First Look at Debian's Next Generation Installer

An anonymous reader writes "Over at LinMagAu There is an interesting look at the new beta version of the Next Gerneration Debian Installer. Putting aside the fuss around Ian Murdock, Progeny and Anaconda, this is how Debian is constructing the future of what is known to be it's Achilles heel. It's a well done beginning." While still not a graphical installer (and the article does a good job of explaining why that's not a priority) the installer now autodetects hardware, streamlining module selection, which was previously one of the more confusing parts of the install for newbies.

Comments

It's about time

[bsharitt]

I don't really care about a pretty install, I'm just glad they finally got hardware detection.

Re:It's about time

[awgriff279]

I can think of one good reason for Linux to have an easier installation process. I've wanted to switch from Windows for several years now. However, not having any Linux experience makes a proper installation very complicated. Consequently, I'm still using Windows until I have time to figure everything out. Unfortunartely, it's hard to learn about an OS when one doesn't have it to use. I love the idea of Linux, but until the learning curve drops on a free version, I'll probably keep using WIN98se.

Re:It's about time

[shaitand]

Redhat 9 has a very simple install and incredible hardware detection that blows windows away.

99% of the time the only thing you'll have to setup after install is 3d acceleration for your video card if it's an ati or nvidia card.

Don't listen to all these mandrake pushers, when you get done with the install the system will be broken and the configuration applets won't work right. Go out and get ya rh9 and save yourself the headaches :)

Re:It's about time

[at_18]

Grab a RedHat or Mandrake ISO and start playing. Installation is a quick and easy.

Re:It's about time

[Apreche]

I'm with you all the way man. I've never gotten debian to install right. The installer is just too crap. And if they aren't replacing it with a graphical one, then it isn't going to help much.

But yes, for some reason I am able to install gentoo just fine, and it has become my distro of choice. Why is that? Because of the documentation. The gentoo linux install guid has step by step very explicit instructions on every single thing I have to type in to make gentoo do what I want. The debian installer often ends when the system is in a state where you can boot, apt-get things and get to a full screen terminal without the cd. The documentation on gentoos site keeps going and tells me to install a kernel logger, a cron daemon, X, alsa, etc. And emerge is apts perfect equal if not it's better.

So yeah, that's all I gotta say. Either have step by step instructions that go into great detail, or make an installer super intuitive so that a 5 year old knows what to pick.

Re:It's about time

[jmitchel!jmitchel.co]

Your failure to do a Debian install is hardly a personal failure. I'm as good at installing Operating Systems as just about anybody. I've done some really hairy installs like Xenix on a TRS-80 and OpenBSD on a Dec/MIPS workstation. I've even done a number of successfull installs with older versions of Debian. While I eventually succeeded at installing a recent version debian on each of the four computers I regularly use, it never was easy, and usually required me to take at least one heroic measure, and typically far more. Moreover, each install was difficult in it's own special way. Anyone short of a wizard could not make a current debian install go on current hardware.

It would have been easier if debian had just supplied a tar-ball of the minimally installed system and left me to create the filesystems, install the boot loader, etc...

Re:It's about time

[Knuckles]

The documentation on gentoos site keeps going and tells me to install a kernel logger, a cron daemon, X, alsa, etc. And emerge is apts perfect equal if not it's better.

My usual Gentoo rant:
puleeze! This is the thing that annoyed me no end in Gentoo. Thing is, the debian docs don't need to tell you to install a kernel logger or a cron daemon because, guess what, those are installed automatically. Simply b/c a general linux system won't work very good without them. Granted, those will be the crond or the kernel logger the debian developers have chosen for you, but that's fine with me: I could care less which crond I run as long as it works and is secure. And if I really think I want another one, Debian won't stop me from installing it (or removing altogether, after the appropriate warnings). I addition I get the benefit that all of Debian will work with the kernel logger installed, something that can't be said about Gentoo: e.g., Gentoo's firestarter (simple Gnome firewall tool) wouldn't work with Gentoo's recommended metalog (that was half a year ago, may have changed)

In contrast, the Gentoo docs stop at the point when you have installed a working system. They don't tell you, however, that this system is not at all configured to work ok. They should tell you b/c Gentoo's packages, compared to Debian's, install very little configuration stuff. It surely is a matter of preference, but I hated the amount of work Gentoo needed me to perform to get a working system (and people complain about Debian, ha!). E.g., Gentoo's fileutils decided to install no cron job to run updatedb, making locate useless. I thankfully forgot what else Gentoo expected me to do manually, but it was a lot. Ah, yes, another example: X ran nice 0, and I had to hunt down a startup wrapper on Gentoo's website, compile and install it to make it run nice -10, which is Debian's default (so much for the perceived responsiveness of Gentoo. Ha). Each and every thing easy in itself, but they added up tremendously.

As far as emerge being apt's better, we'll talk when it actually can take dependencies into account when uninstalling, not only when installing.

Re:It's about time

[nEoN nOoDlE]

He never said that Linux shouldn't have an easier installation process. Just that Debian shouldn't have an easier installation process. The Redhat installation is already easier, IMO, than a Windows 2000 installation.

Re:It's about time

[hankaholic]

When people working on the distribution support users, it takes away from the time that they could be spending to improve the distribution. Therefore, it makes sense for them to not make Debian open for anybody to install.

Bullshit.

More users ==> more bug reports ==> more things fixed ==> improved distribution.

Debian's installer isn't actively kept down; anyone can become a contributor and make it better. I'd say that a lot of the "problem" is that Debian tends to be reinstalled much less often than other distros.

I know that (at least in the past) to upgrade from one release of Redhat to the next one had to run the installer. Debian's installer was never meant to upgrade the system, since there are already robust tools made for that task. Since Debian users only use the installer when actually installing the OS, and since many Debian developers have likely been using the same installation of Debian they've had for years, the lack of an elegant installer is not something which annoys the developers often enough to justify spending time on.

OSS programmers develop because they want the program which they are writing; if none of the people writing the code need to use the installer very often, it won't bother them enough to spend tons of time fixing.

Re:It's about time

[HiThere]

The LibraNet Debian installer is about as simple as you can reasonably get. And no, your mother shouldn't use it. She probably COULD, but she'd be likely to make some rather poor choices. Most of the defaults are sensible, but there are a few places where if you don't choose exit you would get stuck in a loop.

Now I'll admit that it's not a pretty graphics screen. It's largely text mode. But if you read the words things are quite clear. OTOH, if you just hit the enter key, things don't always work the way you would want. And some people seem to never read what the words say.

Re:It's about time

[DarkSarin]

I have to agree with you on this one. The grandparent is correct that gentoo docs seem very explicit, but they are not as good as he seems to think. As a noob to gentoo, I could NOT get it to work on reasonably common hardware (I don't have anything even remotely exotic in terms of hardware).

Gentoo's lack of decent documentation for post install configuration is also annoying. I quote:
"Configuring a USB Mouse

A USB mouse is your friend on a high resolution screen. The kernel takes care of the scaling so you don't have to move your mouse five times across the pad to make it across the screen.

The first thing that has to be done is the installation of the kernel modules. The modules that will be needed for a USB mouse to work are usbmouse, mousedev, hid, usbcore, usb-uhci, and input. After the necessary kernel configuration is done, insmod the modules."

This might be useful to someone who has a fair bit of experience, but as a novice linux user, one of the reasons I want to use Gentoo is all the great things I have heard about emerge, which would make using the system much less time consuming. I personally want that, but can't seem to have it because the docs are not explicit on how to do the necessary kernel configuration, "insmod" the modules, or even how to obtain the modules (yes, I tried to emerge them, but apparently that isn't what they want you to do).

Let me lift another quote from their website:

"The most fundamental issue is designing a technology that allows us and others to do what they want to do, without restriction. ... The future goal of Gentoo is to continue to strive to create near-ideal tools. Tools that can accomodate the needs of many different users (all with divergent goals) with ease are extremely powerful. Don't you love it when you find a tool that does exactly what you want to do? Doesn't it feel great? Our mission is to give that sensation to as many people as possible."

If the mission of gentoo is to give as many people as possible "that sensation", then does it not logically follow that they would want to give them a choice to use a well developed ("near ideaL") tool to install gentoo? The unfortunate thing is that most will have differing expectations of a "near ideal" tool. For me, and apparently many others, the "near ideal" tool for installing gentoo would include a GUI installer that results in a system configured for use on FIRST reboot. It would also allow the option to compile packages via this method or to use their GRP packages for a speedy install on older hardware.

I for one, though not a programmer, would be willing to help design the interface and make it more friendly to noobs. However, I lack the ability to do everything necessary for such a project (such as program anything very useful in C, or a similar language--and I doubt that my skills with PHP will be much help either...)

Debian, to get back on topic, takes a slightly different philosophy to the table, and that's fine. Debian, as I understand it, is all about stability. That's fine. But if a distro claims it wants to provide their tools as many people as possible, then they should do what they can to achieve that goal--not feel smug because they installed it and I can't, and happy because that keeps noobs off the forums!!!

As a side note: I don't know the actual developers of Gentoo, and if the "gentoo social contract" is a true indication of their actual attitudes, then I respect that. It is an admirable document with many wonderful ideas. I personally feel frustrated because I don't feel like those ideals and goals are being met. If you are gentoo developer and are reading this: I applaud your work, and hope to be able to benefit from it. I am afraid, however, that until the installation is somewhat more suited for my needs, that I will be out of luck.

Re:It's about time

[scrytch]

That's one of the things I like best about Gentoo's root shell installer. It immediately gets rid of people that are intimidated by that sort of thing, and prevents them from sucking up tons of attention on mailing lists or forums. The difficulty of the installer should be like those little signs in front of rides at amusement parks: "You must be this tall to ride."

This blatant trolling was modded up +5 insightful? Ook ook, grog, has lots of words, man talk smart, he smart, me mod up.

Re:It's about time

[CentrX]

Presumably from his argument, the users that would not be able to install using a difficult installer would be users that don't tend to submit useful bug reports, whereas technically adept individuals would be much more likely to submit bug reports and, more importantly, would be more likely to submit useful bug reports.

Re:It's about time

[CentrX]

To be fair, the only time most people ever need to even insert any hardware modules for the install is to install a single network card driver. The modules for the rest of a person's hardware are generally loaded by the kernel after installation.

Re:It's about time

[SpaceRook]

I'd recommend Mandrake 9.1 (or the recent 9.2).

My old system had 2 hard drives: 40GB WinXP and 6GB Red Hat 8.0. I booted through grub.

I decided to switch to Mandrake. Well, after buying a 120GB HD ($70 at Best Buy after rebates!), I tore out my old 6GB drive, threw the 120GB in, and simple booted off of Mandrake's CD. The whole install (including putting in the new HD) probably took about 30 minutes. It was very painless and I was shocked at how easy it was. Mandrake is very smart about it's bootloader and letting you have multiple OS's on one system (I don't remember Red Hat being as easy).

Re:It's about time

[gnu-generation-one]

"When people working on the distribution support users, it takes away from the time that they could be spending to improve the distribution. Therefore, it makes sense for them to not make Debian open for anybody to install."

Mozilla.org have outsourced their telephone support to a dedicated company, who are making $40 per call off reccommendations on the mozilla website. This isn't taking any time from any developer.

Mandrake-linux has (in addition to their staff support) a system where users can login, browse support requests, and answer them. The top-rated guys who help out at the site get paid for their efforts.

Google now has a system where you can ask a question, and allocate a sum of money for anyone who can answer it satisfactorily. This seems to be working, and would be a useful system for any linux experts with spare time.

Yesterday on slashdot, a project was proposed where roles in free software (developer, project manager, security auditor, and presumably support) could be put out to tender, with people worldwide bidding for the chance to get this support money.

Would it not be better to use similar systems with any Free Software, rather than cherry-picking the types of user who won't call for support? There are a lot of people who like the confidence ok knowing that if mozilla doesn't work, they can phone for help.

Re:It's about time

[Knuckles]

Gentoo definitely is only for the experienced. I appreciate that it's possible to taylor it to one's liking, but to do this one should first know what one's liking is, or what is possible. If you want a distro to combine the good things of Debian (vast array of packages, tremendous package management) with commercial distros (easy, very new software), may I suggest Libranet or Xandros

Re:It's about time

[hankaholic]

Any bug report can be useful, more so if a valid return email address is supplied. Even a vague bug report can be an indicator that error messages produced should be clarified or that a program did not behave in a way that the user expected, which can indicate a UI design flaw.

Even if no immediate problem is identified, at least a developer's attention has been drawn towards something relevant to end-users, which is a benefit in itself. Few people ever get to watch many end-users interact with their programs, so such reports can provide feedback to the developers which they wouldn't have otherwise gotten.

Re:It's about time

[Knuckles]

er, before I get flamed to hell and back, I do realize that the "good things of Debian" include freedom, which partly is lost with these distros.

Re:It's about time

[Chess_the_cat]

This message should be posted on the main page of Slashdot and should become the mission statement of all the Linux geeks who visit here. +5 Insightful.

Re:It's about time

[DarkSarin]

Thanks. I appreciate this type of response--pointing at solid alternatives that I haven't fully considered, instead of flaming me for being some type of luz3r.

I am still curious about why gentoo doesn't live up to it's social contract, though.

Re:It's about time

[dvNull]

Storm Linux which died out was based on Debian and was easy to install as well.

Re:It's about time

[Knuckles]

why gentoo doesn't live up to it's social contract

I'd guess it's, as nearly always, that the amount of work needed is so big that the resources and time contributed are not enough. If they keep going, they'll come closer

Re:It's about time

[Seraphim_72]

Give knoppix a try - the install is great IMHO.
Just boot up the CD hit Ctrl+f1 type knoppix-installer and away it goes. It will ask you a few uestions about partitioning your drive and it will chrn for a good long time (your screen may go blank - just wait untill the HD and CD-ROM lights go out) knx-hdinstall (I think) willl also work - It is my personal fave, it seems to have fewer issues. But by all means get knoppix and get going - it is how debian gets on my boxen :)

Re:It's about time

[Spoing]

Knoppix is a good starter distribution. Since it boots and runs entirely off of the CD, it is low fuss and can be used as a crude way to see if your hardware is supported.

Even if you don't 'switch', it has saved me and others quite a bit of time in emergencies or diagnosing hardware problems. (Simple example: Mouse stops working under Windows. Boot Knoppix. If the mouse works, it's Windows...if the mouse fails, it's the mouse.)

(SNIP! from previous post on /.);

[Knoppix] requires no commitment, and can be handy for fixing problems and testing out machines even if you don't use it as a Linux desktop. The 11/03/2003 release is a bleeding edge release and has OpenOffice 1.1, though the 09/24/2003 release should be more stable.

Knoppix is only slightly lightweight, and you don't compromise much by using it except for the fact it's a boot CD and isn't as snappy as a hard drive based one. You can even test out your TV card and other hardware if you want. 256MB RAM is not required but is a realistic minimal amount for full use of what's on the disk.

1. Knoppix (English pages)

Tip: If you don't get a desktop, or the monitor doesn't sync up properly, use the option screen=800x600;

1. knoppix screen=800x600

More details here if you want to tweak it more. It supports USB and floppy drives to store desktop information and program settings.

Re:It's about time

[chris_7d0h]

I disagree.
I purchase HW for various chores (like PVR, transcoding machines, distributed computing etc.) for use at home and each time I get a new box I have to spend hours getting everything up and running (using Gentoo) and configured as I want that specific box.

Having an installer which reduces the number of steps and configures stuff which the computer should know better than I (what HW I'm using and what firmware etc. are on it) is something I see as A Good Thing. This means that even "experienced people" can benefit from good installers (ever wonder why Linus is/was running RH and not Slackware?).

Regarding Debians' current installer, well it's simple if you know the answers to all the questions asked, not if you don't. (then again, that's true for most installers isn't it?) Compared to Gentoo, the Debian installation process is much quicker at the expense of "tweakability". I personally think the big difference between Debians installation process and RedHat's for example, is that you have to enter fdisk/disk druid and that it's curses based. You also have the option to specify what additional modules you want (the hard thing for new users is to know if they need those extra modules). Other than that I don't see a big difference between RH and Deb.

As for new users... Asking as few questions as possible regarding stuff the computer should be able to figure out is a huge help. I still recall the first time I tried to install X, having to know the H&V Frequencies of my monitor, each refresh rate, what ramdac my gfx card had, what resolutions were supported etc. etc. etc. (infinitum it felt like). Not even going to mention configuring a slim kernel for the first time (what modules.. aha, I have an IDE CD burner, then I should obviously know I need scsi support!)..

Needless to say, stuff like the RH/Mandrake installers or better yet, the knoppix one are a great help for newbies.

