Slashdot Mirror
Debian Installer Beta 3 Usability Review
Marcus Thiesen writes "Debian Installer Beta 3 was released two days ago and I wrote a small review concerning the installation part. The new debian installer is good way to set up your favorite distribution. Nontheless there are a few usability things and I thought that it might be a good idea to write a walkthrough from another point of view: Bob 'average' User."
The Debian Installer can install Slackware then?
Hate me!
What happened to Joe User? Did he finally wise up about using GUIs and get fired or something? I never really liked Joe User, anyway (I mean, what an idiot!), I'm just curious.
True story.
FROM 5 YEARS AGO!
Debian Installer - Beta 3 - Usability Review
Introduction
The main reason for me writing this text is that I tried the new Debian Installer Beta today and was quite pleased. It is a good way to set up my favourite distibution. Nontheless I stumbled over a few usability things and thought that it might be a good idea to write a walkthrough from another point of view: Bob User
Bob is the guy most of us target at in order to get him to "switch". The "Windows Power User" which knows Windows from the beginning, knows how to keep his system clear and safe. He is quite unhappy with Windows for the obvious reasons. But he is used to the "reboot-solution" and doing everything without a manual, not even really knowing what is going on.
Bob heard some of his geek friends talk about something like Debian, which has a rich repository of easy to install software, can be bleeding edge if he wants and has all the other features of a common Linux like stability, safety, reliability and freedom.
He had a look at this Knoppix thing and found it quite impressive, now he wants to do more, he wants to install Debian...
The Beginning
Bob grabbed a bunch of CDs from the newly released Debian Sarge and put the first CD into the disk drive of his old test computer which used to run Windows 98.
"Huh" he thought and was pleased to see this nice graphics. The main problem that he had was that he had to think twice what to do next. He was given two options which didn't fit. What he wanted to do was to actually install a Linux, he didn't need any help and wasn't quite sure what "boot" would do. As an average windows user he just hit ENTER and awaited the things to come.
This seemed to be the right step. Some funy lines ran over his screen and a few seconds later he was confronted with a nice screen that ascked him to "Choose language". The screen told him that this also affects his default locale and his location. He knew of the powers of Linux but was quite sure that this wouldn't affect his location, otherwise he would be really surprised. He didn't really know what his "default locale" was but he believed it to be a good idea to stick to en_US.
Though the earlier screen had told him that his selection would affect his location he was still at the same place, in front of his old PC.
The next dialog asked him about his "Keymap" which seemed to be something similiar to a keyboard layout, which actually should have been affected by is former selection but appearently was not.
So he selected American English again and went on.
The next things were quite familiar. Some hardware detection happened and some components were loaded. This was fine with him.
Network Configuration
The hardware detection seemed to be successfull and he was prompeted to enter a hostname. The next familiar thing he thought and as it actually was his Debian system he stuck to the default.
Some more hardware detection happened and afterwards he was prompted to do some partitioning.
Partitioning
He had seen such thing before and never really understood them. But it didn't matter as he just had deleted his Windows 98 with fdisk.
So he thought it would be a good idea to stay with the installer and let him do the work. Manually was something he didn't like, anyways.
Though he had an idea of what a home directory might be he was quite unsure and used the given recommendation.
A "mount point" wasn't that much help to him, but as the installer had done it it was ok with him.
The only thing that confused him a bit was the lightnig system next to his "primary" partition. He decided to just stick to the smiley next to it and go on. The other words weren't that much use to him as he had never heard something about "swap" or "ext3".
Then he noticed the two exclamation marks at the top of the screen. Were they a sign for an error? He coulnd't remember if the had been there before or not.
He got a l
an oxymoron? :P
Why not have a single selection at the beginning that says "Install all defaults"? Hit that, let the installer figure out all your hardware settings, and come back an hour later with a fully installed OS.
Maybe throw in a warning that the whole disk will be wiped out, but how much user interaction does an installer really need?
I have been pwned because my
Are the mods completely out to lunch? This isn't even funny, let alone interesting. What a fucking joke!
Everything mandrake does is gpl'd, so there's no reason that debian couldn't keep their crazy "hard" installer for traditionalists and setup the mandrake installer to install debian easy-like for newbies. why duplicate effort?
The new debian installer is good way to set up your favorite distribution. Nontheless there are a few usability things and I thought that it might be a good idea to write a walkthrough from another point of view: Bob 'average' User. Does it sound cool, you might ask?...do you wonder how long before someone cries about civil liberties? --- Does this seem like an idea that would suck? Is it good, or is it whack?
the installation seemed to contain a lot of stuff I didn't know. At least they had recommended choices to keep some unwanted stuff from happening.
