installer team has done a great job, and this is a project that the Debian community really should be paying close attention to.
"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."
I really hope that the Debian installer would have support for autodetection and configuration of all installed hardware, something like Knoppix (which is based on Debian) does. I know you can manually configure everything, but having all the hardware already known to it detected and configured would be great. This would mean that Debian would again be on the innovative edge of GNU/Linux distros...Debian does have the reputation of being a slow-moving, but stable distro.
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Oh I'm being too harsh I think... I know there's aptitude, tasksel and apt-* but this is good news too.
I wanted to test this in VMware but unfortunally the netinstall bootdisk didn't have support for VMware's network driver. I really think they should include it so it would be easier to try this out. I'm not going to run this on my normal computer and risk destroying all my data.
It has three branches (stable, testing, unstable) so you can choose your ratio of features to stability.
It has a large community of users to give support.
Each software package acts as a personal liason to upstream authors of software so you can get wishlist requests in and solid bugreports dealt with in a reasonable manner.
It has a completely open development process so you can see everything and even participate if you want.
It has a clearly defined and actively updated policy that provides standardization throughout the system (any package that violates policy is buggy by the way, and is treated as such).
It has an army of developers over a thousand strong who maintain "more than 8710 packages" to make this distribution the largest (what was that about no good software?)
There was a long and drawn out discussion about this on the debian-devel mailing list. If you want to sit around compiling your entire system from scratch, you're welcome to, but note that you can do this in Debian too, and keep things packaged. There's the apt-src package that will do this and keep all the debian stuff you love. This program hasn't had the most active development in the past (the author is one of Debian's best developers and contributes all over the place) but you can be sure it'll be improved soon. Plus, say what you will about Debian's install, it's way easier than gentoo's manual bootstrap method.
Besides, the majority of apps won't benefit from custom compilation enough to make it worth the time.
This traditionally hasn't been Debian's focus at all, but hopefully the desktop subproject will change that once it really gets going. And as for Lindows, it's based on Debian itself. Debian does serve as a fantastic platform for other people to build systems on.
I'm sorry, but if you put Debian stable vs. Redhat on the server you'll find Debian wins out everywhere that it needs to including upgrades and stability. Redhat gives you corporate support if you pay for it, which is a definite advantage when you need to cover your ass or you're ignorant. There's something to be said for a name brand, that's for sure.
The desktop project will hopefully work on this. I personally do just fine having fun and using multimedia on my Debian desktop system, but maybe that's just me and the thousands of other users like me.
Well, there's the HURD subproject in the works, as well as a NetBSD port. None of the other distros you mentioned have that. The reason for that is that Debian is far more than a Linux distribution, it's a whole project devoted to making a great system. This system can be ported to other kernels and other architectures. It's flexible and has the underlying infrastructure (like autobuilders and debbugs database) to handle this task. It's got the large quantity of manpower and the policies in place for managing it. Debian isn't a corporation, so it doesn't work the same way as Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, and the rest. The closest one to it is Gentoo, and it's no mistake that Gentoo modeled its social contract on that of Debian.
Debian isn't the be all end all by any means. But it's an amazing project that moves at its own pace. While everyone else is worried about pretty installers, Debian is working on supporting computers that no one else supports. While everyone else is worried about grabbing the largest userbase, Debian is working on making the best system that the developers can put together. It just works differently than other distros. This doesn't make it obsolete, it makes it impressive.
"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
What? The Debian packaging system contains more packages than I will ever use, which cover ever type of application / daemon that I will ever need. Many times have I looked at some software I wish to install, to find that someone has already put it in the apt mirror, AND written a nice text based front end configuration from it.
USB mice - apt-get install hotplug detect gpm - and your away
Debians policies and standards are put in place to ensure that it will long be around after other commercial vendors have gone broke. It does not rely on cashflow and will be around a LOT longer than other distros.
You are a troll.
-mikkav
Developers NEVER have enough people testing and reporting quality feedback. So again, if you use Debian at all, please help out.
Well, about kde3, all I can say is that since I upgraded kde on my woody box to kde3, konqueror (and the few other kde apps I use) crashes a lot less than konqueror in kde 2.2.2. Not that I blame the packagers though, when the decision was made not to package kde3 not much was known about how stable it would be (if it even was released at the time, I don't remember). It could have been full of bugs, so it was certainly a better and safer choice to go with kde 2.2.2, which was known to be relatively bug-free.
Anyway, hopefully they get to release sarge by the end of summer 2003. Or if they at least could get gcc 3.2 as the default compiler in sid by then...*sigh*..:)
*dons asbestos kit*
Related to the above, the weird thing about debian is their stubborn refusal to use a schedule. "Release when ready", what kind of mantra is that? Every human endeavour requiring cooperation among many individuals, related to computing, warfare, whatever, for pay or voluntary, benefits from a schedule. Hell, most people schedule their own lives too, for good or bad. What makes the debian project so special, that they can't use the same basic tool that almost all other projects in the world use?