PS. for those people stuck in Windows land, not because they don't want to try out Linux, but because of "being intimidated" by all the seemingly pre-req knowledge one needs to even get a distro off the ground, I'd advise start looking at Knoppix. This distribution has a "live cd" which has the ability to boot up a complete "Linux system" from a CDROM, without installing anything on the HD. It configures everything automatically so you'll just boot it up and you have an "MS-Windows clone" (I'm going to get bashed for this comment I'm sure) in front of you when it's up. It's a nice way to get the possibility to "touch Linux-land".

Re:It's about time

[sybarite]

Hi. If you would like help with installing Linux, please contact your local Linux Users Group. http://www.linux.org/groups/ They frequently have what is called Installfests. Someone there could help you with an install, perhaps a dual boot between Win98se and GNU/Linux.

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

try Knoppix or one of the many other live Linux CDs. Download the ISO image (or pick it up somewhere for $3), burn, & reboot. Instant Linux & it doesn't mess with your existing hard drive (unless you specifically ask it to, of course..)

When you are done playing with the hundreds of included programs, pop out the CD & reboot to windows... no mess no fuss, nothing to install, nothing to mess up.

Graphical?

[yoshi_mon]

While still not a graphical installer (and the article does a good job of explaining why that's not a priority)...

Who ever said we needed a graphical installer? There is absolutly nothing wrong with a good text installer. And for installing small footprint it's always best.

And besides, this is the logical progression. First you do the text installer, then you move on to a graphical installer if you so desire. Not the other way around.

Re:Graphical?

[AKAImBatman]

Amen brother! FreeBSD still uses a text mode installer, and I have to say that I don't feel like I'm missing anything. Not sure about XP, but even Windows NT/2000 does the initial install from a Curses-like interface.

Re:Graphical?

[BHearsum]

I completely agree. The debian installer is the only one that has never failed me. It's simple, fast, and efficient. I can install a debian system in about 10 minutes flat from the standard or XFS boot disk. (That includes the time it takes for me to download the initial packages).

Don't fuck with perfection.

Re:Graphical?

[cyb97]

it's not only the best, it might be the only options; serialconsole is really hard if the installer depends on using graphics for something so simple as installing an os (!).
The installer, especially if made even more automagical should remain textbased.

Re:Graphical?

[Kjella]

Who ever said we needed a graphical installer? There is absolutly nothing wrong with a good text installer. And for installing small footprint it's always best.

Average consumers. There's nothing *wrong* with a command prompt either, but they don't like that either. Neither the cryptic C:\> prompt in DOS nor [root@mypc root]# in Linux/Unix. That is, if you want Linux to be interesting to average consumers, but I'd say having a market share that'd at least make companies take Linux users into consideration would benefit all.

And besides, this is the logical progression. First you do the text installer, then you move on to a graphical installer if you so desire. Not the other way around.

Mostly true. But considering that just about everyone except those installing a headless server would prefer to use the GUI if there was one available, it's not exactly a small "add-on" for a small special interest group. Particularly if you ever hope to convert Microsoft "point-n-click for almost everything" powerusers...

Kjella

Re:Graphical?

[iantri]

Remember.. the installer isn't a command-line, its a TUI. Basically, a GUI done in text. Its not as bad as you'd think. And have you ever installed Windows 2000/XP? It uses a text-mode installer..

Re:Graphical?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the FreeBSD and Slackware installers, simple curses based menus, anyone with half a brain can install FreeBSD or Slackware, this is what debian should be aiming for imo, graphical is not needed.

Re:Graphical?

[digime]

Whether or not it's text-based won't really make a difference with this installer. I imagine you will have a choice of front-ends that all do the same thing when this moves out of beta. From the article:

"...but due to its modular design the developers can stick almost any front-end on it they like. There are already test builds using a GTK (ie: Gnome-style) GUI with mouse-driven menus etc, and if you really wanted to you could build a front-end using anything from a Braille device to Macromedia Flash."

Re:Graphical?

[TheRaven64]

I run FreeBSD on two boxes, neither of which has a screen or keyboard. When I installed them, I did so using a serial console. The only improvement to the FreeBSD installer I would like to see is the ability to run it over an ssh session (since serial ports are becomming less common). A graphical installer would add nothing for me.

In general, I feel graphical installers for operating systems are a bad idea, since you really should not be installing an OS unless you know what you're doing. The FreeBSD text installer has the advantage of being easy to use while still looking intimidating to the kind of person who shouldn't really be installing an OS, and encouraging them to either get help or read the documentation.

Re:Graphical?

[typobox43]

XP's first-stage install (up until the first reboot) is all text-mode. After the reboot, you get a 16-color version of the graphical setup screen (assumedly due to drivers that aren't installed yet)... then after another reboot, it's full color.

Re:Graphical?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not only for the average consumer. Look, I've installed more Linux systems that I can remember. It's not an interesting or pleasant experience, so why not make it as painless as possible. Let the poor tired sysadmins eyes rest on a 1024x768 or better resolution with a decent colorscheme and refresh rate, and why not some soothing background music while you're at it...

Re:Graphical?

[zhenlin]

The whole NT series installs from a curses-like interface. (Note, a full NT kernel is booted)

The 9x series installs from what appears to be a stripped down Windows 3.1.

As for me: I installed Gentoo. Meaning, manual invokation from the command line for many steps. (But I would have hated to have manually fetched and compiled the base system, I'm not looking for LFS.) Can't say I'm missing that much either.

Some comparisons:

All Linux distros install from a proper Linux environment - some even install from a proper XF86 environment. And some have a fully-functional LiveCD.

Mac OS X is installed from a app-reduced OS X environment.

Re:Graphical?

[wackybrit]

even Windows NT/2000 does the initial install from a Curses-like interface.

And there are plenty of 'curses' in the later parts of the install too :-)

Re:Graphical?

[swb]

Text mode installers are fine, but Sysinstall (FreeBSD's) ain't that great.

The user interface isn't terribly consistant or easy to navigate, although it may be curses fault as much as FreeBSD's. It's also a major fuckaround if it fails someplace -- there's no recovering, despite the fact that the installer sticks around.

Personally I think it needs major rework to improve the UI. I'd like to see fewer seperate screens and more expandable hierarchical menus. They do seem to be kind of stuck on the two-floppy size limitation, which I'm not sure makes much sense anymore outside of die-hards that insist on doing floppy-started network installations.

I'd also like to see it capable of doing installations for network booted systems. This might seems contradictory, but think of an installer you run on the master system that lets you fill in the blanks and generate an image for bootable floppy or .iso that would then be net bootable, or on the net-booted system itself if the HDD was to be the boot source.

While it's been a usable install screen, it could use some UI and functionality help, all of which would require ditching the 2.88MB barrier.

Re:Graphical?

[smittyoneeach]

Why not crib the kernel configuration menu system and apply it to the whole distro? Do any presently do this?

Re:Graphical?

[evilquaker]

yoshi_mon: Who ever said we needed a graphical installer? There is absolutly nothing wrong with a good text installer. And for installing small footprint it's always best.

Kjella: Average consumers

"Average consumers" don't install operating systems. They get an OS pre-installed and never change (or probably even update) it.

Re:Graphical?

[smittyoneeach]

Aye, when you try to boot another partition and find out that not only has 'Doze installer wiped out your boot loader, it rendered your other partitions unbootable!
Boo, boo, boo!

Re:Graphical?

[dipipanone]

"Average consumers" don't install operating systems. They get an OS pre-installed and never change (or probably even update) it.

Have you never used Windows then? I always understood that a complete reinstall every couple of months was the only way to make the thing useable?

Perhaps that makes me an 'expert' though?

Re:Graphical?

[peter_gzowski]

WinXP still has the curses-like insterface as well. I get this all the time from friends I'm trying to convert, "why doesn't Linux have a nice installer like Windows XP?" I tell them that the Windows XP SETUP is not the Windows XP INSTALLER.

Re:Graphical?

[Tongue In A Box]

My take on it is this...you have the power users and the home users. Power users, who want a text-based everything and completet control of every aspect of installation and configuration want a good text-based installer that installs the bare minimum and everything else is only what they need to develop, monitor, serve, or whatever. Home users on the other hand don't know what they want, sometimes don't even know how to use the stuff they do want, and installation is always a pain for them anyway. I'm not speaking for the Debian developers or anyone else but me, but IMHO Debian, Slackware, and the like (the "not really user friendly distros") are for sysadmins, power users, control freaks, and masochists (who don't even know windows.) Let the home users use Red Hat or Mandrake. To the topic at hand, the installer with h/w detection will be awesome, and the text-based interface is perfect for those tht use debian, IMO.

Re:Graphical?

[armando_wall]

"I always understood that a complete reinstall every couple of months was the only way to make the thing useable?"

Tell me about it!

That's what I've been doing until 2000 came in, and finally when I switched to Linux.

However, I have plenty of "average consumer" friends and neighbors who ask me to reinstall Windows in their PCs.

Re:Graphical?

[lithron]

No, it makes you a dumbass. Many of us keep Windows up and running 24/7 for years at a time without re-installs. Its not a difficult task either. The key to it is to NOT FUCK WITH IT. If you don't randomly install software and drivers, then its a non-issue.

Trust me, 5 years ago I was re-installing Windows every few months. Since then I've matured and learned a decent amount about Windows. Because of that its been over a year since I've had to re-install Windows 2000 Pro, or Windows XP on any of the four machines I admin. If you know what you are doing then Windows isn't that difficult to deal with..

Re:Graphical?

[00420]

Most people don't even install XP, and even when they do it's not always the installer that they use. Recently I reinstalled XP on my box (eMachines) and I had to use the eMachines Recover disk to do it, which just uses Symantec's Ghost and not the Windows Installer. It shure wasn't a difficuly UI either; my only option was to type "Yes" to erase everything on my hard drive and start over, or type "No" to abort.

Personally I was a little dissapointed that I couldn't just install Windows on the NTFS partition, instead I had to clear the entire hard drive. But, at least it gave me an oppotunity to try new Linux distros which I was going to do eventually anyways.

Re:Graphical?

[gnu-generation-one]

"I'd say having a market share that'd at least make companies take Linux users into consideration would benefit all."

Reccommend Mandrake-Linux to your companies if they have Intel Pentium desktop computers, with keyboards, mouses, monitors, and graphics cards, and if you need an easy graphical installer which can be used without too much knowledge of the details.

Mandrake's what I use, and what I'd reccommend. But if you were asking about a less "typical" system, then you might find that the Mandrake installer is less than ideal. For example, if you have a hundred computers, and none of them have monitors or keyboards, you might be a bit stuck if you expected them to display a graphical installer somewhere. (actually, I'm pretty sure that Mandrake allows a text-mode install, so it'll still work on non-GUI systems)

In short, the Debian installer Must Just Work(TM) on as many computers as possible, whereas Mandrake, Windows etc. can get away with only working on the subset which most people use. It's a fair point; optimise for the most frequent case. But Debian can't do that without giving up it's reputation for being the universal operating system.

It's not as if Debian installer is difficult to use, either. Just hit Enter, lots of times. Although I'd be tempted to reccommend Knoppix if you're installing Debian on 'standard' computers - just boot from the CD, and then type "knx-hdinstall"

Re:Graphical?

[GreyWolf3000]

If you know what you are doing then Windows isn't that difficult to deal with..

Neither is Linux.

Re:Graphical?

[Robert The Coward]

They use these thing called recover CD. Stick them in reboot and come back in 1 Hour to reset things up. also average users just use the PC until rebooted take 30 Mins and you have to do it after 10 Mins of use.

Re:Graphical?

[Night Goat]

Windows XP and 2000 have this annoying feature of doing a semi-graphical text mode. What I mean by this, is they do something weird with my video card so that it only shows a weird, unreadable mess of lines. Upgrading my BIOS helped to fix this, but for a while, I either had to swap video cards or install NT4 or Debian. I fully understand and respect Debian's choice to have a graphical installer.

Re:Graphical?

[cperciva]

The only improvement to the FreeBSD installer I would like to see is the ability to run it over an ssh session (since serial ports are becomming less common).

If you want to install via SSH, you'll need to either create customized install images or allow anyone on the same network to run the installer as well.

Which option do you prefer?

Re:Graphical?

[Dwonis]

When you boot from the CD, I don't think it boots DOS. At least, not with W2K.

Re:Graphical?

[timmyf2371]

Average consumers. There's nothing *wrong* with a command prompt either, but they don't like that either. Neither the cryptic C:\> prompt in DOS nor [root@mypc root]# in Linux/Unix. That is, if you want Linux to be interesting to average consumers, but I'd say having a market share that'd at least make companies take Linux users into consideration would benefit all.

The thing about Debian is that it isn't aimed at the average consumer.

There are many different Linux distros around and distributions such as Mandrake and Lindows and the ones I see as aimed at the average consumer.

The way I see distros such as Debian and Gentoo etc are for both "hardcore" users and server applications, not for use by "the parents".

Re:Graphical?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of us keep Windows up and running 24/7 for years at a time without re-installs.

You keep Windows up and running 24/7? Whats your IP address?

Re:Graphical?

[t0ny]

Why dont they just make the graphical part a 'plug-in' to a text installer? Since both will essentially be doing the same thing anyway (placing files, modifying config files, etc), it seems smarter to just have the installer do its thing, and give out programatic flags which will be displayed by the method of choice (default to text, or connect to a gui).

Re:Graphical?

[gl4ss]

well.. when installing it you could have only one other computer on the same network. though, just telnet would be enough then anyways..

his just worried that computers don't have serial ports anymore(i don't know if stick-into-usb-and-have-serial-port devices wouldn't be an option for him).

-

Re:Graphical?

[TheRaven64]

Installing an OS is not the same as driving the car, a better analogy would be someone should not be allowed to service a car unless they know what they are doing.

Installing an OS is a complex task, and hiding this complexity from people encourages people who really don't know what they are doing to believe that they do, and can result in some horrible messes. I recently saw a Mandrake Linux box being used as an internet-facing server by a SME. It had been configured by someone who had been attracted to it by the graphical configuration tools, but had no real understanding of what was going on in the background. As a result, the machine was in a horrible state.

Re:Graphical?

[Brandybuck]

For instance, no one should be allowed to drive a car unless they can also tear down and rebuild an engine.

So close, yet so, so far away.

No one should be allowed to drive a car unless they can demonstrate their ability to properly handle it when a tire blows out. They shouldn't be allowed to drive in the snow or rain unless they've demonstrated how to handle it during a skid. They don't need to know how to build an engine, but they do need to know how to check the oil, radiator, battery, etc.

Re:Graphical?

[Brandybuck]

I'm a huge FreeBSD fan, but I still recognize the installer as being poor. It definitely needs updating. The problem is that sysinstall was a quick hack that got entrenched. It's better than some installers, but leave a lot to be desired.

It doesn't need to be a GUI, but it could definitely benefit from dumping the current dialog library and switching to something else.

Re:Graphical?

[Solosoft]

No ... I don't think so ... it looks like it's booting the NT kernel so it can see what needs to be done (SCSI etc etc). Thus it's not DOS stupid

Re:Graphical?

[Krunch]

I think dselect is a bit like that but I don't think it's really what you want.

Re:Graphical?

[Bob9113]

There is absolutly nothing wrong with a good text installer.

Sorry to get in on this one late. You are absolutely correct, and just a hair short of the mark. A good command line interface (CLI) installer is better than a good gui installer. You can run a CLI installer on a VGA card, but have you ever tried to run a gui installer without a grahics card? If (and this may be a big if) the CLI and the GUI have all the same features (sensible help, wizards, etc), the only upside of GUI is the prettiness.

A GUI means there is more code to potentially get wrong, and it's less user-friendly for advanced use. Many things have to be text entered for a full install (EG: static network settings) - requiring the user to switch from analog data entry (mouse) to binary data entry (keyclicks) is a hinderance both in terms of moving your right hand and in terms of mental context switching.

There is far too much GUI in the world. This is a matter of consciousness raising - stop blindly nodding when technots imply GUI is inherently better. The invention of the GUI should no more be the death of the CLI than television was the death of radio (which is to say, CLI may take a back seat, but still has an important role).

The litmus test of this is code editors. The two most effective code editors are Vi* and Emacs. I switched to Emacs from a GUI editor in 2000. I've since made extensive use of IntelliJ and Eclipse. Emacs is still better - it doesn't sacrifice keyboarding and screen real estate to satisfy an analog input device, which has absolutely no place in code development.

Even the technotards at Microsoft have finally figured this out and have begun rebuilding DOS.

Re:Graphical?

[ifwm]

"you really should not be installing an OS unless you know what you're doing"

It's exactly this type of thinking that keeps Linux off the desktop

Re:Graphical?

[qtp]

Average consumers.

"Average consumers" could care less if the install is "graphical" (I'll assume you mean "X11-based"), what "average consumers" want is an install that does everything itself without asking them very many questions, and I've yet to find one (including on Windows) that doesn't ask at least one question that your "average consumer" is unable to answer correctly the first time.