I certainly hope it improves their old installer. Debian installs have to be some of the most frustrating things I've ever come across. Mysteriously not seeing network cards, failing to see the hard drive...UGH! Maybe this will bring it somewhere near where other distros installers were 5 years ago.
:(){
...is intelligible CD burning interfaces.
I've been screwing around with Roxio Desy CD Creature 5 and Direct CD Fsckup Utility, trying to make an
Look: I want a CD from this
Instant
Mine is far and away these CD burners. Haven't seen one yet that didn't have 32 feet of static head.
</rant>
Hasn't Knoppix made the Debian installer a moot point for Bob 'Average' User, at least for the desktop?
If he had never installed any OS from scratch before, sure, he would be confused - but he would be just as confused if he had pulled out the raw W2K install disks on a rainy Saturday.
sPh
With RH losing a lot of stock in the tech world, I foresee Debian becoming more mainstream. The only problem about this is, Debian is usually an elitist group of users. Many users of Debian before I switched (06/2003), would just say... "You use Redhat? What are you a girl or something?" I just told them, "Bah... you stink! RPM is the coolest thing ever!" Well, I wish I could have gone back to the days when I was stupid. :) The new Debian install almost makes it as easy to install as Windows. I don't think a GUI is needed for installing an OS onto a machine, plus it causes overhead in the installer and on the disk.
IMHO... someone should create a "smart" installer that says... "I see you have Windows installed. I can remove it for you. Please press return."
I don't think it would be any problem. A good scripter/programmer could easily figure it out. I wish I could...
"Debian... Next to Jesus, it's the only way to Heaven"
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)... oops
So this is where RedHat 5.x installer went to... I was wondering what happened to it.
A lot about the process can be learned this way. Most of us are used to this process, and think it all makes sense, but, as the author points out, there are a lot of things that WON'T make sense to "Bob User."
Debian should have a look a this to see what they can improve.
IBM is doing something smart, a call went out to employees looking for volunteers to install Linux on their company laptops. This is a great way to start, because those employees will probably feel a lot like "Bob" but have access to internal tech support.
Wouldn't you like to convert your friends without having to be THEIR tech support?
Any word on better working SATA support in Beta 3? I spent a good part of last week trying to get Debian installed on a customer's SATA drive (VIA chipset) It was a far bigger pain than it should have been. I would like to see Debian have some good SATA support in the installer considering how it's taking off.
Several times to install Debian/Gnu on my SGI Indy. As a relative cherry when it comes to goofy installs this is a problem. The websites I have found all seems to take for granted nuances I should probably already know but are left unsaid. Suuch things as WHICH machine to set up WHAT file on and suchlike. The Indy is an r4400 with 96 meg and a 4.3 Gig HD. It does NOT boot from disk. Instructions aimed at knuckleheads such as myself need this goofy level of detail to learn things y'know. I do have a pretty decent redhat 9 machine on the network here that is supposed to be used for the TFTP bootloader but there is detail about setting that up that is also left unsaid. It would be really cool if someone actually tried to understand that there are geeks out there that dont know things and want to learn.
Dammit.
Stupid Humans.....
...especially if they put Kudzu or something like it into the mix to autodetect things like Knoppix does.
/home directory. Anyone who doesn't do this is asking for trouble. Knoppix's knx-hdinstall doesn't, and requires some wizard-level incantations to repair.
I especially like the option in the auto-partitioner for a separate
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
If it were truly easy to use, there would be no need for a walkthrough guide... each screen would present choices, and offer help if needed. Software installers should NEVER require external documentation.
Can we all please make this the last GNU/Linux "usability" study that begins with some ridiculous description of a "joe shmoe" mythical target user. I am sick and tired of it. It is possible to make something usable for "normal" users, while at the same time comfortable for both "mewbies" and "power users". Please let us retire "Bob" and "Aunt Tillie" and "Grandma" and every other stupid target user.
If you don't agree with my statement in the first paragraph go look at http://www.google.com - great for newbies AND power users. I've never heard anyone say "Google works fine for Aunt Tillie and Uncle Bob but I really could use MORE features to the interface." Its interface is clean, simple and completely intuitive. And if you want to do some arcane power search you CAN!.
