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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!)
My biggest complaint w/ debian is the slow release cycle. 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. Last time I pinned kde 3.1 and updated I spent three days finding broken stuff and fixing it.
And yes, I am aware of the other debian-based distros that are more up to date, but they're all (to my knowledge) pay distros, and I am looking for something cheap/free.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
Oh, please... It's a joke, isn't it?
I'll be glad to see if there's any managers USE Debian. Managers INSTALLING Debian... ?? Wow! It's so... "news that matters".
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Debian is sometimes superior to other Linux distributions but IMHO the installer is just horrid. When compared to other Linux installers, notably RedHat (which is very nice), it fails. Other than that, Debian seems to be the way to go for any would-be Linux guru.
For those turned off or scared away by the debian install process (which still seems stuck in the 90's. Jesus, did I just say that?), grab a Knoppix CD.
No, seriously. I don't run debian primarily because I don't want to go through the install process. I don't know what chipset my nic has, and I really don't care to know, know what I mean? Ditto with everything else.
I've been using flavors of RedHat, culminating with Redhat9 that's currently my Linux of "choice", mainly because Redhat offered superior hardware detection/setup. But, I've always had to tweak a bit here and there to get it working nicely.
However, with the advent of Knoppix, I think that's about to change. I popped in Knoppix 3.2 today for the first time to see what it was all about. The hardware detection on this LIVE CD is absolutely.. superb. It recognized and setup my Orinoco Wireless card. It found and mounted my Sony Cybershot Camera. Jesus, it even found and setup my Wacom! The only thing it didn't do was give me dual-head support OOB, but I don't think I know any distro that does that. But that's okay, fortunately I know how to set that up myself. It comes with KDE, it looks great, it just WORKS. And because it "just works" I'm really tempted to wipe RedHat off and do the HD install of this.
Some notes that I've come across, though: As Knoppix uses a special blend of testing/unstable (or something like that), it's really hard to do dist-upgrade and what not without downgrading your desktop. I heartily recommend reading through the docs at the Knoppix website and finding out what issues may remain. As a desktop Debian based distro, though, I think Knoppix just plain rules.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
So far, I've been a Redhat man. It's served me well so far. I did try Debian, and I tried to like it, but it just didn't turn me on. I've tried Gentoo over this weekend, and while I wouldn't install it on any servers at work (yet), it's a pretty slick little distro.
I used to get annoyed at all the kiddies proclaiming Gentoo, Gentoo, but since I've tried it, I like it. You start to realise how long a glibc, XFree86, kde , and mozilla compile takes though. For those of you who haven't tried it - it makes a kernel compile look like a walk in the park. I started it on Friday evening, and it's now Sunday afternoon. It's been running flat out all this time. And that's a P4 2GHz with 1Gb RAM. ;)
I haven't found out how to list installed packages yet though
PS. Mod me down, I don't care. Karma to burn, baby.
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Unstable really isn't that bad. No worse than Gentoo for example.
TODO: Something witty here...
I'm undisputedly a Slackware geek but I have to admit that Debian really is a better system. Whenever I feel the need to deploy some kind of GNU/Linux application, I find time and time again that it's easier and faster to do in Debian. More and more these days, however, when I need to deploy some kind of *nix application FreeBSD beats all the competition hands down as a platform. It's simply superior.
P.S. Redhat is no good at all. It's not that I'm being close-minded, but every single time I try to use Redhat it ends up wasting huge amounts of my time.
LEARNING, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious. A. Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
My own experience with Debian:
:-)
I have a number of longtime hardcore Linux fans, most notably my (now) roommate. After being ridiculed for a long time about my use of Windows (especially my need to reinstall it every three months, due to it's tendency to crap out, regardless of which one I used--9x, 2000, XP), I decided I'd try this so-called "Linux".
So I asked for a copy. Not even being aware that I had a choice of distributions, I took the first cd set given to me--"Woody", at that time Debian's testing distro, later to become Debian 3.0.
At first, I kinda freaked. No pretty graphical install, but it really wasn't so bad. I've been through worse in DOS. The instructions were pretty straightforward, though I did have to ask my friend what NIC driver to use (it was tulip). But after about an hour, I had a working system, with WindowMaker as my default window manager, and witha simple "startx"....