What would be nice addition to the Debian installer is an ai that can look at your disk resources, ask if you want to keep your previous OS for double booting, and then partition according to some reasonable assumptions based on the resources available.

just about everyone except those installing a headless server would prefer to use the GUI

Again, you are assuming too much of the users, most every one designing installers is making this assumption, but the truth is that most everyone would prefer to not interact with the computer at all until it is time to decide what applications they want installed. Building a cli installer that can accept an "assume_yes" option to get you through most of the initial install is a hell of a lot closer to this than "Click here to continue".

Re:Graphical?

[damiam]

If you would have read the article, you'd have seen that that's exactly what they're doing.

Re:Graphical?

[Tim C]

Windows 2000 & XP have a two-stage installation process. The initial stage, which sets up the disk(s) and copies various required driver files, etc is text mode. Once that has finished (after a minute or two plus disk formatting time), you're prompted to reboot. The machine then boots into a GUI installer, which takes you through the vast bulk of the installation and configuration.

From memory, Windows XP installations are about 90-95% GUI-mode, although admittedly, it's been about 10 months since I installed my copy.

Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with text-mode installs - although I recently gave up on Gentoo because of its installation process. Something went wrong, and I couldn't be bothered to read through all 49 pages of instructions to work out what. (My first Linux install was Slackware 3.something in '97 off a bunch of floppies, so I'm no newbie - I just can't be doing with that sort of hassle these days is all)

Re:Graphical?

[dreamchaser]

The average non-geek who will be installing Windows or even *nix won't have RAID or SCSI. With most OEM stuff, Windows installs just fine out of the box. Not all *nixes do. Some have come a long way though.

And yes, it is exactly this thinking that is helping to keep *nix off the desktop.

Re:Graphical?

[akorvemaker]

"In general, I feel graphical installers for operating systems are a bad idea, since you really should not be installing an OS unless you know what you're doing."

I think a distinction needs to be made here. I agree that installing an operating system is not for everyone, and that those who do want to do so need to know what they are doing. However, What does having a graphical installer have to do with this? Some people function much better when using text-mode systems, but others function better with a more graphical environment. I fall in the latter category. Some of the issues are simple - monospaced fonts are more tiring to read - and using a graphical installer helps relieve some unnecessary pains.

Re:Graphical?

[binary paladin]

Eh... I'm a big fan of choice. I like GUI installers when I'm working on a system where that makes sense. I like a text based installer when it makes sense.

Mind you, I'm not intimidated by a text based installer in the least, but I like clicking check boxes instead of doing the arrow key + spacebar routine. Again... when it makes sense.

It's certainly isn't a necessity, but neither is hardware autodetection. I mean... only people who know what they're doing should install an OS and those people would already know their hardware ahead of time... like me. But... I like hotplug and I like autodetection.

This is nothing but a glorified CLI vs. GUI debate... a debate that is as pointless as vi vs. Emacs or KDE vs. Gnome or X distro vs. Y distro. It's really a matter of choice, preference, and situation.

Re:Graphical?

[dipipanone]

This might be an aesthetic issue, but in general it does not impair the functionality of Windows in any way, and in the odd case when it does, you can fix it.

As I write, in my 'Add/remove software' control panel, whenever I try to remove the app titled Reaktor User Libraries, it actually attempts to remove my text editor. Whenever I try to remove another app, it attempts to remove the drivers for my midi keyboard.

That's impaired functionality by any stretch of the imagination. I've got a commercial registry cleaner/repairer that I run regularly, but it doesn't seem to fix these particular screwed up registry entries.

I suppose I could go in and edit the registry by hand, but I'm a lot happier if I just go back to my trusty Ghost image every couple of months and start again.

Re:Graphical?

[Deadplant]

i couldn't agree more.
i'd like to add that they should have to demonstrate an understanding of stopping distances.

i think i should be allowed to plead self defense if I shoot someone who follows 3 meters behind me at 120k/h

Re:Graphical?

[mbanck]

"...but due to its modular design the developers can stick almost any front-end on it they like. There are already test builds using a GTK (ie: Gnome-style) GUI with mouse-driven menus etc, and if you really wanted to you could build a front-end using anything from a Braille device to Macromedia Flash."

Note that Mario Lang already has Braille working mostly for the new debian-installer. It needs a bit of hand-work, but works successfully AFAIK.

Michael

Re:Graphical?

[Some Bitch]

Neither the cryptic C:\> prompt in DOS nor [root@mypc root]# in Linux/Unix.

The root prompt scares me, it usually means I'm about to fuck something up!

Re:Graphical?

[dipipanone]

I suspect that your registry cleaner is *causing* those problems, which are abnormal

I don't believe that it is the registry cleaner, which actually works very well.

I accept that it's abnormal though. That was precisely my point. I can install and uninstall all the crappy software that I like under linux without worrying about what it will do to the basic functionality of the OS.

When I do so under Windows (can't speak for XP because I've never used it, but I'd see this in NT and 98 -- far more so in 98), then over time it will invariably introduce these kinds of abnormalities.

Then, eventually something will break, and while it's probably fixable I'm much happier returning to what I know to be a solid, clean install.

Re:Graphical?

[viperblades]

Applying your attitude, you shouldn't be installing Freebsd because you can't make a custom install cd.

Silent switch to Dvorak?

[DAldredge]

Why does it silently switch to Dvorak when you select diff languages?

"If you select "English (USA)" you'll be safe, but be warned that if you choose "English (Australia)" or "English (United Kingdom)" your keyboard will switch to the Dvorak layout! Not quite what most people expect."

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does it silently switch to Dvorak when you select diff languages?

Maybe the developers were so 1337 that they didn't recognize that the keyboard layout kept changing all the time while they typed.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[anaphora]

aoeuhtns > *

Maybe it's hinting that you should be cool and learn dvorak like the rest of us l33t guys.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just installed Debian Woody and so far it's jiasm hfnns wjeucvn xmswjh wpcmsn oewmdn ekncow!

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[pb9494]

Maybe you should file a bug report rather than post this stuff on /.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[DAldredge]

Stupid me! If feel like such an idiot discussing the new Debian installer in a /. discussion on the new installer!

On a more serious note, the shows the like of thinking that has gone into the new installer. To an outsider items such as this look like it was just thrown together with out thinking.

It would not have been a major job to add another question to the installer.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[You're All Wrong]

This is the stupidest fucking thing I've heard in a long time.

Debian have been slowly losing it over the last few years, and I can now find almost nothing to recommend them to others, which was something that I used to do a lot in the past.

The next machine's 10 screws from completed. I'll be sticking Gentoo on it...

YAW.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[HiThere]

Yeah, mixing the language selection and the keyboard selection was a mistake. They need to pull those back apart.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[Miles]

On a qwerty keyboard, that's:
cga;m jyll; ,cdfi.l bm;,cj ,rim;l sd,mhl dvlis,!

I'm don't think that means what you thought it meant.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[ameoba]

I thought he just silently switched to Welsh.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[hankaholic]

They did actually add this question to the installer. As mentioned in the article, you can switch to different keyboard layouts, and the language selection screen simply causes a reasonable default to be selected.

Given the screenshots, I can imagine that you can even select a new keyboard layout using none other than the arrow keys, enter, and perhaps a function key or two. In other words, even if it selects the wrong layout, you can still use the keyboard to select the correct layout without even having to guess about which keys to press.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[zaphod_es]

I just took a look at http://www.dvorak-keyboard.com/ and could not see a backslash. Normally I use a Spanish keyboard and right alt + 1 is intuitive enough for me.

The layout is totally aimed at English speakers and Dvorak looks to be no improvement in any of the languages I know much about. For instance in Spanish Q and Z are commonly used and the K and W tiles would be worth about 50 points each in Scrabble.

The French, being the French, already have a variation and use an AZERTY keyboard layout. I doubt if it would be beneficial to the US to introduce another metric style incompatibility with the rest of the world.

Dvorak would have been great if it had succeeded 50 years ago but I suspect its use will be restricted to Esperanto speakers.

ZB

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[damiam]

So one minor glitch (which probably wouldn't affect you, if like most /.ers you're American) in a pre-beta of an installer is putting you off of using an operating system? You really need to rethink your priorities.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[Hooded One]

And how do you learn how to install them? Is knowledge of how to install programs supposed to magically transfer itself into your brain? No. One of the best ways to learn is by experimenting and asking questions when necessary.

In other words, asking questions does *not* make you an idiot. Asking the same questions repeatedly without learning from the answers (provided you were given good, helpful answers) does.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[Tim C]

For the rest of us, that's not a "minor glitch", that's a complete show-stopper.

I've never even seen a Dvorak keyboard - if I installed an OS, chose English (UK) and got my keyboard set as Dvorak, I'd have a pretty frustrating time of getting it fixed. As a programmer, I'd also be cursing the utter stupidity of whoever made the decision to make it work like that...

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[damiam]

pretty frustrating time of getting it fixed.

You mean like rebooting and choosing a different language setting? That takes around 15 seconds.

If this was still present in sarge when it becomes stable, I'd understand your outrage. But this is the first beta of a piece of software that won't be released for a long time, probably close to a year. I agree that it's not the way it should work, but it annoys me when someone refuses to use an entire OS because of a non-critical keyboard layout bug in an installer that's many months away from shipping.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[tooth]

I live in Australia and I don't think I've ever seen a dvorak keyboard IRL, I don't even know of anywhere I could by one apart from online stores.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[Nimey]

It is beta software, you know.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[Tim C]

Oh, I'm not outraged - I just think that a bug like that should never have made it into a version of a product available for use, even if it's not finished. It's not a code bug, it's a usability issue, and creates a poor first impression for new users. They've not even made it through the install, and already things are messed up, through no fault of their own. If that breaks, what else is broken, that'll cause trouble in the future? Anyway, as you say, I'm sure it'll have been removed by the time it's finished.

For what it's worth (ie very little) that's not the reason I'm not using debian. I'm not using debian because it's not aimed at my type of Linux user. I want something that's more-or-less good to go straight off the CDs, with up to date versions of packages I want and minimal faffing about. I used to enjoy tweaking and configuring my system, but these days, I just want to use it - I have little enough spare time as it is, with work and a family. I don't want to be wasting what I have fighting with an OS.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[anaphora]

My board has a backslash.

Typematrix

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[You're All Wrong]

It's not a minor glitch. It's completely fucking broken.

It's indicative that they didn't think about what they were doing.

If they made such a fuckup in one place, I can't be
sure that they haven't made other fuckups in other places.

And in fact they have. They have gradually become sloppier and sloppier about what gets put in their new releases, and their willingness to just overwrite or override configuration files without asking me first, for example. I do not expect sloppiness off Debian. Debian always used to be above that. The relationship of trust which I have had for about 3 years with Debian has finally been worn down to a filigree.

It does only take one straw if the camel's already heavily laden.

I'm using Gentoo on some systems, and it's now looking like it's pretty well thought out and stable. I will therefore try my hand at adminning it on my own systems too.

To mindlessly stick with Debian just because 3 years ago it saved one from the feature-bloat quagmire of SuSE and RedHat is as errant a set of priorities as finally deciding that they rut one's in is heading in a direction one doesn't want to go.

YAW.

Re:Silent switch to Dvorak?

[You're All Wrong]

Disagreed.
Debian is the second worst linux out there, but all the other distributions I've encountered are in equal worse place.

It appears you do have a debian fetish, by the looks of it, you seem somewhat obsessed by it. And your incoherent argument never indicated what you think is wrong with debian and apt-get.
You appear to not like it/them simply because other people do like it/them.

Which is plain stupid.

Do me a favour, don't agree with me again.

YAW.

I'm speechless.

[BJH]

Be warned, though, there is a big catch here: some of the language options don't default to a Qwerty layout! In the past you were asked what keyboard layout to use but now it just makes a guess based on the language setting. If you select "English (USA)" you'll be safe, but be warned that if you choose "English (Australia)" or "English (United Kingdom)" your keyboard will switch to the Dvorak layout! Not quite what most people expect.

Yeah, cause everybody knows those crazy Aussies all use Dvorak...
Come on, guys - it's only one extra question, OK? Just add it in there. It'll save you a lot of grief later on.

Re:I'm speechless.

[a whoabot]

www.dvorak-keyboard.com/

Re:I'm speechless.

[inquisitor]

Well, I'm a UK keyboard owner - and I'd be really really pissed if I selected "English (United Kingdom)" and all my keys were in the Dvorak order; since I don't actually *know* the Dvorak order.

The current Debian installer requires you to know that the UK's keyboard layout is, in fact, "gb" ("uk" is the Ukraine). Now the new one requires you to select a US keyboard just so you can get QWERTY, without the small rearrangements that we have on UK keyboards (the UKP symbol is on Shift-3, for example).

And it's STILL using dselect for packaging. Oh well, at least it's a beta, so they'll hopefully change these stupidities before sarge comes out. It looks like a pretty nice installer otherwise.

(On the other hand, they didn't fix the stupidities of the last installer either...)

Re:I'm speechless.

[BJH]

Do you have any idea how hard it is to input stuff with a mismatched keyboard layout? In some cases, you wouldn't even be able to log in.

I'd say users would care about *that* feature.

Re:I'm speechless.

[Tony Hoyle]

I guess it's because it's a beta but...

What fscking brainded moron decided to switch the UK keyboard into dvorak mode?

I live in the UK and I've never even *seen* a dvorak keyboard let alone used one - I assume they're entirely a US phenomenon... however instead of breaking their own keyboard layout they decide to break everyone *elses* instead.

A good graphical installer...

[ca1v1n]

A good installer for a vanilla desktop user would take advantage of all the hardware on their system. It should detect your sound card, and then play a sound that says "hey, we found your sound card!" and it should let you use your USB mouse, show all this stuff on your display in such a fashion that acknowledges the existence of the video card, etc.

Basically, it should be more like Knoppix.

Now, I wouldn't want to lock the user, who may not be a vanilla desktop user and may not even have a mouse or video card on the machine, into this setup, but it sure would be nice to have the option, wouldn't it?

Knoppix is wonderful and all, but it leaves behind some artifacts of the live CD setup that can make package upgrades (which users ought to be able to do graphically, and with little pain) very painful. If we could get stuff like this in the base Debian distribution, we'd be a lot closer to Debian being sufficiently user-friendly that we could hand a disc to grandma without fear.

*prepares for the "get redhat" flames*

Re:A good graphical installer...

[AKAImBatman]

> *prepares for the "get redhat" flames*

Try "RTFA". They state that the installer needs to work for every type of screen output from a GeForceFX to a serial cable. Being that the serial cable is the lowest common denominator that they had to support, they designed the installer as a simple text mode interface.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[gl4ss]

**Basically, it should be more like Knoppix.**

if you want to install debian from knoppix like installer.. .. why don't you like, eh,... .. get knoppix? knx-hdinstall from there then?

sure it's not that well shouted all over the place but it's there.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[ca1v1n]

That's why it would be quite pleasant if we had the option to do both. Think Redhat. Think Knoppix. Now try thinking that and Debian at the same time.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[LeoDV]

Actually, more like "Get Mandrake"

As much as I love Debian, it used to be my flavour of choice until I got tired of the poor hardware support (now over to Gentoo), if I want to hand a disc to Grandma (and I actually had to, or almost, since I wanted to introduce my comp-savvy but MS-loving Grandpa to Linux), I'll choose Mandrake.

The other day I found an old pic of me tearing the wrapping off Mandrake 7.2, which was a refreshing change from Redhat (popped my cherry on Redhat 5.*)... Even though I always preffered the control distros like Slack, Debian and now Gentoo can afford me, I've always loved the slickness of a Mandrake graphical install, getting your hardware recognized, choosing a graphical login and a GUI of your choice and simply using the computer.

Bliss.

Even though it ain't my cuppa, I've always admired the user friendliness of Mandrake, far before Redhat turned into a bloatfest (some might argue it always was...) and we had to deal with that Fedora nonsense.

So thank you, mod me up, I was your "get $flava" flame of the day.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[AKAImBatman]

> That's why it would be quite pleasant if we had the option to do both.

Three words: Duplication of Resources

Debian doesn't have the same commercal backing as RedHat (read: $$$). As a result, they lack the manpower to develop multiple installer solutions. I'm sure everyone on the Debian team would *like* to have multiple installers, but it just isn't reasonable.

If you want a graphical installer, stop being an armchair quarterback and go develop it.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[AKAImBatman]

> Somehow Red Hat manages to have a slick graphical
> installer with more useful features than you can shake a
> stick at.

And somehow RedHat has more money than Debian and fewer platforms (by far!) to support.

I don't understand why on one hand everyone proclaims that one of the greatest features of Linux is its diversity, and then on the other hand try to crucify a system for not being like all the others. Am I missing something?

Re:A good graphical installer...

[treke]

Not really arbitrary, it's about starting with work that benefits the most people. Since Debian supports machines without hardware capable of running a graphical installer they are starting by writing a text mode installer. Once the basics of a full installer are in place they can start working on frontends like a "kickstart" or gui installer.