Yes, of course I know that debian developers are volunteers, they can't be forced to do anything. So what? It's not like debian is the only volunteer project in the world. Most schedule their activities somehow. It gives everyone a common goal to reach for.
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).
Installing an operating system should be easy. And it will require skills most people wish to ignore.
No, it should not.
An OS is the most complex piece of software that a user will ever be asked to install on his/her machine, so it should be uneasy (yuk) to install, so that Joe A. Luser really understand what he is doing.
Intuitive, maybe (never had any problem with the Debian installer, but the new installer system was created to replace the old one, which was unmaintainable). But not easy. An easy installer hides the fact that an OS is intrinsecally a complex thing.
Users that do not want to endeavour in switching to another operating system, should not be induced in thinking that an operating system is just like any other software the install and de-install.
You can save space. Or you can save time. Don't ever count on saving both at once. -- First Law of Algorithmic Analisys
There is still a bug on sparc related to gcc 3.2 being the default compiler. It is hoped that it will be fixed this weekend. While debian is not the fastest dist to get stuff out from my experience it tends to be far more solid when it comes out.
During large transitions it typically lags far behind the other commercial dists but it does a better job at the conversion. I have had too many X, KDE, python, ZOPE etc problems on various other dists that I just got sick and tired of it.
Sid is more stable then Redhat and Mandrake are and the software is more likely to just work which is mostly related to better packaging.
I get paid to do other stuff then babysit the boxes so I want software that works all the time and for me and that means using Debian and waiting until the software is ready.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
of next-generation huh? I see. Maybe in 2010 it'll be released as part of debian stable.
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.
1. WTF is this "Insightful"?
2. The question I want to raise is this: Could this be bad news for Debian? Is a more friendly installer going to end up with a more bloated distribution as well?
How does distribution bloat logically follow from a better installer? The new installer addresses some serious problems in the old b-f system. Making custom installation CDs won't be as much of an ordeal now, since the new system uses debconf. Also, there are some features which make life a lot easier for sysadmins, like a http backend for default configuration information, support for kickstart-like automated installs, etc.
The fact that the new installer is modular and therefore able to have nicer frontends is the icing on the cake.
What the hell does distribution bloat mean, anyway? I love Debian, but if I have to I can install a stripped-down RedHat pretty easily. Just don't select any of the package groups. It's true that Debian's basic install is still smaller, but not by that much.
So, how is this bad news? Did you really think about the question before you posted it?
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Aren't CF cards already IDE in nature (mini-IDE devices)?
unfinished: (adj.)
90% of the cases require simple instalations. So you could provide [] Simple [] Hard radio buttons or whatever and solve the problem. But I know most developers do not like that, because the think of users as developers, which are only a small fraction.
If normal users can get to run a "common case" devian instalation and then just use the normal stuff in a normal system (OpenOffice, etc.) and learn more as they go (gradually), it will be a good thing to happen. As long as allowing for the common case scenario does not mean dumbing down the system (as in Metacity, which is a step backwards with respect to Sawfish, as an example).
unfinished: (adj.)
The reason is obvious however. I went to get myself a keychain USB flash storage device the other day and they wanted $99 for 16 meg. I bought 10 disks for $3.98 and went home, and then remember that I dont have a floppy drive and that's why I went out. Those disks are still sitting on my other desk.. mocking me.
For god's sake, $5 is what a 16 meg usb flash card should cost, no more.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Haven't looked at it, and it sounds like I won't as the message looks too goatsexy.
unfinished: (adj.)
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.
Debians biggest problem in the install process is that you still ..... Ditto for your scsi card).
need to know the answers to many of the questions, and there isn't enough help info presented during the install process. Do you know if a program should be installed SUID? Are the defaults safe in most cases, and some questions don't even have a default? You need to know your hardware, Debian doesn't auto probe for your graphics card or your network card (well if your network card was built into the kernel you are in luck, it will probably be found. Otherwise
The package 'tasks' help to select a group of packages needed for specific tasks, but they are too broad. The X11 task installs ALL of the X servers, but you only need one or two.
The desktop task installs BOTH Gnome and KDE. If you don't want both, well there IS a virtual package for KDE (apt-get install kde will do it), but none for Gnome. I still don't know how to install ONLY Gnome in debian Woody. And BTW, sound is broken in the standard install of Gnome in woody. At least I can't get XMMS or any sound app to work under Gnome (so I am using KDE). Problem seems to be in the set up of ESD, If I kill ESD in gnome then sound apps work, but other things are then broken. ESD worked in gnome under Potato, so I think it is the configuration.
Still, in all, Debian rocks.
Followed by:
# apt-get moo
Steak anyone?
-N
I've nothing to say here...
Same goes for yesterday's release of Knoppix, using kernel 2.4.20-xfs. Oh, and don't be fooled. Knoppix has been stuck at v3.1 for a while, but it keeps getting updated, around once a month. And if you ever decide to install to you hd, apt-get dist-upgrade is all you really need :)
Come on now, get off your high horse for a second and relax.