And if google isn't a good enough example for you (because its a website and not an OS, etc.) look at GNOME. GNOME has proven that you can make a good clean interface that is user friendly, newbie friendly, and has all the access a "power user" could want. Yes, I firmly believe that the whining about lack of config options in every panel is entirely from masochistic freaks that simply like to know they can easly change whether the delay to close a window when the close button is clicked is 2ms or 3ms WITHOUT having to open a configuration editor. And BTW gconf-editor IS super simple and user friendly ANYWAY!)
Besides, I am probably what most people would consider experienced with Debian GNU/Linux (been using it exclusively for about 3 years) and I like a good clean, intuitive interface over something that is so-called "geek friendly" any day.
BTW - No I haven't read the whole article yet, I saw the bob bit and HAD to get this off my chest before I read the rest (now I will).
I certainly hope that Debian's Arabic support isn't as bad as that in the installer- the letters don't connect! They're typed from left to right! This would be like having the English installer say something like the following:
(ASU)hsilgnE ni deecorp ot siht esoohC
Except that its even worse - imagine all the i's seperated from their dots, which are written separately next to them in linear order. And even that would be less ridiculous.
As someone who does use Arabic frequently when computing, it's something less than a stunning endorsement of Debian
I've been playing around with various operating systems on an old dual-processor Sun Ultra2 Creator3D, including Debian.
By far the easiest and quickest install was NetBSD and OpenBSD... if it weren't for lack of SMP support (OpenBSD) or Creator3D ffb framebuffer support (NetBSD), I'd stick with one of them and be happy.
Gentoo required a copy of the install guide at hand, but it went smoothly until the time came to unpack the stage from the LiveCD... all three were corrupted, choked and died in mid un-tar. I'm going to see if there are newer LiveCD ISO's available, but it's not a rolicking start, and requires too much command line fiddling to start the show. Still, apart from the abject failure to install the tarballs, the process itself is very straight forward.
Unlike Debian, which has a miserable interface that's at once too convoluted and too spartan to be of any use, and is rotten at picking reasonable defaults. I spent the better part of two days trying to get a booting, networked operating system out of the damn thing.
Maybe Splack, Aurora and SuSe are better... haven't tried them yet, but compared to NetBSD's clean ASCI console installer, the two popular Linux distros come up way short. (Solaris isn't much of an improvement.)
Here's the trick: simplify and automate wherever you can, and pick reasonable defaults while offering options to users who know what they're doing. No need for bright, shiny MS-DOS psuedo-GUI's, just a reasonable curses-based interactive program that prompts the user when needed, but otherwise goes and installs a working operating system on its own with minimal intervention required, but available if wanted.
SoupisGood Food
My rants...
Last week, my friends convinced me to try Debian OS to replace my old Red Hat Linux 7.x boxes. I either could go to Gentoo or Debian since I didn't want Red Hat any more due to the recent news. A few hardcore Linux users told me to try Debian first. So, I grabbed the Network Install to a bootable CD-RW.
Since I only wanted to explore the OS, I used VMware v4.0.5 (256 MB of RAM) on a Pentium 4 3 Ghz host machine. Everything was going well until Debian installer asked a few tricky questions. They were tricky enough even for me, as a computer geek and Linux user (not an expert).
I struggled with partitioning. The text based UI is nuts. I couldn't use up and down arrow keys. Also, there was no mouse pointer at this stage. At least add a mouse pointer or make this part GUI like Red Hat's installer (only used 7.x versions). I also had difficulities setting up partitions which is I am never good with even with Microsoft OS'.
With the help of a Debian friend, I got through this part. Then, the questions got really tricky like which mouse port (/dev/what?). I don't remember. There should be some type of autodetection. IIRC, Red Hat did autodetect for me and that was about three years ago.
More questions came up. There was one part where I had to enter a hostname. Little did I know, I was NOT supposed to use any capital letters. For example with JohnDoeFooBar, I kept getting an error later during setup from Debian about hostname problems. I changed it to something like johndoe, and no more problems! The setup never told me this. On my old Red Hat Linux boxes, it let me use capitalized letters like: JOHNdoe-P2.
The other part I struggled was, why didn't Debian's setup give me an option to boot into text mode. I didn't want gdm or any GUI login screens. I prefer text modes like in the old days. Red Hat 7.x did give me this option. I had to get help from my friend to fix this.
I am still learning Debian slowly. I just learned apt-get command which is nice. It isn't easy for a Debian newbie like me. The installer does need to be improved.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Wouldn't making Linux easy defeat the purpose?