Just a matter of trying to use the available resources the best they can.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[niko9]

The other day I found an old pic of me tearing the wrapping off Mandrake 7.2, which was a refreshing change...

You take pictures of yourself unwraping the latest Linux distro? My GOD man, you are a ture Geek! /chants/ We're not worthy, we're not worthy.....

Re:A good graphical installer...

[ca1v1n]

Have you ever tried an apt-get dist-upgrade on knoppix? It's not pleasant.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[B1ackDragon]

A good installer for a vanilla desktop user would take advantage of all the hardware on their system.

I fully agree, though I must say I love it when all my stuff works for the installer, but then when I go to reboot off of my hard drive half of it doesn't work anymore.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[dipipanone]

If you want a graphical installer, stop being an armchair quarterback and go develop it

Or alternatively, go use a distro that already has one.

Not that anyone needs telling that, as that's what they currently do anyway.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[dipipanone]

I've always admired the user friendliness of Mandrake

I quite liked it as well, until the bug-ridden mess that was Mandrake 9.

far before Redhat turned into a bloatfest

You don't *have* to install it all, you know. The installer lets you choose what you install and what you leave off.

Personally, I'll miss the quality and reliability of the basic RedHat distro, and I've no idea what I'll use in its place. Fedora certainly doesn't appear to be there yet.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[Jon Abbott]

Yeah, and here I thought that box unwrapping pics were only done by Apple zealots... :^)

Re:A good graphical installer...

[gnu-generation-one]

"It should detect your sound card, and then play a sound that says "hey, we found your sound card!" and it should let you use your USB mouse..."

You can almost see it connecting to all the printers in the building, and printing "Debian lives. 164.0.2.253 is self aware, and has mapped your locality"

"Dave, I've autodetected your bluetooth hardware, and installed debian on all mobile telephones in the area. Your laptop is low on batteries, and I've adjusted the time on your watch. The elevators have been hardware-detected, and now play the gnu song at each floor. I couldn't find a printer-driver for your cat."

Re:A good graphical installer...

[Dwonis]

Sure. Just convince a few volunteers to actually develop it.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[pyros]

Have you ever tried an apt-get dist-upgrade on knoppix? It's not pleasant.

thank god someone else has finally said it.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[NoOneInParticular]

Yep, did that, worked flawlessly. Ran knoppix-installer (not knx-hdinstall!), replaced /etc/apt/sources.list with my own preferences (plain debian mirror sid, some stuff for java), ran dist-upgrade and done.

Re:A good graphical installer...

[mbanck]

Debian doesn't have the same commercal backing as RedHat (read: $$$). As a result, they lack the manpower to develop multiple installer solutions.

Actually, no, we don't lack the manpower. It's just that not so many developers are interested in a thing they see only a couple of times in their life, if at all. But rejoice, Joey Hess is back on the debian-installer track and stuff is moving along nicely.

Michael

User friendly

[Anonymous Coward]

How about getting someone who has done some human-computer interaction work, or even joe doe from the street, to go trough the install screens and say "no" to the Debian developers. Really, a screen for configuring dvorak or a zillion other layouts, hmm.... "No, let's drop that".

Really, this work seems to bring the Debian installer up to around Red Hat 7 functionality. Can I do FTP installs? How about over VNC? 1 CDR, then FTP for rest of the discs? Does it look nice?

So Anaconda doesn't work on 11 architectures. That's a pretty crappy reason for holding the dominant arch down. Debian needs to take an attitude like Linus has to the archs and the Linux kernel; if some some arch can't keep it up with x86, though shit, maybe the next version will work better (if you submit the patches in time).

Re:User friendly

[bogie]

"Really, this work seems to bring the Debian installer up to around Red Hat 7 functionality"

Err, try Red Hat 5.0 if that. I still can't believe that the main installer actually makes people have to choose which kernel modules they need. That's like selling a car to someone and then making them figure out how to wire the spark plugs before they can go anywhere. Although Debian has always been less popular than Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, etc I'm still amazed that they have been able to keep any users over the years considering what a horrible install they've had to get through just to get the system up and running perfectly.

Re:User friendly

[TrentC]

Really, a screen for configuring dvorak or a zillion other layouts, hmm.... "No, let's drop that".

Yes, because everybody knows that the only people who use Linux are North Americans with QWERTY keyboards.

So Anaconda doesn't work on 11 architectures. That's a pretty crappy reason for holding the dominant arch down.

Debian doesn't have a "dominant arch", by definition. If you can't grasp that, then you are not the type of user Debian is targetting. (Or you are welcome to take their distribution and fork it, as Libranet and Knoppix have done.)

Jay (=

It's about time

[Fux the Penguin]

Personally, I've never had good luck with Debian. I know lots of people love it, and bully for them, but I have never been able to get a Debian system up and running to my satisfaction. I believed this was a personal failure until I succeeded two times with Gentoo, which is to Debian as Alaska is to Montana, in terms of frontier cred. Anyway, I agree that things that are dumb about the Debian installer could be improved, but I'm still a little worried that an installer my mama could run isn't right around the corner...

As everyone knows, Debian is maintained by an organization of volunteers. When people working on the distribution support users, it takes away from the time that they could be spending to improve the distribution. Therefore, it makes sense for them to not make Debian open for anybody to install. If someone can't make it through an installer that requires some attention and knowledge on the part of the user, then they should probably be using a commercial distribution that offers support for money or whatever. That's one of the things I like best about Gentoo's root shell installer. It immediately gets rid of people that are intimidated by that sort of thing, and prevents them from sucking up tons of attention on mailing lists or forums. The difficulty of the installer should be like those little signs in front of rides at amusement parks: "You must be this tall to ride."

The target audience of Debian doesn't need a graphical installer, so there's really no reason to put one in. If you want the easy graphical installer, perhaps you should ask yourself why you chose Debian in the first place. Besides, with distributions like Debian and Gentoo, using the installer is more likely than not a one time thing, because you can upgrade the version of your operating system without bothering with the installer. I'm all for installer improvements that save time for the core users of a distribution, but revising the installer to open the distribution to a new class of users should not be entered into lightly

Installer with My Hardware?

[idonotexist]

I prefer to go through the difficult installation process Debian is known for - I know what hardware I have and can update drivers in the kernel if necessary, manually. So has does an installer perform? How about detecting a p4p800 deluxe motherboard with a 3com 3C940 nic? Unfortunately not. The disadvantage with installer is that users generally become lazy because of the very nature of an installer. It's purpose is to automatically detect a user's hardware - if it does not, then a user will likely give up and not naturally, say, update a drive in the kernel.

Re:Installer with My Hardware?

[Spoing]

I prefer to go through the difficult installation process Debian is known for - I know what hardware I have and can update drivers in the kernel if necessary, manually. ... The disadvantage with installer is that users generally become lazy because of the very nature of an installer.

Lazy, hell. You don't really believe this, do you?

I don't go to every machine I manage, I use shell scripts. When the machine boots, init configures the system. Hardware configuration is part of the entire scheme. If it fails, the user (not an admin) should then get someone else to fix it as it's not thier job to know how. If the hardware configuration software is worth it, there should be few situations where it does indeed fail. Kudzu (Red Hat's) is damn good. If the Debian folks want to reinvent the wheel, they can.

Getting the proper modules loaded automatically is exactly the kind of task that software does well. Looking up hardware details and slogging through kernel notes is an entirely automatable process...and automation is why we have computers in the first place.

I used to fiddle around with modules every time I upgraded the kernel -- either from source or from a new distribution. Kudzu (also used in Knoppix BTW) does an amazing job of auto configuration...so why not use it or something like it?

1. Would you use a boot CD like Knoppix if you had to configure the modules and other drivers each time you went to a new machine? It would take the joy out of it, making you do the work a computer is entirely capable of doing.

It doesn't make you any less special that the system figures out something that you also can figure out. Yes, experts should know how the system works. Tinker with modules.conf if you like. I personally would like to fiddle with other things beyond the base hardware configuration since I already know how it works.

That said, if you're a professional let me put in a plug for InstallBase. This is a TK-based, cross-platform installation program; Solaris, Windows, and Linux. It provides a good balence between simple and detailed configuration, as well as a silent mode. Currently, I'm using it to bring sanity and automation to a mismanaged network.

Here's something you likely agree with. The network management document I'm writing says -- up front -- installation is not running an install program. I'm a strong believer that If you don't know what the answer should be, using a computer to tell you is an act of trust in something that has proven itself untrustworthy; it is foolish.

InstallBase (the tool) is used becuase it meets the goal of automation, though to use it or any other tool properly you have to know exactly what it is you want it to do. That takes concerned effort. The result eliminates needless work and inconsistant human mistakes that happen when each machine is managed a little differently. (If done wrong, you get consistant mistakes...so, there you go!)

Re:Installer with My Hardware?

[Microlith]

So in otherwords you like bending yourself over backwards to do tasks that could easily be automated.

Keep in mind, this is for the initial installation. Most people like the system to be up and running after an install, not partially functioning with a pile of kernel modules that need to be downloaded and compiled (like I was last time I tried Debian.)

The USER wants to use their system. They shouldn't have to manually configure every little bit of the OS just to get it useable. No other OS forces this (not Wwindows, not other distributions of Linux.) That's generally because doing so is like saying "we don't want anyone but the elite using this" which is a problem Debian faces.

I gave up on Debian because Debian's installer gave up on me before my system was up and running.

I'm still on windows though. Linux has other problems that need solutions before I move over (and I really wanna ditch XP.)

Re:Installer with My Hardware?

[antiMStroll]

Gentoo has a particularly difficult installation process that entails selecting compile optimization options from a set of dozens, setting processor optimizations, choosing which kernel sources to use and compiling a kernel, all in a chroot environment. This is for the simple Stage 3 install, Stages 1 and 2 are worse. It's been a long while since I tried but I still found the Debian process obtuse in comparison. The difference was documentation, not laziness. Gentoo's is very straightforward and linear. Activiting the NIC is step 2 and the links browser is immediately avaliable for scoping on-line installation resources.

With so many worthy distros around, I just didn't see where Debian was worth (even) more bother than Gentoo for a flat i386 optimized system.

Re:Installer with My Hardware?

[mpol]

The disadvantage with installer is that users generally become lazy because of the very nature of an installer. It's purpose is to automatically detect a user's hardware -[...]

Yeah, automation sucks. Don't ever use a computer for that, they are not designed for it. It will just make you lazy.

Re:Installer with My Hardware?

[Dwonis]

I gave up on Debian because Debian's installer gave up on me before my system was up and running.

I gave up trying to use Debian's installer long ago. I typically boot Knoppix and then do a network install using the debootstrap command. Although, I tried a debian-installer CD image lately (inside VMware -- VMware is great), and it worked quite well for me.

I'm still on windows though. Linux has other problems that need solutions before I move over (and I really wanna ditch XP.)

Ever considered buying the Crossover Plugin and either Win4Lin or VMware?

I have, and I can definitely say that, since I started using these three programs, I have never needed to boot Windows natively to do anything (though I don't typically play Win32 3D games, but I think VMware might support these now).

It involves shelling out a bit of money, but it's worth it!

Re:Installer with My Hardware?

[bryanthompson]

So in otherwords you like bending yourself over backwards to do tasks that could easily be automated.

Sounds to me like the parent poster gets paid hourly and likes to feel like an ubergeek sysadmin god when 'regular users' see all the elite configuration skills he is so proud of.

Onto the topic, in Redhat 9 when you boot the install you have a choice of typing 'install text' if you want to install text mode, or you can just hit enter for graphical. I'm pretty sure Mandrake has the same sort of setup.

i think i used that(judging from the screenshots)

[gl4ss]

just few weeks(2? or something) ago when i installed debian on the machine sitting next to this. to be frank apart from the bootup screen i didn't see anything new in it compared to my memories of the previous installers, except maybe some minor differences. it's been easy enough for years if you figure out the fact that most of the time you really want to do a netinstall and not install from the cd's. the package selecting might be the problem,though imho dselect isn't that bad if you'd just take time to read through the keystrokes just even once and don't bash the keyboard mindlessly(no offence to the one's that do.. but that's not really a way to get anything done ever on any system).

btw. synergy rooooocks for mouse sharing..

hardware autodetection...

[ultrapenguin]

Is it really necessary?
I mean, once you install a "server" operating system using a generic kernel, then go and recompile the kernel to include support for whatever hardware you have in your server.
What exactly is the purpose of hardware detection in this case? You won't be using X11, USB, or any of that stuff that needs to be "detected" on a server, and by installing Linux in the first place you accept the responsibility that you know what you are doing.

Or is this no longer the case?

Re:hardware autodetection...

[peeping_Thomist]

What exactly is the purpose of hardware detection in this case?

It's nice if the installer can see your hard drive, so that it has somewhere to install to.

Re:hardware autodetection...

[GrenDel Fuego]

I mean, once you install a "server" operating system using a generic kernel, then go and recompile the kernel to include support for whatever hardware you have in your server.

What exactly is the purpose of hardware detection in this case? You won't be using X11, USB, or any of that stuff that needs to be "detected" on a server, and by installing Linux in the first place you accept the responsibility that you know what you are doing.

Not everyone uses linux for just servers. And even on servers, installing custom kernels doesn't scale well if you support a large number of machines of different types.

I love autodetection. I spent a lot of time setup Redhat kickstart installations that ended up being supported on a variety of hardware. Should a machine require manual work just because this particular machine included an intel NIC instead of a 3com?

I know what I'm doing. I can compile a custom kernel, but it might not be the best use of my time.

Re:hardware autodetection...

[jilles]

Yes it is really necessary. You don't want to spend two days in newsgroups trying to figure out stuff that the setup can figure out itself when your new hardwar arrives (network card, scsi/ide controller, video card). Probably the most important thing you need to get working out of the box is the network card (asuming you want to connect your server to a network). It would be nice too if your raid controller is detected properly and it's awfully convenient if you can just plug in a usb mouse/keyboard and have it work right away. Ideally you would just pop in the setup disk, drink some coffee and then finish configuring the machine in a few minutes (if needed at all).

You are mixing up a number of things here. The reason you need to know what you are doing when installing debian is that its qualities (so far) do not extend to the installer. That's a problem, not a distinguishing feature. In any case, reconfiguring an automatically configured pc should not much more time than configuring everything manually. If the USB driver really bothers you, you can always remove it. Compiling a custom kernel should be enirely optional IMHO (I know it is on most major linux distributions).

Reinventing the wheel..

[spectrokid]

I don't want to be a troll, but I thought the whole idea about open source is you can copy from each other and not reinvent the wheel. If Mandrake has a really good hardware detection, then why are these dudes writing something from scratch?

Re:Reinventing the wheel..

[perotbot]

I think it's based on anaconda, the redhat installer, it just doesn't have the "Redhat" corporate gui running

Re:Reinventing the wheel..

[shaitand]

probably because mandrake has lousy hardware detection. so they based it on redhat instead ;)

Re:Reinventing the wheel..

[Anonymous Coward]

Because mandrake only has a few platforms to support. Debian supports no less than 11 different platforms and a couple of different kernels. The installer must work with all of them. Much of teh hardware detection for i386 was most likely taken from Knoppix which I belive was taken mostly from RedHat.

Re:Reinventing the wheel..

[Knuckles]

b/c Mandrake runs only on i386 while Debian supports 11 architectures? Which has always been the only reason for the state of the Debian installer anyway

Re:Reinventing the wheel..

[MsGeek]

There is a Mandrake for PowerPC. It is stuck at 9.1 while the i386 version is at 9.2, but that's not a major problem. When Mandrake goes to v.10 there will be a new PPC version out. I haven't used it...my Wallstreet PowerBook runs Yellow Dog. But from what I have heard it's as brain-dead easy as MDK i386.

Re:Reinventing the wheel..

[Nothinman]

PPC is easy, it's almost the same as x86 hardware wise. But what about sparc64? Some sparc64 boxes don't even have PCI busses, do you think MDK has any idea how to detect hardware on SBus?

Logical progression?

[FreeLinux]

I don't really see the logic. Linux in general used to get beat up severly because of installation difficulties. Over the years many distros heard these complaints and addressed them by developing better and better installers. Today, there are numerous distros available that have such excellent installers that installation is a moot topic, except for Debian, Slack and Gentoo.

Most, if not all, of these better installers are open source GPLed programs. It seems to me that "logical progression" would be Debian taking one or many of these better installers and adapting them to Debian. Instead they choose to reinvent the wheel and have produced a crude installer whose interface was passe years ago. Where is the logic?

Re:Logical progression?

[DavidNWelton]

Good theory, but the article explains why it doesn't work in practice: Debian has to be installable on 11 different architectures, and they have gone for a lowest common denominator approach (instead of, say, having a different, graphical install for x86 and maybe ppc).

I agree with other comments. I can do without the graphics, but it's nice to whip through hardware detection without opening another console and digging through /proc.

Re:Logical progression?