It worked.
And didn't stop, ever. It's never even paused on me. Since then, I've taught myself every intimate detail of linux in general, and even tried a few other distros on my other machines, but always end up going back to Debian (though now I'm running unstable--I like to live dangerously). Even used it to turn my crappy 486/DX66 Toshiba Satellite w/16MB of RAM into a useful internet terminal for my living room.
It's not the easiest way to start, but when you're done, you'll have a good grasp of everything you'll need for an everyday system, and adding features or building a custom "utility system"(email server, firewall, etc.) is just an apt-get away. Overall, I'd highly recommend it to anyone.
Unless you're really -that- lazy.
[este]
Debian Developers usually get humiliated in public if they upload a broken package to unstable without testing it. Of course, this is somehow proportional to the importance of the package, but if a Developer somehow manages to mess up other packages, too, he will have a hard time defending himself.
Michael
Dude, i have jsut spent the last 30 hours installing gentoo, xfree and kde. It may be simple to do, but it shouldnt take a lifetime to finish :P
Although we rely on it, the release cycle really does screw us from time to time, and in the long drag before Woody finally released, we seriously contemplated a bunch of alternative distributions. The joke emerged at the time - about the two main flavours of Debian, being of course: Debian/Stale and Debian/Broken :)
Yes it is, but it's not used very much. I think the current preferred method for an "easy" Debian install is to install Knoppix or Libranet first, and then apt-get dist-upgrade to Debian.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
I am not trying to fuel a flame here, but I don't really think there are that many "common people" such as plain old managers who know about Linux. IT people are the ones who would be most effective.
Too bad some IT managers view the choce as "Linux = no counterstrike". The network administrator for my Cable ISP really sucks at Counterstrike, but he loves to play it while on the clock.
Many tech support people are worse though. For example, when trying to get my friend's DSL modem to work with Mandrake Linux 8.0, I had to call up tech support. After the guy had me on hold for a while, he comes back on and says "You're trying to get your DSL modem to work with your Lexus, right?"
As far as Linux vs. Windows goes, I believe OpenOffice.org is a great office suite and almost any buisiness can use Linux for all their office administration tasks. If the company wants to focus on their business, not the computer, Linux distros make for good operating systems. If the people in charge of a company favor having fashon makeover software instead of saving hundreds per seat for MS Office and Windows, so be it.
As far as the companies who buy MS products and then lock the computers with Secure PC or Foolproof, management either is very rich and loves the Windows logo, or is probably leading the company downhill.
I usually log in via ssh/xterm and just run a console on the screen. If I run a X server, it's usually Xvnc, so I don't have to work in a noisy machine room.
Desktop/laptop machines are usually RedHat - RH does have a nicer GUI than Debian, but RH seems to be rivalling Microsoft in the amount of unneeded programs that get installed by default.
The average user can't install it.
a) That is an (old) prejudice, the Debian install is pretty easy by now (including the tasklist --- if you want X, then click "X-Windows".
Debian is a superior distro in many, many ways. I can't argue with your points b) and c), but a) is wrong. Debian is a pain in the ass to install.
I have an old AMD K2 box here. It's a practice box that I got from a friend. I opened it once. It's now tucked under my desk under a pile of other stuff.
I installed RedHat on it a few weeks ago. RedHat autodetected almost everything: The network card, video card, hard drives. Not perfect, but it was actually easier to install then Win2k. It took 2 hours total, and I was away from the computer for 80% of the time.
I'm installing Debian on it today. I'm on try #3, and have spent 3 hours flipping back to my primary computer and reading documentation. I'm still on CD #1.
Debian can't automatically find the drivers for network card, will only give me the option to reformat hdb and not hda (I booted to an emergency disk and used fdisk to destroy the partions on hda. Now debian sees hdb. Go figure.),
My fear is that I will have to drag the computer out from under the desk, open it up, write down make and model numbers. I just wanted a 1 hour project to do while eating breakfast... I have a million things to do today, and don't feel like spending my Sunday morning choking on dust, scraping my hand on the case and searching for obscure installation hints on the internet with my primary computer.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."