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!)

Comments

Another way to try debian...

[Rinikusu]

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.

Re:Another way to try debian...

[martinde]

> the only difference is its RPMs and Redhat instead of .deb and Debian.

Now, I haven't installed from "freshrpms" so take my statements with a grain of salt, but... Past experience says that Debian has at least three big advantages over RedHat:
- Almost every significant (and many not-so-significant) free software program is part of the official distribution, integrated with the menu system, mailcap system, configuration database, etc.
- The installation of most packages tries to help you get a working configuration (by asking you questions) out of the box. People often find this confusing, but many find it preferable to having something like "sendmail" installed but broken.
- Upgrading anything but the kernel itself does not involve rebooting, and your configuration is generally either left alone, or migrated with some help from you. (And most packages that can't do one of those tell you "I'm broken, please read [whatever help file]" so you have a chance of doing something about it.)

Until you've lived in Debian (and perhaps another OS) and maintained a machine for some period it's hard to appreciate these things. I've got a machine that has been migrated to the latest and greatest since around 1996, and not had a fresh install in this time. It's had uptimes of hundreds of days, and just chugs along, secure and doing it's job.

If running RedHat with "freshrpms" is like that, more power to you, and I'm glad RH has caught up. Otherwise you might want to give Debian a try. If you find the install confusing, as others have suggest, Knoppix makes a fine installer for Debian.

Re:Why bother?

[Tyler Eaves]

Unstable really isn't that bad. No worse than Gentoo for example.

The best way to meet linux.

[este]

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.

Debian Minimal Install

[virtigex]

I use debian on my servers and embedded machines and install with a minimal install first and use apt-get for any commands I need. The minimal install is the LordSutch install and is over in about 5 minutes. Immediately after I apt-get the commands I know I'll need and thereafter apt-get commands as needed.

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.

Re:The first person to mention

[stefanlasiewski]

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.