[dmaxwell]

Debian's installer has to work across at least 11 different arches. It has to be endian clean and work equally well on 32 and 64 bit architectures. It must also be able to cope with http, ftp, and cdrom installs. Last but not least, there is the multitude of Debian packages and the categories they come in.

It was probably easier to write something from scratch than adapt say RedHat's installer to meet those requirements. It also doesn't sound as crude as your making it out to be. This installer has hardware detection and automatic module configuration. A pretty front-end can be wrapped around it and the article says that experimental gtk installers based on it already exist. A multi-arch installer is Not Easy.

Re:Logical progression?

[Aliencow]

Gentoo now has "Genkernel" which generates a Kernel configuration...and I must tell you, it is utter crap ! I'm OK with graphical installers and auto-detect and all, but I know my hardware and I much prefer being able to do it by hand and remove the unneeded crap...so it needs to be just an option!

Re:Logical progression?

[Aliencow]

What kind of questions does it ask? I think if it asks basic questions like type of cpu, network card, soundcard, it could be good for users who at least know their hardware a bit.. And also I think gentoo should include a .config with every kernel source that would activate the checkmark you need to put for experimental stuff in the beginning of menuconfig and enable devfs by default..

Re:Logical progression?

[cdc179]

Did you even read the fucking article, hell no.

If you had read you would have found out that the Debian installer team has an issue of supporting many arcitectures (x86, ppc, s/390, spark, etc...). They want a single installer that works properly on all platforms.

Now that they have the hardware detection working on all platforms for all devices supported by Linux it is easy for somebody to write a GUI interface to interact with the installer. I for one wouldn't use a GUI if it was around, takes a hell of a lot longer to install and have to have more memory in a machine just to run the damn installer. Some of us still have machines with 32 M mem and have full Debian systems running in less than 100M disk space.

RTFA!

Re:Logical progression?

[the uNF cola]

Installation difficulties != graphical installer. Installation difficulties are due to a bad user interface.

OpenBSD has a great installer for the tecnically inclined, while dselect is just plain annoying. You have so many keys to remember just to select stuff, and the screen's view keeps changing.

Redhat's text mode interface is quite nice, 'cept it doesn't provide all the right questions or choices all the time. If i select something and its dependencies aren't met, it should ask me right away, "Do I want to add this or forget about my selection." I shouldn't have to think, I selected some packages before, and these are the missing dependencies over all of them, now I can go back and guess which ones i fooked up on.

The autodetect and what not is important too, getting rid of stupid questions like, "do you have a 3 button mouse." If there was a way it could figure it out, do it damnit. And this project at LEAST strives for the autodetection. Hopefully, it'd streamline the package selection process and what not.

Re:Logical progression?

[HiThere]

Please remember that some of those architectures don't even have screens (at least if I read that article correctly). I'm sure that they must be connected to screens for the process to work, but I'm guessing they might be part of a temporarily attached console. You can't depend on framebuffer working, e.g., much less X Window. Not from the system being installed on.

That said, I sure hope they include X Window configuration as a part of the installer this time. So what if not all architectures use the feature...the most common ones do. I can certainly see it not being a mandatory component, but then neither should a network connection be a mandatory component. But you still want the installer to set up you connection.

Re:Logical progression?

[dipipanone]

now they're working on the graphical installer

Hang on a minute. I've just sat and read through dozens of posts from Debian and BSD zealots telling me that graphical installers are a crime against humanity, an abomination to all right thinking people, and that the last thing that a politically correct distro like Debian needs is one of these evil contraptions.

Now you're telling me that they'd actually like one really, they just haven't gotten around to doing it yet?

Re:Logical progression?

[MrUnknown]

genkernel doesn't ask anything. For the most part, it takes most of the options and compiles them as modules, then it lets hotplug take care of the work or loading modules of new hardware attached and such.

while you do end up with a boatload of modules, it allowed me to setup my compact flash reader by just plugging it in and mouting /dev/sda, which i liked.

even the 2.6 kernel makes it easy to do something like this with hotplug by doing a "make allmodconfig && make".

Re:Logical progression?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake is available on three or four arches. One of them is Mac (big-endian), the other is AMD64 (64-bit). Its installer can install from http, ftp or cdrom. Mandrake deals with its own multitude of packages and categories and repositories through urpmi which is basically a port of apt-get, so rewriting it to use apt-get should be trivial. Finally, it's GPLed (unlike, for example, Yast).

Re:Logical progression?

[LucidityZero]

except for Debian, Slack and Gentoo.

Emphasis mine

What are you talking about? I'm a new Slackware convert, so maybe this has recently changed, but... With Slack you do have to fdisk manually... Besides that, it is the cleanest, quickest and easiest install I've ever seen. Best hardware detection I've ever seen too (the primary reason I switched to Slack).

I agree that noobs (and even some veterans) shouldn't have to fdisk themselves, but lumping it together with Gentoo and Debian is unfair.

Re:Logical progression?

[dipipanone]

You seem to have somehow, God knows how, decided that people posting here represent the views of the Debian developers

No, I was assuming they represented the views of Debian users.

(And by the way, please don't split your infinitives. I know that an excess of Star Trek does that to people, but it grates on the rest of us.)

ask yourself who the "they" are that you talk about in your last paragraph.

These, clearly *are* the developers.

What I'm curious about is whether they know that they're casting pearls before swine, and what they feel about that?

Or do you suppose that in five years time, when the great new all-singing, all-dancing Debian graphical installer is finally unveiled, that we'll see the same Debian users being just as vocal about how the kick-ass Debian installer beats the pants off anything produced by RedHat or Suse?

Re:Logical progression?

[Shinobi]

Clear case of not reading the fucking manual....

genkernel --config....

Re:Logical progression?

[grolschie]

Wrong! These "better" installers work only on the i386 platform. Do YOU want to port these to 10 other architectures for Debian? I guess not. Point ended.

Re:Logical progression?

[qtp]

Now you're telling me that they'd actually like one really, they just haven't gotten around to doing it yet?

Of course the Debian Developers and users would like a graphical instal environment, but it's just not a reasonable priority. It's not that a graphical (X11 based) installer is a "crime", it's just that it's a waste of time until you have everything working without it.

It is much more sensible to create an install that works efficiently with the lowest possible number of resources available, and to later make a graphical inteface available for systems that have what's necessary for it.

These decisions are not being made by zealots, they are being made by some of the best OS integrators that can be found who happen to have no pressure to place market concerns before coding practices, system design and best practices.

Not being a commercial vendor is one of the Debian Project's greatest strengths.

Re:Logical progression?

[tzanger]

Today, there are numerous distros available that have such excellent installers that installation is a moot topic, except for Debian, Slack and Gentoo.

I haven't a clue what you're blathering about; Slackware 9 and 9.1 detect the network and CD on install, and standard hotplug takes care of pretty much everything else on boot.

Re:Logical progression?

[cmacb]

(And by the way, please don't split your infinitives. I know that an excess of Star Trek does that to people, but it grates on the rest of us.) "

Split infinitives have been condemned as ungrammatical for nearly 200 years, but it is hard to see what exactly is wrong with saying to boldly go. Its meaning is clear. It has a strong rhythm than reinforces the meaning. And rearranging the phrase only makes it less effective.

In fact, the split infinitive is distinguished both by its length of use and the greatness of its users. People have been splitting infinitives since the 14th century, and some of the most noteworthy splitters include John Donne, Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth, Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot, Henry James, and Willa Cather.


From: The American Heritage(R) Book of English Usage.

Re:Logical progression?

[binary paladin]

I just thought I'd add that, in general, 2.6 makes me VERY happy.

Re:Logical progression?

[binary paladin]

Ahhh yes... another point of choise. If you're using an x86 and want something that's x86 centric with a graphical installer... Mandrake is your pal.

If you use older hardware or something outside the realm of the x86 then Debian is a good idea.

If you're a freakshow that compiles everything and don't care about any installer, Gentoo is a good idea. (I'm a freakshow, by the way.)

I tried it...

[perotbot]

it works, if you stick with woody, it's pretty much a "hit enter" proposition. It's not as good as libranet or knoppix/gnoppix/morphix. But given the "Debian Mindset" it is a step forward.

Re:I tried it...

[yomegaman]

I tried it last night. I wanted to set up testing on one of my machines, so I figured I'd just download the net install CD image (it was called beta1, beta means it mostly works, right?). Burned it, popped it in, kernel panic - "can't find init". Reboot, give it "init=/linuxrc" at the LILO prompt, another kernel panic - "tried to kill init". Grrrr....

linux magazines

[lifebouy]

Does anyone else remember when the US linux magazines were more than 4 pages? Both Linux Magazine and Linux Journal are really just monthly pamphlets now. Originally I could justify paying those high prices because there was a lot of content, but now its mostly adverts, with maybe two good articles buried within them. No thanks. For the same price, I'll take the paperback on the next shelf. Or skip a couple of issues and use the money for a reference book.

If these magazines are in trouble, its because they are asking WAY more than they are worth. For the content level currently in each issue, $3.50 max. The idea is, you make enough money to keep afloat long enough to get the advertizing. Then you maximize readership by lowering prices and make your money off advertizing. Thats not a difficult concept. Look at Woman's Day, and Family Circle: $1.50. They are the most popular magazines in America. Learn something from them.

Sorry if this was OT. It had to be said.

Re:linux magazines

[psifishdot]

Tempting the moderators with -1, Offtopic, are we?

Why would you need a 'print' magazine when you have Slashdot?

Unless the magazine is about Debian-stable, then it will be out of date by the time it gets to you!

Re:i think i used that(judging from the screenshot

[Etherwalk]

On the package selection side, it would be nice to see some change. tasksel is decent enough for a very basic user, but for individual packet selection I find aptitude *a lot* more intuitive and, well, generally shiny, than I suspect dselect will ever be.

Mirrored... poor poor dead server...

[Anonymous Coward]

First Look: Next-Generation Debian Installer

The Debian installer has been considered its Achilles heel for a long time, but in the last couple of months things have really been heating up in Debian-installer-land. Ian Murdock recently announced to the Debian project that Progeny, the Debian-based distro that created the Progeny Graphical Installer, was dropping PGI in favour of porting Red Hat's Anaconda installer to Debian. But things haven't been sitting still within Debian itself either, with frantic work over the last couple of months to get the next-generation Debian Installer to the point where Sarge (Debian 3.1) can be released.

A Debian-Installer Debcamp in Germany in September saw many of the core developers get together for several days of intensive coding, with the result that Beta 1 of the new installer is now ready for the world to come and gawk, and poke, and kick the tyres, and even take it for a spin around the block. It's still changing on a daily basis but the developers want as many people as possible to give it a whirl and report back any problems they have.

So, for your edutainment and complete with pretty pictures, I present to you this first look at the next-generation Debian Installer.
Installer Rationale

To understand some of the design decisions that have been made with respect to the installer and why it's taken so long to get to this point, it's important to know a little about the Debian project itself. For many people this section will be rehashing old ground so if you just want to get to the guts of it skip ahead now to the next section, "Getting The Installer".

The long and the short of it is that Debian is committed to supporting multiple processor architectures. It's famous for being the most broadly deployable Linux distro (and possibly operating system) in existence, running on at least 11 distinct architectures. Nobody has more expertise in porting software to different platforms than the Debian project.

While that causes some problems when distributing normal user-space software, they're difficulties that can be worked around: for example, a package written in C needs to compile on all 11 architectures, but not all architectures use the same C libraries. No problem, Debian's server farm just autobuilds the package with different libraries for each platform.

When it comes to an installer, though, things are different. An installer needs to be bootable on all platforms, but different platforms boot in totally different ways. x86 systems start up and look for local disks in a certain way, Power Macintosh systems do it another way, and S/390 is different again. Then consider that the job of an installer is to figure out what local hardware you have available and setting up the system in a way that will work on that hardware. How does it detect the hardware? Will a detection system that works on one architecture fail horribly on another?

Probably.

But it gets worse: think about what happens when you first launch an installer. It boots up and displays some stuff on screen, right? But some machines use an AGP or PCI graphics subsystem, while others may not have a graphics subsystem at all, only a serial interface with a character-based console. What should the installer do if it starts up and finds the host system doesn't even have a graphics card installed?

The more you think about questions like that, the more it'll bake your noodle when you consider the task faced by the Debian Installer team.

In essence, they are trying to make a universal installer that will run on any architecture with any hardware detection method and any display system.

So people may bitch and moan about how it's taken so long for Debian to produce a "pretty" installer while other distros have had one for years, or they may say that Debian should just adopt a third-party installer like PGI or Anaconda, but that doesn't really take the big picture into account. Debian's mantra is to be the Universal Operating System, a

Re:someday

[njdj]

For your information, it's a great deal easier to add a gui to an installer than it is to get the underlying functionality of the installer right. Debian is certainly not short of people who can program GUIs.

Somebody at Debian has probably thought about whether a GUI would really add value to an installer. He/she presumably came to the conclusion that it adds little or none. He/she is probably right.

What Debian needs

[Espectr0]

-Fork for architectures: i know lots of people don't like to wait for upgraded packages because they break on different architectures. This is what's happenning with xfree 4.3 not being available. If there were a debian-x86 fork, it would use optimization and wouldn't be behind other distros in package versions.

-Dselect needs to be sent to /dev/null. The debian installer was never the problem. It isn't harder than slackware, but dselect really, really sucks.

-Loose the restrictions a little bit: why mplayer is missing and xine not? Mplayer has been 100% gpl since 0.9 and it was rejected from getting a package because of ffmpeg, which xine also has.

-More customization: the USE variable of Gentoo is really powerful, and it would be great when apt getting source packages. I want package X, and it wants me to install package Y that is optional and i dont want.

-Updated versions! Slackware is current, and it's stable.

-Re-do the stable, testing and unstable package list: they should only contain base, critical packages. So i want to run the latest kde with my stable setup? Is kde 2.2 more stable than 3.1? The security bugs fixed between them say no (yeah, i know they backport, but those packages never get the same QA) User-level desktop apps which aren't critical shouldn't be restricted in the same stable, testing and unstable trees, or at least they could mix and match.

And lot of other things i can't remember...

Re:What Debian needs

[ultrabot]

Fork for architectures

I agree. All the users of exotic archs could very well stick with the version they already have. Or use NetBSD or whatever.

Also, I think that a source-based distribution would be better for non-mainstream architectures. Architectures that matter in this day and age are i386, AMD64, IA64 and PPC.

Re:What Debian needs

[Varitek]

Fork for architectures: i know lots of people don't like to wait for upgraded packages because they break on different architectures. This is what's happenning with xfree 4.3 not being available. If there were a debian-x86 fork, it would use optimization and wouldn't be behind other distros in package versions.

Well, first of all, XFree 4.3 is available. I've been using it on Debian for ages - you just neet to add a Debian Experimental line to your sources.list Secondly, getting software to work on many architectures usually involves fixing bugs and poor assumptions. The many architectures of Debian helps QA, rather than hinder it, even if it does take longer. As far as dselect goes, I've been running Debian for 3 years now, and I used dselect exactly once - my first install. You're not forced to use it in any way.

do the stable, testing and unstable package list: they should only contain base, critical packages. So i want to run the latest kde with my stable setup? Is kde 2.2 more stable than 3.1?

Stable doesn't just mean it doesn't crash. It means it doesn't *change*. That's the point of the stable install. You know that installing the security packages won't introduce some behaviour that you weren't expecting, which a lot of people think is damned important.

Updated versions! Slackware is current, and it's stable.

New versions of software are by definition unstable. Things change, configs become out of date, new libraries are needed. If you don't mind those things, use Debian Unstable. Its packages are not only up-to-date, but they're also damned good quality.

Re:What Debian needs

[HiThere]

I think that testing is generally a better choice than unstable. I prefer testing with selected packages from unstable...but I never leave the unstable line uncommented through an apt-get upgrade.

Re:What Debian needs

[BigJim.fr]

> -Fork for architectures

Multiple architecture are a good way to make sure that everything is kept clean and generalized. Architecture specific hacks are not acceptable and that's good for everyone. So even thought I only a couple of time used Debian on something other than i386, I think multiple architectures are good for Debian.

> -Dselect needs to be sent to /dev/null

That is you opinion, but I happen to like dselect very much. If you do not like it, you are free to use aptitude or tasksel.

> -Loose the restrictions a little bit

non-free archives are available if you want. For example,
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main

Re:What Debian needs

[HiThere]

It's more than that. I have three machines, and if I'm going to find out the hardware specs of any of them, I've got to check the documentation (and hope that it's there and accurate). But with decent autodetection I don't need to.

OTOH, autodetection DOES mean that I had better turn OFF my internet connection during the install. For some silly reason, probing for ethernet parameters resets the DSL modem parameters. And to fix it I need to connect the Mac directly to the DSL modem and reset them to the proper values. (I don't know what it does, but Linux systems just won't work for this job! And, I suppose, this illustrates the downside of autodetection.)