Not to be a troll (I use linux myself, gentoo) but... what is so special about easy to use GUI installers? I think Microsoft and RedHat have been doing it for quite some time.
_________ Help me get a PSP!
Though the earlier screen had told him that his selection would affect his location he was still at the same place, in front of his old PC. ...and...
But it didn't matter as he just had deleted his Windows 98 with fdisk.
The "average user" is happy to see that the computer didn't teleport him somewhere else, but can still figure out Windows 98 fdisk???
Online reviews would be much better if we could moderate by throwing rotten fruit at the author...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The funny thing is, I just installed Debian today from a daily. Didn't know Beta 3 was released, but I'm sure it was about the same thing. In fact, I'm typing this message in vim through w3m (or vice versa?). I was struggling getting a good console framebuffer setup in Freebsd. As far as I can tell 800x600 is the highest resolution it will go, unfortunately. So... then I tried Gentoo knowing linux had much better framebuffer support. A couple failed attempts to boot later and it was time to go to bed. Whipped out the Debian-Installer cd I burned a couple days ago and was up and running in 20 minutes. Being a noob, I foolishly recompiled my kernel when I probably just had to set vga=792 in grub. But I got a fresh-er kernel and a new system in less time that it took to unsuccessfully get things configured in FreeBSD or Gentoo. To it's credit, though, FreeBSD was setup in about 20 minutes also. I just couldn't for the life of me get a higher resolution console to work with my hardware.
Overall, I'd say Debian provided what I wanted. But I'm a little disturbed that there were ports in FreeBSD that I couldn't get as Debian packages. Some common stuff like w3m-ssl, links-ssl, and naim. It didn't help that there were many debs on the mirrors that weren't showing up on packages.debian.org such as kernel sources. I'm a little disappointed in that respect.
For what it's worth, I am the "Bob User" that he wrote for, and the article seemed to fairly accurately reflect the thought process that I would have gone through.
As far as easy installs go... I've plugged this before, but I think it's worth repeating that Arklinux has a really smooth install (including a little Tetris game to play during loading). After using Knoppix only a few times, I was able to install Ark on a Compaq laptop and give it a whirl.
Of course, your mileage may vary, but I'm dual-booting Ark on my home computer, and I've switched to using it exclusively (except when I'm playing Disney's Toontown, which only runs on I.E.), and I know next to nothing (I sort of know what a command line is, but that's about it.)
It's still in Alpha, so do be careful, but I would HIGHLY recommend it for clueless "windoze" users looking to get their feet wet.
The Dalai Llama
I would while away the hours conversatin' with the flowers... if I only had a .sig
My sig could be your sig!
This is supposed to be a new installer for Debian? Apart from the opening splash page, it looks just like the installer I used to install Woody and Potato years ago. What am I missing?
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Debian has it harder than the other guys; most distributions focus on just one platform (intel), or just a few (alpha, sparc, powerpc). Debian supports 11 hardware platforms. They need a flexible system that supports the needs of all of them. I'm not personally knowledgable about the internals of either the Debian or Mandrake installers, but this is probably one of the reasons they can't just use an "off-the-shelf" installer from another distro.
Why is it that there are so many people out there who just don't like things the easy way?? Mostly i think they just pretend to like the harder command line interface and wag their tongues when they see a lovely easy click n go installer.heh.
But seriously , easy installation is one of the key factors through which Linux or unix based systems can gain more marketshare in the desktop section.
Lord of the Binges.
You mean 30 pages of help files and a command prompt?
I've used many Linux Distrobutions, Mandrake, Redhat, Slasckware, Gentoo, SourceMage, and Suse. Out of all those Debian was the worst for me to install there menu system is just confusing the way they jump from step to the next. I had a terrible time getting it installed just to find out i missed something. Had to go back through it and reinstall. Once I got it finally done and installed I found that mostly everything wasn't what I wanted. Packages seemed a little old. To me Debian is just not worth it. I choose Mandrake for the easy intsaller and setup. But Gentoo for its great help in their forum, documentation, and choice from the very start.
Google says Bob will use XP with the preinstalled NTFS and it's quite probable he doesn't want to dump it immediately and because Debian still doesn't support non-destructive NTFS resizing thus the install will fail for him.
If you RTFA, you'd know that this 'guide' is wholly inane.
All he did is hit "enter" about 4 times. Debian-Installer is easy beyond belief.