/etc trying to find the file they need to edit. They want to go through as painless of an install as possible and see what Linux has to offer like OpenOffice, Mozilla, etc. Most of the distros have realized this, so hopefully soon this ease of use will become a reality.
It does not make you any more of a geek just because something, such as an OS install, is difficult or complicated to do.
I realize that for some reason that I cannot fathom, some people actually enjoy the mundane hours spent searching through your system and editing config files to make your system usable. If this makes you feel better about yourself because you feel superior to those of us who would rather not have to deal with this crap, that's fine by me. But let the rest of us have the option to do something efficiently and easily.
It is this kind of attitude that makes people hesitant to switch to Linux. If the installation is such a high hurdle, a lot of people are not going to be willing to give Linux a chance. They will ask themselves why are they spending hours just trying to make their system bootable when OS X or Windows was already working fine.
I know I thought this when I tried to install Debian, and I am far more knowledgeable than your average user. I'm a comp sci major who has learned a lot about unices from using OS X, yet the Debian install was still so daunting that I nearly gave up midway through. I can't imagine how an average user would be feeling.
Just because something is simple and works well does not mean that people cannot appreciate the complexity. But more importantly, I think that if Linux is ever to be for the masses, it is vital that people are not required to realize the complexity of an OS. When people install OS X, they (well most anyways) don't think, "Oh wow, this is really amazingy that Apple has put out Unix-on-the-desktop and made it so easy to use while still giving people all the power of a Unix." Instead, they say, "Oh cool, I click a couple times, and it just works."
People learning math don't go straight to differential equations. They start with 2+2. The same applies to computers. People don't want to start their Linux experience in
I just hope this installer includes options to be started from a DOS prompt and install from isos located on NFS/SMB/FTP shares. Also hope this is NOT a replacement for dselect.
If only they had a hardware config program like Knoppix, this could be the killer distro now.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
http://www.donarmstrong.com
Strip down a basic redhat install of _every_ extra package that the installer wants, and you end up with well over 500 MB of software. (This was on 7.3, last I checked.)
:)
That does NOT constitute stripped-down in my book. Also, the resulting system that you get is f*cking useless. It has no ssh{d}, wget, apache, or practically anything.
So, yeah, theoretically, you could probably strip down a redhat install to less than 500MB. But the resulting system would be even more useless. Debian is much better if you're going for low disk usage - and the packages you get in under 200MB are much more useful. (Then again, what do I know - I use Gentoo!
Now now, let's not go TOO far! While dselect is perfectly workable once you get used to its quirks, I hardly think it qualifies as "excellent". Especially when compared to, say, aptitude. I admit, I stuck with dselect for a long time, and I agree with you that some of the complaints about dselect are overblown. But now that I've finally taken the time to learn aptitude, I am so much happier! It makes my life just so much easier. And, in the end, isn't that the whole point of a tool?
Some of my favorite features of aptitude:
- Allows you to mark packages as "autoloaded", i.e. only installed to fulfil a dependency. Will autoremove these packages once they're no longer needed. Marks can be manually tuned. This is so much simpler and easier than using deb-orphan, I can't tell you.
- Can go directly from a package to one of its dependencies (or recommendations), and then back. This makes checking alternative dependencies (A | B | C) so much easier. Best of all, it's recursive.
- Can see what packages depend on the package you're looking at (and can go browse those, just like dependencies).
- Can browse virtual packages. Wow!
- Remembers which packages are new until I tell it to forget.
'Nuff said.This leaves you with a bare-bones install between 90 - 150 mB, depending on the RH version.
I'll have to try that again. I tried to do do a minimal install a month ago for a work project but still wound up with a 450 megabyte system! I tried RedHat because it seems to be the company favored Linux, but after that bloated install I used Zipslack instead and added a couple of packages and removed a few more.
By the way, the project was to turn obsolete PCs into tn3270 terminals. I wanted it to basically be an embedded device so that it booted straight into the app and didn't allow logins, just like a real 3270 only slower startup. I got my first prototype working on a P166 using Zipslack and c3270 (a curses-based tn3270 client) from the x3270 project when the project was killed by a clueless VP when the tech-savvy people approved the idea and were excited about it. Pooh. I could've had a half-a-million-dollar savings on my resume.
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.
That's not the way it should be. Everyone should get together, discuss the issue, decide on what's best and do it.
Cute Senator: But that's the problem, not everyone agrees.
The should be made to agree by someone!
[Cue Imperial March music]
I hope the debian team gets Klaus Knopper to help work on the new debian installer. The hardware detection he made for the knoppix live cd's is great.
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.
Just out of interest has anyone ever tried the Mandrake or Redhat graphical installers run on a low spec machine?
I've tried RedHat 8.0 on a Pentium 133 w/88MB of RAM. The graphical installer does not work, there's not enough resources. However, the text based install works just fine.I've also used Debian 3.0. I'll try the new installer when I get a chance this week. The old install is not as hard as everyone makes it out to be, just skip tasksel and dselect.
Getting the right disk / CD, however, is the hard part of the install process. Maybe this new installer will fix that.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.