Re:What Debian needs

[CentrX]

In most cases, you don't need to know the names of any modules in order to install. You do need to know the module name of your NIC if you do a network install.

Re:What Debian needs

[Mr. Darl McBride]

-Dselect needs to be sent to /dev/null. The debian installer was never the problem. It isn't harder than slackware, but dselect really, really sucks.

You sound like someone who never learned to use it well. It's not intuitive, but once you learn it there is absolutely no substitute. This is especially true when tracking unstable and resolving packages depending on other packages which are still pending update. It's possible to get a fully resoluved installation every time, resolving dozens of conflicts with just a few keystrokes.

Re:What Debian needs

[ChrisJones]

All the users of non-exotic archs could very well sick with the version they already have. You can't say that is any less true than your argument, but it is just as silly.

A source distribution is unlikely to be better, especially for non-mainstream stuff. I'd really rather not have my little Sun IPX churning away for weeks trying to build a base image when I can download one in a couple of hours. I have challenged a number of FreeBSD and Gentoo users to give me one *good* reason why source distros are better than binary ones. I instantly discount "because it's cool" and "because optimisations make it faster" because the former is not a *good* reason and the latter is still very much up for debate ;)
I have yet to be given a good answer and I believe I never will, unless CPUs suddenly get a lot faster and compile time is no longer more "expensive" than a bit of downloading.

I like that Debian is exactly the same on my IPX as it is on my desktop x86 box, forking the architectures would only serve to fuck that up. If the tradeoff for that is I have to wait a bit longer for XFree 4.3, so be it, the only interesting new feature for me is coloured/animated mouse pointers, which isn't even that exciting.

Cheers,

Re:What Debian needs

[ultrabot]

All the users of non-exotic archs could very well sick with the version they already have. You can't say that is any less true than your argument, but it is just as silly.

Most of the Linux users use non-exotic architectures. If exotic architectures hinder debian development, something should be done. Actually, there should be a "Debian-oddball" distribution for them, where the volunteers who care about such things would follow the mainstream debian development.

Re:What Debian needs

[adrianbaugh]

Quite.
If, for some reason, you do want to install a package from unstable into a stable debian (or, more likely, a testing debian) all you need to do is apt-get install packagename/unstable. It's really not hard (and, for the hard-of-thinking, well explained in the documentation).

Re:What Debian needs

[Hatta]

I agre, dselect blows. So, I skip it and just apt-get stuff as I need it. That way my system isn't filled with a dozen text editors I'll never use or other whiz-bang shit.

Re:What Debian needs

[Hatta]

What's wrong with lilo?

Re:What Debian needs

[dvdeug]

-Loose the restrictions a little bit:

Debian is 100% Free software. That's a large part of the reason the community of users and developers around Debian exists. You're welcome to expand on Debian and loosen any restrictions you want, but we don't plan to.

why mplayer is missing and xine not? Mplayer has been 100% gpl since 0.9[...]

Because Mplayer was less then 100% GPL prior to 0.9. Because Mplayer has a history of licensing problems, so we're not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Re:What Debian needs

[Michael Woodhams]

If the tradeoff for that is I have to wait a bit longer for XFree 4.3, so be it, the only interesting new feature for me is coloured/animated mouse pointers, which isn't even that exciting.

However, for me it is the difference between 640x480x8 bits and 1280x1024x24 bits. I have had much pain from Debian not having XFree4.3 (partly because I am new to Debian (although >10 years experience on Linux) so I didn't know about backports, where to get unofficial packages, etc.)

Re:What Debian needs

[ChrisJones]

I really couldn't disagree more. If you want a purely x86 focussed distro there are plenty of them to choose from. Debian is alone among Linux distributions in having a rigorous structure and development process so much of the work of maintaining multi-architecture support (and indeed many of the challenges of assembling a distro) is automated.
I personally have Debian running on two x86 boxes, a Sun IPX and my iPAQ. I run a variety of stable and unstable packages on them, so I am at least somewhat aware of the supposed hinderances. Writing an installer would have taken a long time just for x86, and it would kill exotic systems if they had to write their own installers from scratch (I know, I did some work on a hacky Debian installer for the IPAQ).
Supporting all platforms is not absolutely necessary - if people stop using a port then of course it should be retired after a given stable release, but the non-x86 ports are pretty active and of great use to a lot of people. Hell, Bruce Perens is trying to organise a solid Enterprise release of Debian - that will be able to unify servers for corporations across x86, sparc, alpha, mips, whatever legacy machines they have we can present as a unified platform. Not many people can say that, so not many people can offer that kind of flexibility.

I think it would be a great shame if Debian were to throw away one of it's most distinguishing features just to get faster releases of pretty mouse pointers out. A very great shame.

Re:What Debian needs

[Spit]

And lot of other things i can't remember...

Blah blah blah. Well, thanks to Debian's strict free software policy, you can quite easily fork it yourself and build your own distro. Oh, you want SOMEONE ELSE to do all the hard work, only your way. There are several distros which fit the bill, Xandros, Lindows, Lycoris, Knoppix, all are x86 Debian forks with just the features you want.

Re:What Debian needs

[phorm]

-Dselect needs to be sent to /dev/null. The debian installer was never the problem. It isn't harder than slackware, but dselect really, really sucks.

Alternatives do exist. Aptitude isn't bad, though even it could use some improvement. I actually like DSelect for *some* things, but perhaps an option to choose which one you use as default during installation would be nice?

Re:What Debian needs

[tokul]

-Dselect needs to be sent to /dev/null. The debian installer was never the problem. It isn't harder than slackware, but dselect really, really sucks.

Nope, it does not suck. :) It is just not newbie friendly.

-Re-do the stable, testing and unstable package list: they should only contain base, critical packages. So i want to run the latest kde with my stable setup?

/etc/apt/preference http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2002/debian-us er-200208/msg04800.html apt-get install -t sid package

Re:What Debian needs

[Espectr0]

I have yet to be given a good answer

I will give you two.

Number 1: since binary packages are not needed, new versions get out very soon in Gentoo, because it mostly is renaming a file containing the location of the new source file with its md5sum. That's why gnome 2.4 , kde 3.1 and xfree 4.3 where released the same _day_ it was announced. Debian just can't do that.

Number 2: i was yesterday apt-getting gaim on my debian install (which has its days counted). It forced aspell as a dependency. Wtf? I don't want aspell or any dictionary, i actually look at what i type before i send it, and english is not my primary language, so i would still need to apt get the spanish dictionary. With gentoo, i would just configure my USE variable to disable aspell.

There you go

Re:What Debian needs

[ChrisJones]

That's interesting, and I might add they are by far the best answers I've had so far, thank you :)

I am now happier that people do have a good reason at least, but I still don't think it's worth lots of recompiling ;)

Re:What Debian needs

[Ben Hutchings]

aptitude is a pretty good replacement for dselect and is much more user-friendly.

Are you trolling?

[FreeLinux]

My servers have all sorts of hardware that I want supported. My servers have NIC cards, video cards, SCSI cards, RAID Array controllers, Fibre Channel controllers, integrated out of band management controllers, hot-plug PCI controllers, and more. I really like it when the installer detects these and loads the modules for me rather than having to do it manually or recompiling the kernel.

Debian install: my problem

[njdj]

The main problem I had with the Debian installation process was their specification of what should be included in "installation".

Debian install includes setting up the refresh rate of your monitor, for example. This can't always be autodetected reliably, and the Debian install has always made a bad choice for me (usually too low a refresh rate, because the install picks the maximum possible resolution). You can fix this, but you have to be willing to dig and (horrors!) think.

The right thing to do is what Windows has always done: make it easy to change. The guys at Redmond occasionally get something right. The Display Properties | Settings dialog box is very right, and it's time GNU/Linux had something equivalent. We're not too childish to learn from our opponents ... are we?

My questions are...

[Deziex]

(and yes, I did RTFA, the new installer looks very good and kinda-sorta makes me want to go back to Debian, cos APT beats the stuffing out of RPM)

If I choose to install X, even with the new autodetection, do I still have to manually edit the XF86Config file to suit my needs?
Does ALSA/OSS work immediately? Will USB stuff?

(flame appropriately)

Win2k/XP move rather quickly to a GUI

[Kjella]

Now, I haven't clikced through it in a couple months, but I hardly remember setting more than *where* it was going in the text-mode UI. All the actual configuration (localization, components, network settings, additional drivers etc. are set from a GUI after first reboot. (Unless you need them to load a 3rd party driver to for SCSI or RAID).

Anyway, on the Linux side I can only compare it to the RedHat installer, which I think was quite nice. Since the article is slashdotted, I don't know more about Debian's than what is in the summary....

Kjella

Not just for newbies...

[jdreed1024]

While still not a graphical installer (and the article does a good job of explaining why that's not a priority) the installer now autodetects hardware, streamlining module selection, which was previously one of the more confusing parts of the install for newbies.

While seleting modules by hand may not be confusing for non-newbies, it's still annoying. Sure, I know exactly which modules I need, and I could select them all by hand, but I shouldn't have to. One of the great things about RedHat's installer (I know, I know, RedHat is dead) is the kickstart option. I can put in a disk, kickstart a net install, take the disk out, and move on. And barring any unusual hardware, I'll come back to a fully installed system. This is great for bulk-installing machines.

I'm glad to see Debian has moved closer to this goal by doing module auto-detection.

Nice article, cool installer, but...

[petard]

The authors need a little perspective. From the story:

Nobody has more expertise in porting software to different platforms than the Debian project.

They also state that it may be the most broadly deployable OS in existance because it runs on 11 architectures. No mean feat, I'm sure. But others run on more platforms. At least 17 CPU architectures and who knows how many "platforms" :-) Still, I'm excited about this new installer and can't wait to see if/how PGI integrates with it. Apart from this small (and very excusable IMO) bit of myopia the article does a great job of walking you through what to expect... definitely worth saving the link to read when the slashdotting is over if you can't get to it now.

Re:i think i used that(judging from the screenshot

[gl4ss]

i guess. but for individual packages that you know already what you're looking for i still prefer apt-get install over anything(and looking for the packages is pretty handy with apt-cache search).

anyways.. i just remembered that the installer i used was from the xfs bootdisks(may or may not be the same as this new installer, i haven't really been following up).

why xfs? just for kicks..

anything is better than

[josepha48]

what debian currently has... but this does not seem 'next generation' it looks so last century...

All the others have GUI's which, believe it or not alot of people really really like. Easy that a monkey could do it. This doesn't look that easy.

Re:anything is better than

[Nothinman]

Looks can be decieving. Just because it's text doesn't mean it's hard.

And as was mentioned many times before, it's text because they need to support 11 architectures, some of which support installing without any video hardware, so a text installer that can be run over a serial cable is a must. The text installer is the lowest common denominator and that's why it's being done first, the install system is seperated well enough that other front-ends can be written in whatever toolkit you want and a GTK one is already being worked on.

Re:anything is better than

[josepha48]

I didn't say it was hard. The old system was hard. I don't know about this system. It will be interesting to see this when there are GUI installers for debian. Not required GUI's but optional GUI install.

Linux has it, Debian is just a little behind...

[Cid Highwind]

The right thing to do is what Windows has always done: make it easy to change.

XFree 4.3 has an extension called randr that allows changing resolution and vertical refresh on the fly, and the latest versions of both Gnome and KDE now include control panel applets for setting resolution and refresh rate. How long it will take for that to trickle down into Debian stable is anyone's guess, but the Linux community at large is already there.

Re:Linux has it, Debian is just a little behind...

[BigFootApe]

extension called randr that allows changing resolution and vertical refresh on the fly

I use experimental X4.3 under Debian. While randr is cool, it does not address the problem related by the parent^2 poster.

You can't easily alter monitor specs on the fly using randr. If the config program lowballs the monitor's abilities, you have to manually repair the XF86Config-4 file, or dpkg-reconfigure, or whatever you use to gen the config.

Gripe; The question developers should ask...

[snilloc]

The question developers should ask themselves about every option and screen in the new Debian installer is whether a reasonably knowledgable person could figure it out without a walkthrough or printed directions.

For the most part, this is a huge improvement on the old Debian installer. But I have a gripe about figure 34exim.jpeg ("Which Major configuration? local, internet, smarthost, satellite, none"). Would it kill them to put some brief descriptions like "workstation", "home", "server", or "laptop"?

Even easier.

[Inoshiro]

"It was probably easier to write something from scratch than adapt say RedHat's installer to meet those requirements. It also doesn't sound as crude as your making it out to be. This installer has hardware detection and automatic module configuration. "

Implement the equivalent of latebinding for the installer. The bootable CD/DISK need only know how to get a base FS structure setup with a kernel+network driver and basic userland + rest of the installer. Stage 2 (located on a harddrive with network access, etc) could then be a text or GUI, and do all the rest with simplified logic because the initiall installation part was separate.

This is how all the recent Windows flavours do it, as well as some other OSes.

Re:Even easier.

[MarkSyms]

And that is how debian has done it since about 1998 (or whenever potato came out).

However you still need at least the basic driver installing before the reboot i.e. network, drive controller (scsi anyone?) etc.

Lazy not to know the internal kernel mechanics?

[Kjella]

The disadvantage with installer is that users generally become lazy because of the very nature of an installer. It's purpose is to automatically detect a user's hardware - if it does not, then a user will likely give up and not naturally, say, update a drive in the kernel.

I'll take the most ridiculous part of that statement first... there's nothing natural about knowing how to update a driver in the kernel. Maybe it's a as natural as to clean the spark plugs for an auto mechanic, but in both cases you it only comes "naturally" because you understand how the computer/car works. An average person would go "Huh?"

So what's the installer for? It's not for making you "lazy", it's a tool to help you do yourself what most people would *never* do otherwise. The alternative wouldn't be to take a CS degree or a mechanic's education, the alternative would be to hire in a specialist ($$$) such as yourself to do it for them. That way, the customer would end up with a turn-key system/car, which in the end is all the customer wants.

Kjella

This is a new installer! ALERT!

[Spl0it]

Everyone on here is bitching away how the Debian 'installer' sucks. I think what you mean is their old installer sucked ass. How can you call this one shity, when it has everything but pretty pictures? Text is nice, and I for one don't need a picture for everything while I install a system. How can you say its only up to 'redhat 7' when it has everything redhat9.2 has and more. Realize that this is a new installer, this story is not called 'Lets bitch about the 'installer' and assume it still sucks like the old one'. This is not a flaimbait.... I just want people to know that debian did what was needed. A new installer, and look a new installer is what they've come up with. Understand something before you make statements about it. The installer 'is up to redhat7.0 standards'. Lets avoid ignorant statements, and obviously flaimbaits. This is not a flaimbait, its just my discust of having all these mod 3+ posts that talk about it sucking etc etc.. I think we all know the old one sucked, becaise it was extremely old, broken and missing important features.

Re:This is a new installer! ALERT!

[Hatta]

And how many architectures does red hat support?

Re:not yet graphical?

[Arker]

There are a number of good reasons not to do the install in Graphics mode. It's not necessary. It would introduce unecessary complexity in a crucial operation (installation) that doesn't require such complexity - that alone is good reason to veto the idea. Setting up the video properly is one of the most difficult things to do, and when you have a graphics mode installer a failure in setting that up properly on auto becomes a fatal error rather than a minor inconvenience. Plus a lot of Linux installations don't use graphics mode anyway - why go to the windows way of requiring a graphics card on machines that should be running headless and accessed via telnet and/or console cables only? Plenty of people use linux on machines that don't have a graphics system of any kind, and that's fine, in many cases it's a good thing. Why make an installer that won't work on a sizable portion of the machines that will run the software you're installing? How much sense does that make?

If it ain't broke don't fix it is an axiom for a reason - and making a graphic mode installer would be a great example of fixing something that isn't broke. The Debian installer could certainly be improved though, and from the article it seems they've made excellent choices in deciding what needs to be improved - and what isn't broken and shouldn't be fixed.

Installer thoughts

[Mustang Matt]

I'm personally moving all of my servers from SuSE 7.3-8.2 to Debian. For server installs I don't care about GUI. The Debian install worked great when I started with the 2.4 kernel and it detected my compaq smart array 3200 controller.

However, an average desktop user needs a graphical install. Maybe not through debian though... I mean maybe debian becomes the server/power user version and knoppix becomes the desktop install for the average computer user.

That being said, knoppix's hardware detection locks up on some of my off the shelf compaq servers. I never troubleshot the problem to see which piece of hardware it was hanging on.

Re:Installer thoughts

[treat]

However, an average desktop user needs a graphical install.

Is the average desktop user even going to be able to tell the difference between graphics mode and text moed with curses(-like) menus?

Re:Installer thoughts

[hawkline]

I've had several distros hang on my older Proliants, try nousb at boot and see if that helps at all.