I guess this is sort of a reply to many people, not meant to be a troll or flamewar type of comment. While I do agree that the Debian installer has been notorious for being a bit overwhelming the first few times you use it, if you don't agree with the way that the installer is setup, then maybe you shouldn't use it. There are plenty of setups for different linux flavors that do things like auto partition/auto detect hardware. (think redhat, and mandrake) while others require a bit more from the installer. (Think debian, slackware) Rather than attempt to change an installer that is targetted to a certain group of people, it may be more beneficial to try to find an installer/distro that is more designed for what you are looking for. In the past few years I have used Redhat, Debian, and Slackware installers (and those based upon them) and found that Slackware suits my needs. It is simple, console based by default, and requires a bit of background knowledge of my hardware on my part, but is also not too difficult to use. Redhat, for me is a bit to "spiced up" to my liking. And I find that Debian's system can be a bit confusing when installing software packages. That doesn't mean that Redhat should be like Debian, Debian should be like Slackware, and so on, but that we should all find what niche we like, and be happy with it. This topic comes up a lot when on the subject of desktop environments, window managers, distros, etc.
while true ; do echo this is my sig; done
hmmm. I just installed with the new debian installer today, and what kernel do I have? "Linux rei 2.4.24-1-686 #1 Wed Feb 18 21:59:13 EST 2004 i686 GNU/Linux" And X? "XFree86 Version 4.2.1.1 (Debian 4.2.1-12.1 20031003005825" Granted that in the 2.4 series they're up to 2.4.25, and 2.6.3 is out, but those are also both available and pretty damn painless to upgrade to. And, yeah, some distros have XFree86 4.3 (including unstable) but it's not like 4.2 is ancient.
Go to Mandrake forums and read about all the poeple that have difficulties with getting the installer to work properly. Don't get me wrong; I'm not flaming Mandrake. They have their purpose, but it is a different one than Debian's.
If you have normal stuff (1 year old intel processor, intel chipset, nvidia video card, one 1024x768x24bpp screen, ata133 hard drive) than those automated installs work just fine. But deviate too much from the norm, and things start getting really hairy with Mandrake. The fact is that Debian supports a TON of architectures and a TON of hardware, those automated installs probably won't work properly at all on many of the architectures that Debian supports.
That being said, Debian is probably going to eventually get a nice new graphical installer courtesy of Red Hat.
Does the installer install a simple firewall front end by default? Or does it leave the front door unlocked as usual?
"Run minimal services" is an unacceptable answer when the debian servers get hacked and are unaccesible for updates for days or weeks at a time. The recent security problems, if implemented in the future, combined with a coordinated attack on other servers leaves everyone vulnerable if you can't apt-get upgrade a hole in an application.
Unacceptable. Flame away hard core debians, but you'll only be helping the crackers, not the newbies (they are welcome, aren't they? Or is debian not ready for the "desktop"?), and not the post-newbies who would all benefit from 1. running minimal services, 2. apt-get upgrading nightly, and 3. RUNNING A FIREWALL.
Go for it.
How many times have I tabbed and spaced through a RedHat, Slackware, $whatever, install for forever, picking my packages and deselecting packages only to have the whole thing *die*? Too many.
/that/ is [Y,n] ? 75%?
Let's get the system installed, get X going, and *then* let's talk about window managers, network configuration, grub passwords, etc.
Face it: 75% of the time, people do a default, full install. How much of
How about a simple auto partition > untar? At least as an option? "Yes, please, spew the contents of this (these) puny CD onto my massive 80GB hard drive..
When building beowulf-style clusters, RedHat kickstart has been one of the quintessential installation tools. Its not the only way do things, but its the one I find most useful in my particular setups.
The lack of a kickstart-like installation automation tool for Debian-based systems has kept my clusters RedHat-based exclusively. Does the new installation tool help with this? If not, why not? I know its been requested many, many times. This functionality is entirely too useful to really ignore.
A use for it that even run-of-the-mill boxes might like is that if your box needs a reinstall, simply reinstall using the kickstart script provided after the original install is complete. The machine will then reinstall in exactly the same manner as before, though you may or may not have to apply updates.
I always get the shakes before a drop.
We are migrating from RH 7.3 to Debian. From the beginning it was understood that there would be some learning curve but in a long term we feel Debian it the best distro for our needs.
The main problem that he had was that he had to think twice what to do next. He was given two options which didn't fit. What he wanted to do was to actually install a Linux, he didn't need any help and wasn't quite sure what "boot" would do.
