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Introduction to Debian
[vmlinuz] writes "SitePoint has an article that I wrote that introduces Debian and has guidelines on installing it. This could be usefull for managers, new users and other people that may be interested in using Debian." And honestly, who among us isn't interested in using the obviously superior Linux Distribution against which there can be no other contenders? (Oh dear god don't flame me! It's a joke people!)
I'd like to be able to pin the newest KDE/gnome/whatever to stable and do an apt-get upgrade without breaking a million things.
You can pin the newest KDE/gnome/whatever to unstable. Newest always goes in unstable first. Unstable is pretty cutting edge, but with an occasional hiccup.
The point of stable is that it works. Things go there after they are 'tried and true' in unstable, and then in testing.
Hey, don't forget Knoppix.
But, for those of you who want the bleeding edge without risking instability, Debian does just fine there if you know what you're doing. Go ahead and jump to unstable. Seriously!
The only thing you're missing is "apt-listbugs," which does this automatically with every update...
Before starting installation, apt-listbugs fetches all the bug reports for versions between your current version and the target version. We can see that two bugs have been closed (fixed by later versions, or the bug reports were bogus), and we see that the tetex-bin bug is still open.
In this case, we'd type 'h tetex-bin' to hold the broken package and proceed with a perfectly usable system.
Of course, this still leaves you in the position to be the one in ten thousand who finds a critical bug on installing any given package. If that happens, be a Good Debizen and use reportbug so the next guy is notified. Further, if you flag a critical bug, it's rare that it isn't fixed within a couple hours, even at 2am on Sunday. Once you've reported your bug, go ahead and roll back a version and carry on until the developer closes the bug -- if you used reportbug, you'll get an all-clear email automatically when he or she closes the bug.
With unstable and the apt-listbugs' automatic reports, the chances of ever winding up with a broken system are exceptionally low. Showstopper bugs are rare even in unstable -- maybe one package update in five thousand. But, with thousands of other users snarfing packages and reporting any bugs, the chances of your being the one to discover breakage without apt-listbugs warning you first are virtually nil.
All that said, if you can bear to be a week to a month behind the bleeding edge, you can use apt-listbugs with testing as well. The chances of getting a broken system with testing and apt-listbugs are about the same as the chance of Windows Service Update not needing a reboot. Virtually nil.
I use Debian and I really like it. A very welcome departure from the nightmare RedHat has become.
Yet, I agree with you. The installer is a pain in the arse. Bear in mind however that I only installed Debian once. All the other installations were "cloned" from the original one.
In any case, I'd love to see Knoppix HW detection routines incorporated into Debian. Knoppix is a killer in this area.
Plenty of other otherwise excellent OSes have difficult or non-user-friendly installations. FreeBSD is a good example. But it gets the job done, it isn't really that hard if you RTFM, and once you are finished you have a far superior OS to Mandrake (in my opinion).
No, Debian isn't going to be on the desktop of Windows users anytime soon. That's a position most likely to be filled by RedHat or Mandrake. But not just because of the installation; desktop users want features and bleeding-edge more than code maturity or stability. Debian doesn't even have KDE3 in the stable tree yet. So while a nicer installation may be nice, the kind of users Debian targets don't really need it.