Debian Installer

[gotw]

Now I have to say, I tried to use this installer a few weeks ago. I know it's a work in progress, but it was basically entirely non functional on my computer. Bits crashed, bits had to be fixed in other virtual terminals, then it stopped switching virtual terminals (the main installer started writing all over them). In the end, I gave up and used the stable base installer and used apt to get unstable.
It didn't look like it was very near release, or at least, there's some frantic work to be done.

Re:Cool

[SydShamino]

Agreed. When I installed Linux for the first time a month ago, I chose Debian. I took notes on another machine as I worked, and noted the following:

Quote, starting right after I set up the filesystem:

Now the installation path becomes too complicated too quickly. The installer asks me to identify the modules that I need, without telling me what it already identified. It also provides the lists via menus, and I foolishly didn't write down the hardware list in the machine. I use a network card and sound card built onto the motherboard; these may not be supported but I really have no way of knowing at this point, nor could I go grab a driver for them from the internet and have any clue as to how to install it.

I do add the lp module for parallel printer support. At least I may be able to print.

Interesting. After I give up and assume that I will not have network support, the next page of the installer says "You have a network device, but it is not yet configured. Press Next to configure." If it knew I had a network card, why didn't it say so before I had to worry about finding its driver? (Woo! DHCP works!)

End Quote

As far as a graphical installer goes... well, a text installer is great for me, but I would rather have a pretty graphical one that let me use a mouse instead. It also opens up the opportunity for a user to more easily customize his or her installation; optional popup submenus get messy quickly on a text only screen.

Re:Cool

[13Echo]

Any modern Linux distribution that has Hotplug can autodetect most standard hardware. It's been that way for some time. The exception is sometimes the videocard, but most distributions have a program that detects display devices and configures it for X. Even Slackware does this. These days, it requires very little work. Shoot. Even soundcards are autodetected and configured on Slack 9.1. This was a problem for many people in the past.

Keep in mind though that any new devices aren't always going to be autoconfigured, even on Windows. Windows, on the other hand, almost always has binary installers for device drivers.

Hard Disk Partitioning / LILO Install

[AELinuxGuy]

For me anyway, the most difficult part of setting up Debian has been the uncertainty in the disk partitioning / Lilo setup. Unfortunately, these screenshots do not show much of a change in that area. As the author suggests, some sort of "automatic partitioning" like Anaconda does would be a nice addition.

On another front, is there any reason why the installer cannot let you choose in between GRUB and LILO like Anaconda does?

Re:Hard Disk Partitioning / LILO Install

[runswithd6s]

There is an automatic partitioning option, but personally I'm much more picky about how my disk is set up. The article actually gives a sane setup for newbies.

Re:Hard Disk Partitioning / LILO Install

[Mawbid]

Me too!

I started a post about partitioning earlier but found I had so much to say that I'd have to spend more time than I cared to on it.

The condensed version: 1) Unexparienced users can't decide how many partition to use and how much space to give each one. 2) I don't buy the argument that only administrators and system builders should be running installers anyway. It's useful for normal people to be able to install an OS. 3) If normal people install their own OS, they don't do it often. Most installer users will be first-time users, so the first time has to be easy.

Therefore, it is absolutely inexcusable to force users to decide how their disk is partitioned. (And about as inxcusable to not give then the choice if they want to.)

The installer then has the difficult task of picking the right partition sizes on a variety of disk sizes and for a variety of usage patterns. It will fail some of the time, but all in all, I think a developer who is intimately familiar with Debian and can refine his partition sizing routine in future versions based on user feedback will get it right in more cases than the users themselves ever will.

Then again, maybe we should think more about solving the underlying problem instead of helping people work around it. That problem is the finality of the partitioning choice made during installation. Systems grow. Systems are repurposed. The partition table stays the same. I move /var/cache/apt somewhere else and link to it from /var/cache.

We now have advanced filesystems with live-resize features. We have the device mapper. As far as I know, neither Debian nor any other distro enables users below the wizard level to use these features to tweak their partition sizes with confidence and ease. If we could do that, the partitioning phase of installation wouldn't be as daunting as it is.

Re:Hard Disk Partitioning / LILO Install

[binford2k]

Please read the second to last line.

When will this be default?

[bkhl]

Is this already the installer you get with Debian, or is it still in development.

I'm thinking of going back from Gentoo to Debian, but it seems sensible to wait until this new installer is deployed.

Re:When will this be default?

[nestler]

This will be the installer you get with the upcoming stable release of Debian (Sarge). Right now it is still in development. If you want to wait until this is deployed, wait for the announcement that Sarge is released and then go try it out.

Re:someday

[antiMStroll]

He/she presumably came to the conclusion that it adds little or none. He/she is probably right.

'Right' under a limited set of conditions: for Debian developers and the Debian familiar. Not at all right for users new to Linux or Debian.

Why the Fuss?

[displaced80]

Debian's had an excellent installer for a while now...

It's called Knoppix

I was looking to install a Linux distribution that did things how the package authors intended, not how the distributor thought things should work. Red Hat et. al... tended to modify original packages, file locations, etc. a bit too much for my liking.

Knoppix's hdinstall method got me an up & running Debian install in one easy step. The boot CD lets you test your hardware for compatibility before anything's installed. When everything's tested, a simple hdinstall invocation copies the working system over to disk.

Easy as pie.

Re:Why the Fuss?

[runswithd6s]

You obviously didn't read the article. The debian-installer is about presenting a consistent installation method for eleven, count them, 11 architectures. Yes, Knoppix works great for i386 and its grandchildren, but doesn't work so great for sparc.

Remember, Debian isn't just a desktop distribution.

Re:Why the Fuss?

[displaced80]

Sorry about that - re-read my post and it's more flippant in tone than it should've been.

I did RTA, and you're absolutely correct. The point I was rather ham-fistedly attempting to make was that debian's current lack of an installer does not mean it should take second place to distro's such as Mandrake or Red Hat on the x86 platform (or on the PPC platform either, where Knoppix is also available).

A good graphical installer exists, folks...

[MsGeek]

Think Knoppix.

Good, we're thinking Knoppix here. Anyway, for those who want a brain-dead easy Debian install, this is exactly what we want to do.

Let's break this down like the old Mac commercials. Step one, boot your CD-ROM bootable computer to Knoppix. Step two, open the Root Shell and type knx-hdinstall.

There's no step three! There's no step three!

This is the reason why what Debian is doing to make their text-mode installer more friendly and more modern is just fine, and why Knoppix is a viable graphical installer for Debian, or at least the Knoppix flavor of Debian.

Knoppix

[PurpleBob]

The easiest Debian installer is Knoppix.

You boot from a Knoppix CD, and all you have to do is install a base system and apt to your hard disk, and you've got a Debian system that's already configured.

They should acknowledge this fact and officially support Knoppix as an install method for desktop users. Then they can still focus their installer on people who want to install Debian on an Alpha over their serial line.

Re:Knoppix

[adamfranco]

Actually, I just tried the Knoppix install and it wouldn't boot. For some reason none of the modules would load when booting. I find this pretty weird since knoppix boots just fine.

Oh well, I guess I'll just wait till this new Debian installer comes out so I can move off Red Hat.

The ultimate installer....

[armando_wall]

...would be that one which reads my mind and installs the OS exactly the way I want it.

I wouldn't care whether it's graphical or text-based ;-D

Re:mplayer is just as gpl as xine is

[Carewolf]

Yes and no. Xine contains ffmpeg code, but they have removed the parts potentially covered by known patents (License is not the problem with ffmpeg, patents are).

MPlayer is kept out for personal reasons, but not the personal reasons of the Debian develops, but thoose of the mplayer team. They are the ones making a fuss, and keeping mplayer out. Look at how they bitch about SuSE who packaged mplayer, basically they do not want distributions to package their software.

Re:NetBSD rules them all!

[repetty]

"Just use NetBSD, all you need is two floppy disks to install it from network."

Which begs the question... what is a floppy disk?

--Richard

Looong Overdue

[rinkjustice]

I could deal with dselect and the overall clunkiness of the install interface, but what burned me was how Debian took the liberty of shuffling my IRQ settings everytime I installed it (and God knows what else it did to my BIOS). Of course Windows wigged out apon boot up, so I'm running Redhat.

Debians still cool, but I need what little sanity I have left!

Re:Looong Overdue

[rinkjustice]

Oooh,I've touched a nerve. That must've hurt. Sorry big guy. Ok, so it's the particular way Debian configured the kernel.

Is that better? Are you gonna get some sleep now?

Seems semi-pointless

[Sabalon]

Looks pretty pointless.

About the only thing it appears to do different is hardware detection. I guess that's a good thing as it seems every hardware type has 50 subvarieties - gee...is it a 3c509 or a 3c905 that's in this machine? Usually gets me once in a while.

And it automates the network settings by assuming you want DHCP.

Then, what is probably one of the more complex things for people who would whine about the installer, disk partitioning, is left to the same crappy program. Same with partition mounting and filesystem selection.

Why on earth if you are assuming the person must just want DHCP would you require them to manually partition and set mountpoints, end even more so, why would you offer them a choice of filesystems? If you think they can't setup networking on their own, just give them ext3 and be done.

And after you reboot, you still have tasksel and dselect as ways of installing packages. These SUCK. If you're gonna try to cater to people who think Debian sucks cause the installer, perhaps you should work on the way that an average joe would select packages. A simple curses front end to apt-cache search and apt-get would take care of this. Don't do like dselect does and as soon as they say they want package X, tell them package Y,Z, and Q are required....just let them select it, perhaps as part of the description have the depedencies listed.

Re:Seems semi-pointless

[evil_one]

File a bug on debian-installer saying so.
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi? pkg=d ebian-installer

Re:Seems semi-pointless

[vastabo]

At this point somebody usually mentions using Aptitude instead of dselect.

Re:Seems semi-pointless

[Sabalon]

Never used it...I don't whine about the installer...I do a bare minimal install and apt-get as needed :)

Still looks a little overwhelming for newbies...though given the number of packages avail...only so much simplicity can be designed.

Re:Seems semi-pointless

[mbanck]

Looks pretty pointless.

The actual point of the new debian-installer is that the code of the old one is/was an unmaintainable, monolithic piece of shit that nobody (including its last maintainer) wanted to touch with a pole, much less compile.

The new debian-installer introduces 'microdebs', which are stripped down debian packages for all components. This makes it extremely flexible and modular, as they are built from the same source packages as the according ordinary packages and normal debian archive tools are applied to them. Additionally, the user interface heavily relies on debconf (AFAIK), which makes changing it a matter of writing a new debconf frontend (of which several exist already).

Oh, and it has hardware-detection, btw.

Don't do like dselect does and as soon as they say they want package X, tell them package Y,Z, and Q are required....just let them select it, perhaps as part of the description have the depedencies listed.

That's probably the stupidiest thing I've read in the comments to this article. What do you think 'Depends' are for? (I haven't read them all, of course)

Michael

Re:Seems semi-pointless

[Sabalon]

I want to install some package - say Samba. I go into dselect and tell it to install Samba. It pops up that it'll also install samba-common, libcups, etc...

Who gives a fuck? Just do as I asked - select Samba for installation and let me move on, not confirm that I understand that installing Samba installs something else as well....for every damn package I select. If it must show me dependencies, show them at the very end as a general overview of "other packages that will be installed to meet dependencies".

But thanks for the info about the complete code rewite. Didn't notice that.

Re:Seems semi-pointless

[jonoxer]

Then, what is probably one of the more complex things for people who would whine about the installer, disk partitioning, is left to the same crappy program. Same with partition mounting and filesystem selection.

Yes, and I made mention of that very thing in the article, but luckily it looks like it'll be taken care of by the proper release: if you boot the installer in a more verbose mode (such as by typing "linux DEBCONF_PRIORITY=medium") there is actually a tool to handle all the partitioning for you automatically. You just don't see it if you do a normal install. The developers intend to have that option more generally accessible in future builds.

Debian installed

[oohp]

I for one don't like the Debian installer. I find it hard to use and confusing. And if dselect wasn't evil enough you are now stuck with this thing which automatically selects sets of packages with some packages you don't need and then have to deinstall. If you don't want that, you have the choice of using deslect. Yay! Don't get me wrong. I was a long time Debian user and I'll probably use it again. But the installer pretty much sucks and there's room for improvement. There's no need for a GUI, just a better text installer.

On the other hand I find the Slackware and FreeBSD installers very easy to use. The FreeBSD installer exit options are a bit confusing at first, but after you get used it just rocks. No comment about the Slackware installer. It's almost perfect.

Re:Debian installed

[mbanck]

I for one don't like the Debian installer.

Good news, then. This article is about the *new* installer!

Michael

Re:Debian installed

[oohp]

It looks exactly like the old one. I won't be surprised if any of the issues I mentioned aren't fixed.

Add me to the list of persons not impressed

[MSG]

Is it just me, or does the Debian project as a whole seem to have the nastiest case of NIH ever?

Lets see... installer needs to work on multiple architectures. Anaconda is used on all of PPC (Yellowdog), x86, s390. I think that's good evidence that it fits the bill.

Installer should to work on everything from serial cable to graphical interfaces. I've used anaconda on RLX blades with a serial interface, and my workstations with graphical interfaces.

Installer should handle CDROM, HTTP, FTP, NFS, hard drive sources for the install media. Yep, anaconda does those.

And furthermore, the idea that "nobody has more expertise in porting software to different platforms than the Debian project" is pompous and ludicrous. I don't have to say anything other than "NetBSD" as an answer to that.

Red Hat's employees have commented that when they seriously thought about joining the Debian project when they were planning the future of their hobbyist/developer distribution, but decided that it probably wouldn't work out. Articles like this remind me why.

I seriously doubt that the Debian team even looked at the available GPL licensed installers before deciding to write their own from scratch.

Re:Add me to the list of persons not impressed

[mbanck]

I seriously doubt that the Debian team even looked at the available GPL licensed installers before deciding to write their own from scratch.

Please note that the new Debian-Installer was already scheduled for woody, but did not make it in time. Debian then had to rescue the old boot-floppies and get them uptodate, which took about a year, delaying woody significantly (along with various other things). Thus, this "new" installer actually got started at least 2-3 years ago. I honestly don't know whether Anaconda was available back then or what other installers where evaluated. Also note that debian-installer is heavily interweaved with ordinary debian packages and debconf, the standard debian package configuration system, which makes it quite modular and easily maintainable from a Debian point of view.

Michael

Re:Add me to the list of persons not impressed

[MSG]

Three down, eight to go (Debian installs on *11* architectures).

My point was simply that anaconda IS cross platform. It would be easier to add support for a new achitecture to the existing modular software than to write a new system from scratch.

the article explained why the existing efforts weren't good enough for Debian's purposes

And those reasons didn't convince me that this was worthwhile. It reeked of NIH. All of the requirements listed were provided by several other installers that are available and GPL licensed.

Re:mplayer is just as gpl as xine is

[evil_one]

Also of note, http://marillat.free.fr/ has mplayer packages that work extremely well for stable, testing and unstable Debian.

Re:not yet graphical?

[grolschie]

Probably the same reason why Windows NT, 2000 or XP don't have a graphical installer until the later stage of the install. It makes it compatible with most hardware.

Debian already has a great graphical installer...

[adrianbaugh]

It's called "a KNOPPIX CD". Fire it up, type "su knoppix-install", choose "debian system", and sit back and enjoy. The only enhancement they probably ought to make is to have a prominent menu-item for this feature.

I think so.

[Mustang Matt]

Maybe I'm wrong but I would think even the most basic users would recognize the difference. I mean there are a lot of people that freak out when they don't have a mouse pointer on the screen.

Granted, maybe those aren't the right audience to be selling on using linux on their desktop anyway, but I kind of think without those people it will be tough to gain market share.

Re:I think so.

[treat]

You can do a mouse pointer in text mode. You take a four character square and change those characters two four high-ascii characters you're not otherwise using. Change the font for these characters to position the pointer within that block.

Re:NetBSD rules them all!

[zaphod_es]

Just use NetBSD, all you need is two floppy disks to install it from network.

That is quite amazing!! I just installed Woody on a PC over the network and it took THREE floppies.

Game set and match to NetBSD.

ZB

Re:not yet graphical?

[The Almighty Dave]

Because pressing the enter key is not that much harder than clicking a mouse button

Re:It's about time x1488

[spinkham]

This issue varies from distro to distro. Under debian I've never had any problems like that, which is part of the reason I use it on my laptop.
On my desktop I use Source Mage, which sometimes has those sorts of problems, but It's worth it for me for the learning and control it gives me.

Those kooky Debian folks

[sharkey]

Next Gerneration Debian Installer.

Where do they come up with these names? And what does it mean? I don't even know what a Gerneration is, much less what the Next one will be like.

Re:not yet graphical?

[Doomdark]

Setting up the video properly is one of the most difficult things to do

...

Plenty of people use linux on machines that don't have a graphics system of any kind,

True enough, but aren't there also systems that might not have text mode? (used to be the case for Sun work stations? newer ones use stock PC gfx cars, may be not the case any more).