Hmm... if I'm not quite sure what "boot" would do, and I know I want to install Linux, but it's not an obvious option, I'd take that as an indication that maybe I need help, and press F1. Geez, even my mother would press F1 at that point.
why Joe User or Bob, rather, is installing debian anyway? The last Debian install I did was on a AMD 5x86/100 tablet (three nights ago). Before that, it was on my Dell Inspiron 1100 that had a crockload of not-well-supported hardware that required me to get 2.5.69 (the latest release at the time).
Debian installs usually take me several hours to get most things going from the mini/net install (a linux distro occupying 80 MB on your HD?--yeah, debian does that) to a what-I-consider usable system. However, I've configured everything myself exactly to my liking and probably recompiled once or twice.
Before I go further on my disorganised rant, a graphical easy to use installer that detected everything and booted me into KDM/X with KDE (I use enlightenment and gtk apps) would do nobody in Debian's core audience any good whatsoever and probably only alienate them further.
Tho I have to say, a few years ago, Storm Linux had a really kickass installer. Progeny's doesn't/didn't require you to reboot afterwards.
So I probably should be saying that if Bob wants a Linux distro that's easy to install in the beginning yet insanely powerful in the end (thanks to apt), he should be dealing with Progeny or whatever other debian-based distros there are.
The article did Debian a tremendous disservice in juxtaposing a mythical user with a distro that he'd never try.
P.S. My favorite install of all time is OpenBSD's. A twenty minute script was all it took--and I hadn't installed OpenBSD before. How kickass it that?
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
The much very vocally cursed gentoo-cursors.
Flashy graphics maybe cool but what's important here is the functionality and I ain't seeing any headway made in that direction over the previous installer.
What I want is something like the kickstart installer where it can read your selections etc from a floppy, so if you have 5 or 10 other machines to roll out you don't have to sit through the installer's screens after screens of Y/N ?s
Debian will probably always be hardcore and somewhat cryptic for unexperienced computer users. If you want a pleasant, pretty, somewhat intuitive installer with most the power of the Debian distro, check out some of the Debian Based Distributions.
The Debian Project has a great many factors to balance in creating their distribution. Firstly, their adherance to free-software principles. Secondly, their commitment to multiple platforms. Finally, their legendary configurability. Given all these factors, I think they've done an amazing job, and changing almost anything about the distribution would probably take a little away from the delicate balance that they have.
Tried it, liked it. Its about time they throw out that darn boot-floppies.
It was a little buggy, but it was ~5 months ago.
The translations was hideus, hope they are better now.
It detected all my hardware perfectly.
Keep up the good work!
> What happened to Joe User? Did he finally wise up
;-)
> about using GUIs and get fired or something?
Yes. Bill fired Joe for being too computer savvy. Long live Bob!
http://toastytech.com/guis/bob2.html
Last I heard, he quit and went off to start a consulting firm with John Smith.
- shazow
As I understand it, the new Debian installer is designed for two purposes - portability to all the architectures Debian uses, and flexibility so Debian can be installed just the way one likes it on the widest possible variety of hardware. Idiot-proofing is a lot lower priority. You may disagree with their prioritisation. I personally think that if you're not prepared to spend a few minutes reading some instructions before you install a new operating system and totally change the way your computer operates, you shouldn't be installing a new operating system anyway.
If you want an all-singing, all-dancing, drool-proof, but less flexible Debian installer just for i386, I believe Progeny has built one.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
... been waiting for that feature for a long time now. More than I've been waiting for easy installers...
And the layout is screwed up.. cool!
For those who don't know Progeny's installer, its really Red Hat's excellent anaconda and Kudzu. Mandrake also uses kudzu for hardware detection. Lastly next time you hear someone raving about Knoppix or some other livecd and how it picked up all of their hardware you can tell them to thank Kudzu and Red Hat as well.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I can not understand why Debian don't have a GUI Installer like RedHat or Mandrake? why not try it? It could helps a lot for newbies users decide to start trying Debian... that is important! IMHO.
Rick Moen has a great page of alternative Debian installers if you don't like this one.
The installer's just great. dselect, dpkg is crap.
Bob "Average" user wants to perform the following steps:
1. Buy PC
2. Plug PC into electrical outlet
3. Have PC "Geek" friend connect it to the Internet
4. Surf porn and play video games
Bob "Average" user DOES NOT want to install new Linux distributions for the fun of it. Bob has other things to do.
Let Bob use a PC with pre-installed Lycoris, Lindows. It's OK Really! That's all he wants!
