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Download Anaconda for Debian
hsoom writes "Debian Planet is reporting that unofficial sarge-based ISOs using the Anaconda installer can be downloaded from here. The features developed so far include '...changed the code that installs software to use APT instead of RPM, removed Red Hat-specific configuration hooks, and written a new tool called picax that builds Anaconda-based installation CDs from a Debian repository'. However there are features that are not yet working and it is not recommended for use in a production environment."
It's not that hard to install, but one of the major hurdles I found when using Woody's boot CDs, was the completely obsolete kernels you have a choice of using. Neither of them was from this year. I tried 2.4.18-bf24 but it didn't recognize any of the ethernet nics in my machine... an intel gigabit ethernet PCI card and two onboard interfaces (nforce2 nvidia network interface and a 3com interface). It was an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe board I was trying to install it on. I eventually gave up and put a realtek NIC in to do the network install. Pretty embarassing with the other guys just did a Mandrake install and their NIC was picked up without a problem.
The other problem with the outdated kernel is the Nforce2 IDE chipset doesn't work in DMA mode at all. I needed to compile 2.4.21 with AMD Viper support before I could get anything better than 4-5MB/sec. Now it's great at 50MB/sec.
Another problem I had seemed to be related to the APIC on this board. I would get constant lockups under heavy I/O. Unfortunately one of the heavy I/O periods was during the initial apt-get over the network, thus it would lock up every single time I tried to install. I eventually got it to just install the base image off the CD, replaced the kernel with the 2.4.21 I built on another machine, and after that it was fine (I compiled the kernel without any APIC support).
Anyway, to make a long story short, it's outdated support like this that'll never get Debian to be accepted by my coworkers, and I can't say I blame them. I love the stability and easy of maintenance once it's installed, but putting it on a newer machine is sure a pain in the ass. I'll be stuck with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux) from now on I guess for our servers since Debian provided such a poor showing on a workstation setup.