Text mode is a weird legacy component of modern PC graphics cards; it seems to outlast its companions from past decades like floppies and ISA slots. In many ways it'd be a step forward to get rid of that part of hardware, and just do everything via normal bitmap graphics?

... not this really is all that relevant for average Linux-on-x86 PC users.

Re:not yet graphical?

[qtp]

but aren't there also systems that might not have text mode? (used to be the case for Sun work stations?

Just because you don't know where the console is doesn't mean it's not there. (hint, serial ports are not just for modems and mice.)

Text mode is a weird legacy component of modern PC graphics cards

I guess this is why the folks at Redmond have decided to include a reasonably featured shell in thier next OS. Face it, text modes are going to exist in the hardware whether or not your OS is using them.

just do everything via normal bitmap graphics?

becayuse you are now requiring more programming and a larger minimum OS in order to do a job that is better handled in the hardware.

Your assumptions are those of a person who has not spent much time in a console, which is a legitimate choice, and thus does not understand that not only is this an inexpensive "feature" for the graphics card vendors, but that there is (and will contue to be) a demand for it from users. If there was no text mode to access, then how would you troubleshoot your faulty graphics driver and how would you interact with your bios configuration? Where would your "post" messages be printed, or do you think that your bios should have a full featured windowing system using bitmapped graphics as well?

Re:not yet graphical?

[qtp]

Because pressing the enter key is not that much harder than clicking a mouse button

Actually it's much easier. The enter key does not need to be aligned with a button to work.

Debian install isn't THAT bad

[TheViewFromTheGround]

I ain't no genius, but I'm pretty handy with Linux. My server recently suffered a motherboard failure, and since I had to crack the box and do lots of work on it anyway, I decided to give up on RH 7.3 and go to Debian for stability and security. After having heard how nasty the installer was, I was relatively impressed with how easily it went. I used one of the LiveCD installers packaged by the Debian team members. It was *much* smoother than the Gentoo install I did recently on a home system.

Anyway, I'm not going to diss efforts to make a better installer, but I didn't find Debian installation to be as bad as folks have told me it would be, and the distro itself is just lovely once working.

Re:Sure they are...

[SquadBoy]

You must be doing something wrong. My epro 10/100 works just by loading the module during the install and the CD writer "just works". /me wonders what is wrong with you?

Re:not yet graphical?

[Doomdark]

I guess this is why the folks at Redmond have decided to include a reasonably featured shell in thier next OS. Face it, text modes are going to exist in the hardware whether or not your OS is using them.

I guess you are giving a knee-jerk reply without using your brains or even reading the text trying to understand it. Using serial-port connection to connect to systems has nothing to do with what I wrote.

Shell is not tied to character mode of graphics card in any way; perhaps you are familiar with thing called "xterm"? Shells are tied to textual mode of controlling things, which I have nothing against. And your assumption on my level of experience with consoles, shell, etc, are based on no facts whatsoever (hint: my first real programming was done with 65xx machine code).

As to "inexpensiveness" of text mode; it's only cheap (if it is) because it has been done and "is already there". Same way as full 8086 compatibility is "free" for latest Intel chips. Text modes of course boil down to specialized control of vanilla standard control of pixels, just at low-level. There's no reason why it couldn't as easily be done at BIOS (etc) level, just using straight bitmapped controls just as with any graphics output device.

Re:Sure they are...

[goat_attack]

If you're working with a personal workstation, it's usualy worthwhile to use testing or unstable instead of stable. Change the references to stable in your /etc/apt/sources.list to testing. In practice, they're more than stable enough. Just don't try to do apg-get upgrade or dist-upgrade, you might break dependencies. Only apt-get the stuff you need up to date. I've never had problems with debian detecting my eepro100 though.

I haven't seen any distro that does CD burning very easily though, so the problem isn't localized to debian by any means.

& to add to that...

[M$Marketing]

I don't really care about a pretty install,

...sometimes a picture is worth a 1000 words. In situations where graphics would be clearer, I would rather have graphics. However, in most/all situations, I think that a text based system would be better. After all, a good gui is going to have a help button for every screen, & what pops up when the user clicks for help? Text! This just goes to show that often times, 1000 words is better than a gui.

To further prove this point, ever been to an art gallery? Ever noticed that the paintings aren't always very useful or good? I went to an art gallery once, the only reason that I got anything out of the experience was because of a self guided tour, which had words!

I'm just glad they finally got hardware detection.

I whole heartedly agree. I think that the next generation of installers will make software suggestions based on hardware cofigurations. For example:

I see you have foo card. Many users love to make use of bar package, so that they can biz the baz. You seem to have enough left over space on your hard drive, & installing it should not slow the computer. Would you like me to try installing it? You can always install/uninstall it later.

This type of a suggestion works well with all types of users. Here's another example.

I see that you haven't installed foo package. A lot of security experts install it so that bar won't happen. If don't install it, then your computer will work well still, but experts advise you to avoid using your computer in the following types of situations:
biz
baz
etc.

Want a Debian installer w/hardware detection?

[pegr]

It's called Knoppix...

Re:not yet graphical?

[qtp]

inexpensive = "requires very few resources"

And thats generally a good thing, unless you're one of those idiots who think that the computer industry will continue to be driven by heavier and heavier app/OS combos that take away any possible advantage the latest chipsets and CPUs give us.

I don't see any reason to eliminate something that works well, is easy to program for, and is usable even when the rest of your system is gone to shit (although that should never happen).

Sorry about my stupid assumption about who I was responding to, it's just that you were echoing an argument I've mostly heard from Windows and Mac devotees that do not have the same expirience that you have. They are usually the people who argue that capabilities be scrapped for no other reason than they've been around for a while.

Welcome Silent Switch

[oddmake]

I use Japanese keyboard.
When I misconfigured X11,I must type the keyboard with english keyboard mapping.

I had really hard time.

Re:Welcome Silent Switch

[CyberDruid]

Why you tell me this?

Have a look at Mandrake or SuSE then

[leonbrooks]

I haven't seen any distro that does CD burning very easily though

I installed Mandrake 9.2 on this laptop. It didn't even mention the CD burner, because the machine doesn't have one (but it didn't on the desktop box underneath it either, which has a Sony CRX220E1 52x24x52 IDE CD burner in it). I effortlessly pulled 503 photos from a Sony DSC-F717 camera onto my laptop during the course of a day. I plugged in a "Genesys" 5.25-inch external USB2 cage containing an IDE DVD burner (a Pioneer DVR-106D) and put a CD blank into it.

• K, Applications, Archiving, CD Burners, k3b;
  
• drag folder to "Data1" project;
  
• click Burn.

I waited 3 minutes. My wife is delivering the resulting CD (and two spare children) to her sister as I type. SuSE is similarly easy, but I still prefer Mandrake.

You should get out and about more often. (-:

I think a Debian user would be asking you...

[leonbrooks]

...questions like "What's a reboot?"

Windows often comes up in a full colour screen after a reboot, as long as the full colour you had in mind was blue. Well... I say "full colour", but it's got some white lettering on it too.

Re:I think a Debian user would be asking you...

[typobox43]

Agreed... I was just pointing out that XP does use the text-mode setup for the first stage. Can't say I've ever installed Linux from a text-mode installer before - only distro I've ever installed is Mandrake... although I've been considering switching to Debian lately.

Mandrake only needs one floppy (or CD)...

[leonbrooks]

...but it does need 56MB (ie, 64MB less 8MB for a built-in video card) of RAM to install, because it crams so much stuff into RAMdisks.

AFAICT The installer's written almost entirely in PERL, and has several text modes as well, which would make porting it to those fabulous 11 different architectures much easier. If you could make the initial logic just that tiny bit cleverer and eliminate most of the RAMdisk stuff for most configurations, it'd probably install in 8 or 16MB.

Text is best

[Chicks_Hate_Me]

I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels this way. Graphical installers introduce too many glitches and failures. Many of times I've ran into installing Mandrake and having it freeze on me, only having to reboot and try again.

Debian and Slackware installers are probably my favorite (never tried FreeBSD but it looks the same), they are smooth and not that confusing if you actually read. I've tried Redhat text install and it didn't feel as smooth. Graphical installers are not necessary especially if you're going to be setting up a server that's not going to use a GUI anyways. All I ask is for easy menus and a back button to fix any mistakes I've made.

The auto detection is a nice feature, but isn't necessary in my situation because I know all the hardware I have. Although I see this helpful in a corporate environment where you don't know what kind of hardware is set up on a client's computer.

Overall I think this new installer is a great compromise. We don't have the shiny GUI install where a mindless drone can just "duhhh next next next", but at the same time, the install is much easier. Plus no worrying about your installer trying to figure how to get your funky video card to work in X ;)

Re:Sure they are...

[sammy baby]

With respect to your travails, I've done metric ass-tons of Debian installs using the net-install floppies. A signifigant number of these (I'd guess half) used the Intel 10/100 drivers. I've had only the mildest of problems with them, mostly periodic "card reports no resources" kernel messages.

CD writers, on the other hand - dunno. You're on your own there.

Re:Hey look, the debian support people are here!

[ogre57]

I don't have any problem using Redhat or Fedora

Last May purchased a brandy-new laptop and Redhat 9 boxed set. Supplied kernel refused to see the pccard slots, 2 of 3 usb ports, firewire, or modem. Updated kernel does find all usb and pccard.

Spent much of this past week trying to get Fedora Core 1 to install/work on same box. Looks purty, but buggy, crashes; reminds me of Windows XP actually.

Spent one evening installing SuSE 8.2. Didn't check firewire. Everything else worked, first time, straight out of the box, including internal modem.

Just spent an hour installing "antique" Debian 3.0r1. Everything worked first try except firewire (untested) and internal modem. Didn't have to load any special modules. Install seemed easier than Redhat 9's to me. Online with Debian now installing security updates, something I could not do with Redhat 9 "out of the box", and gave up on Fedora without ever getting as far.

I prefer to get work done, rather than fskcing around with my CD drive for days

Granted ymmv, this is one reason why I expect to dump Redhat/Fedora in favor of Debian. Too often I have to futz with things in Redhat whereas in Debian they "just work". Another is that while Debian stable is intentionally ancient, many package in their testing branch are newer than Redhat's latest offerings. Debian's sid routinely has something packaged within days of its upstream release. This discrepancy is one flaw RHE/Fedora split is intended to address.

GUI Still needed

[nurb432]

A 'nice pretty' GUI installer is still needed if you want the unwashed masses to warm up to it.

Techie types, sure we can do with out, but the market share of the general public is what you are after..

And to get there, you must make it brainless and pretty...

Re:not yet graphical?

[Arker]

Using serial-port connection to connect to systems has nothing to do with what I wrote.

But it does. It has a lot to do with it, because a text-mode installer will work through one, and a bitmapped GUI one won't.

Or how about redhat

[strobert]

now I am a command line guy for more things that most folks. (I like being able to use things like a pipe or a single command to do a fileop that would take thousands of clicks in a GUI, but that is another discussion) back to CD burning.

In both rh6.2 and rh7.3, cd burning has been cake!.
used both scsi and ide burners under rh6.2, ide under 7.3. In all cases just have mkisofs and cdrecord instaleld and then do:
mkisofs -J -T -R -v -o
cdrecord -v dev=0,0,0
(the dev may vary depending on your hardware config, than is what cdrecord -scanbus is for)

Have no idea about burning under a RH GUI but see above :)

Re:Sure they are...

[bsharitt]

I've never got Debian to work with my network card or sound card. Red Hat 8.0 got the network but missed the sound. Mandrake 9.1 got both.

Re:Hey look, the debian support people are here!

[PD]

The other guy you're talking to is too polite, but I'm not.

The problem that you have with Debian is that you're an ass. The guy commented that you must be doing something wrong, and you insulted him. The Debian network driver for your card does indeed work perfectly.

One word...

[theTerribleRobbo]

... 'Frontend' (split into two and hyphenated if you please).

A frontend can be written that'll, say, automatically select options (eg. Auto-select Qwerty). But there'll still be a text-based interface to allow power users to do whatever they please.

It's the best of both (Friendly vs Functional) worlds.

Re:Sure they are...

[Trepalium]

I haven't seen any distro that does CD burning very easily though, so the problem isn't localized to debian by any means.

The Linux 2.6 kernel should take care of this problem nicely. On 2.6, instead of having to tell cdrecord where your burner is by host,lun,id, you can tell it where it is by device (/dev/hdc). Discovering which /dev/hd? devices are CD drives is also easier thanks to sysfs. I believe Joerg Schilling still insists that every device should be SCSI, even when it's not, but it doesn't matter. No more ide-scsi mess, no more stupid kernel arguments to exclude a particular IDE device from the ide-cd driver, and no more cloned devices because SCSI LUN support is on. From now on, all CD-RW drives can be accessed via the device node that rightly belongs to it.

Re:Sure they are...

[Valar]

I'm on gentoo, and all I did was emerge xcdroast. Everything just worked. Honestly, I was amazed.

"Is the public's faith..."

[daevt]

The answer to that is no. It is more important for the results to reflect the exercise than for the people to have faith in the collection method. To be perfectly frank, if the gov't wants to use electronic voting machines, it will. It is the duty of those who build and test the machines to make sure that the machines are tamper-evident and relieble. If the system does not function securely, then it must not be used. IMHO, if there is no paper receipt for the votes cast, the incentive to cheat will be overwhelming. One solution to this issue might be to have an electronic voting machine which punches a card (like a butterfly ballot or an IBM-style punchcard) indicating what vote was cast. These votes could be counted electrically, but would retain a physical record of the vote. Thus there would be the same sort of instant tally that a fully electronic system offers, but there also would be physical receipts to confirm the tally in the case of any questions. If the physical votes do not match the electronic one, you know you have a problem. Each precinct gets exactly the number of voting cards they need for all of their registered voters, returning the unused ones to ensure that there are no votes being replaced with forged votes.

My take....

[NerveGas]

The debian installer, overall, isn't all that terrible. The package selection, however, is attrocious. You have two options: Install everything, or spend hours flipping back and forth between the choices and the "fulfill your dependencies" screen a thousand times. If the package selection were designed without the intent of making your life tedious and boring, then the process would be much better. The process isn't hard, it's just long and drawn out.

Now, lest anyone think that this is a Debian-bash, other installers and package-selectors have their flaws as well. RedHat lets you choose packages quickly, and deal with dependencies afterward. However, once it's figured out your dependencies, you either have to go back and try it yourself, or make a blanket decision that will affect all of the packages. A combination of the two would be nice - pick your packages, then let it figure out the dependencies, and let you choose on a package-by-package basis what you want to do.

In RedHat's case, the dependencies are insane. While Perl is a really need programming language, the idea of having a non-working vi because Perl isn't present seems insane to me. And the idea that X-windows just won't work without openssl isn't much better!

Re:Sure they are...

[goat_attack]

My prayers have been answered...

Re:Hey look, the debian support people are here!

[PD]

Same network drive. It loads just fine.

When you marked me as a foe, that's just like HITLER marked me as a foe.

I'm reposting this b/c of moderation abuses.

[Tim]

In the parent post, I express a legitimate concern about the quality of the Debian install process. I believe I have been unfairly censored, so I will repost the core of my complaint.

To recap: I just bought a new system, containing fairly run-of-the-mill hardware, including an Intel eepro100-derived network card and a CD writer. Debian Woody, as installed directly from the net, does not properly detect my network hardware at boot time, and furthermore, doesn't even bother to set up my CD writer. I said as much in the parent post. I did not insult anyone, post false information, or try to start an argument. I posted my experience, and was moderated as flamebait.

I guess I have to wonder what the discussion on this site is worth if posts like mine are so easily censored. Perhaps those individuals who are so extremely sensitive about critiques of Debian's quality should spend a little time fixing bugs, and a little less time moderating posting on slashdot...

Re:not yet graphical?

[Doomdark]

because a text-mode installer will work through one, and a bitmapped GUI one won't.

There are 2 separate issues: whether installer is built to use (logical) text output display or not, and secondly, how such device is implemented: in hardware (as is the case for PC gfx cards, as legacy baggage), or in firm/software.

I'm only arguing about second part; that physically there's no need to have hardware implementation of character output device. I'm NOT arguing that all installers should be graphical "just because"; just that such text display could be implemented by BIOS (or equivalent), if necessary. Or alternatively, by reasonably light-weight part of graphics lib. Installer definitely shouldn't implement graphics primitives either way.

About serial port connection; there still has to be serial driver that connects to shell (either full or minimal one on which installer runs), which is used to give input and enable output... so while simplish to implement, it's not completely free. But I definitely agree it's a useful thing to have, and wouldn't claim it's imperative that should be removed.

Re:not yet graphical?

[Arker]

That's what I thought you were getting at, but it seemed a bit wierd that you were apparently criticising the second issue when I was only talking about the first.