Debian can be installed over the FreeBSD kernel: here's some more information on that
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I would guess that most people setting up Linux initially would care very much about partitioning, as they probably don't want their Windows installation trashed.
Two small comments:
Xandros is based on debian and can be installed in 4 clicks? Why can't the rest of the distro's do this?
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
This is the kind of problem that could really put off an average user if they encountered it (although maybe RAID isn't a feature you'll find used in many average machines), since most distributions tend to refuse to install in the best case, and in the worst cases will sometimes contain stupid default settings which will trash data on my drives if I allow them to continue. Does anyone know a distribution that copes better with issues like this than those I have tried? Is this new version of Debian likely contain this feature (although I've heard bad things about the usability of the Debian installer), since I'd love to give it a try if it doesn't mean huge amounts of effort on my part. If anyone could recommend a distro that might be easier to install than those I have tested, I'd love to try it out, since I've grown bored of the wait of several hours to install packages on my current Gentoo setup (although it was interesting to play with for a while).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm a relatively recent Debian convert, thanks to my friends raving about apt-get mostly. I shied away from Debian for a long time because I could never figure out the installer. It's just about the most user-unfriendly application I've ever used. Almost as if they went out of their way to have everything different than everything else (hint: if 99.9% of apps use the arrow keys and enter to select options in a menu, you may want to do the same. Random keys to choose things do not help the user).
:)
Anyway, after struggling with dselect and whatever else is involved (quite frankly I always got lost about 1/4 of the way in), I discovered Knoppix. It's a non-guru's wet dream, really. Until the day I entered "apt-get upgrade". The next time I booted my machine, squid and apache were both running and were actually listening for connections. My machine tried to load ISDN drivers for some reason, along with something related to braille. I never really spent the time trying to figure out why a metric shitload of new services/modules were being loaded, because unfortunately I needed to use my computer in an unsecured environment. Oh, and I can't remove openoffice anymore either. Apt claims it's not installed, yet it runs fine. *shrug*
Installing software (and removing things other than openoffice) are a dream. Apt-get is godly. Knoppix itself has just the right amount of stuff in it for me, with some interesting extras I never would try if they weren't there. But I'll never again try an entire upgrade
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Windows 2000/XP: Partially text-mode, and yet, could be easily installed by ANYBODY.
Knoppix - Winner for obvious reasons
RedHat - A bit overcomplicated the last time I used it, but easy nonetheless. The graphical installer is nice, but doesn't always work. If you're lucky, you're sent to the curses-based textmode installer which is lightyears better than debian's. (of course, there are screwups, and videocard detection can crash on exotic hardware)
Gentoo - No installer is a good installer. HONESTLY! If you carefully follow their directions exactly using the examples they give you, a proficent Windows user could get it working. The installation process is incredibly well-documented. As a plus, a quick post to their forum will usually yield a solution in under an hour. I have yet to see another free distro which offers that kind of support. Despite all this, they still need a REAL installer.
Mac OS X : Next, I agree, Next, Yes, Reboot. Done. Enough said.
BeOS: I once accidentally installed this without realizing it (the version that came packaged for windows).
Debian: From the people that brought you EMACS! Debian was my first distro, mostly because it was availible on floppies (my PC at the time wouldn't boot from a CD), and it had a nifty install-on-demand feature which required you to only download the 20mb base (yes, onto floppies), which would then allow you to set up a LAN or PPP connection to download the proper packages (I was on 56k, so the PPP option was a godsend). Needless to say, it wasn't all that difficult or painful, though it had quite a few rough spots. (Such as a nasty bug where the installer's FDISK mixed up the device names, causing me to nuke the wrong partition.
This was 3 years ago. The screenshots in the article show an installer that's almost identical to the one I remember. Honestly, couldn't they have made SOME advances? The installer is simply a disgrace, and needs to be 10x easier!
As for me, I'll stick with my mac. I like an OS that doesn't have to be reinstalled regularly.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I find Gentoo a lot easier than Debian to install. I've installed Gentoo on x86es and SPARCs without much of a headache. But try as I might I cannot get Debian to install right on any platform. I've tried dozens of times; I've gotten a bootable system maybe 5 times and never gotten X to work. For some reason installing Debian reminds me of programming a VCR, which I also can't do.
It's like on the one hand you have RedHat or SuSE-type installs where you get a nice GUI that makes installing easy. On the other end you have gentoo which gives you a full shell and I'm good with using a shell so that install was pretty easy too. But Debian lives in this weird in-between world (like a VCR's interface) where you don't have an intuitive GUI but you also don't have a shell's freedom to put what you want where you know it needs to go.
So, long story short, I can't get Debian to install, but I don't have problems with Gentoo. Maybe it's a matter of taste.
All's true that is mistrusted
www.mepis.org is what we used for our newbie class and it worked great. Bob can learn what he needs to know from mepis, that free software rocks. Sooner or later, Bob will want to take off his training wheels.
This is yet another reason I love Knoppix. A buddy wanted to try Linux on his laptop, but (for fairly unavoidable hardware issues) didn't want to remove Windows. qtParted is awesome! Boot the Knoppix CD, resize the NTFS partition, and install. You can even install Knoppix to the hard drive while you're still in Linux, so you can surf the web or whatever, while you install.
:)
It's very nice to be able to do something like this without having to have people get a warezed copy of Partition Magic, lemme tell ya. The "you mean this is ALSO free and legal?" questions are pretty fun, too
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
As the AC above noted, there is a bug report and the left to right problems will be resolved. Stick that in your $40,000,000,000 account and smoke it.
What Debian is trying to do is build a robust backend infrastructure for installers. The installer has to run on 11 different architectures. Some of those 11 architectures may have variants as well. Any number of install methods must also be sanely supported. Someone will probably produce the graphical wonder you're wanting for commodity x86 machines. On the other hand, it may be necessary to install a rack mounted ARM server through a serial console.
I doubt it would be easy to adapt Mandrake's GUI first x86 centric installer to Debian's needs. An installer that primarily consists of libraries and hardware tables can be more easily adapted to the full spectrum of archs and installation methods.
Slashdot lameness filter is annoying :P
Now this, this comment is flamebait. Dumbass.
If you don't get it, don't mod it.
The problem with all this crap is Debian is obviously not designed for Joe, Bob or Norm. Debian is designed for the people who design it. To think otherwise is foolhardy. We make packages as convienent and understandable and standard as possible: but they're still packages. You still have to know what you want to install when, and how to configure most of it. The people who like Debian like it because they know what they're doing. End.
The partitioner screen struck me as potentially scary. "swap" should be replaced with "virtual memory (a.k.a. swap)", ideally with context sensitive, or even clickable, help for a few of the buzzwords. Predicting how much swap you'll need isn't easy, anyway, and pretty hopeless for a newbie.
Instead of asking "How much for the swap partition?", why not "Do you want a swap partition? (n)". That way Bob Default doesn't have to worry about whether a drive needs exchanging, and the installer will put a swapfile in the partition containing /home later.
If they're going to allow (even recommend!) putting all non-swap in a single partition, maybe it's time to embrace the swapfile. Off the top of my head the only big advantage I can think of for the swap partition is that in theory it can be shared by multiple OSes in a multiboot system. How many people bother with that trick anymore?
If we were ants living on a Rubik's cube, differential geometry would be a little more confusing.
The latest beta drops support for PowerPC platform. What's the hang-up. The official site just says, "Due to severe problems found in the powerpc port at the last minute, it was dropped from beta 3".
Does anyone know any details?
evanchik.net
That's because you are tracking the "stale" release, if you want this year's apps, you need to track the "flakey" release and if you want really cool stuff, you need to track the "oh_crap" release.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I'd have to agree. I spent about 30 minutes installing OpenBSD on 2 older 486 laptops. Debian install time, per laptop? 2 and a half hours.
I'd say Gentoo isn't for you. You'd be better off with something more tuned to your skill level. If reading the instructions here is a problem for you, then you'd be better served with a more hand holding OS like Debian. The only strange hardware problem I had with install "SATA drive" was fixed by following the very simple Knoppix install method outlined on that same page. All the weird compile problems I've had over the last 2 years or so (all 3 of them) were solved in a few minutes by reading stuff here. Reading must not be your thing, or you have strange hardware. I personally couldn't imagine running anything but Gentoo on any desktop I use because of the excellent performance, documentation, security, and ease of upgrading. That and all the bleeding edge stuff in the world is at my fingertips in record time to be compiled however I want, when I want. This is what is important to me though. If I was lazy, I'd probably pay for RedHat 3.0 WS for the strong vendor support and excellent upgrade ease. I'm not lazy though. I don't mind putting in the bit of work up front to be very lazy afterwards and have the fastest Linux distro possible. The performance gains are very real, and very noticable. And you don't have to wait 13 months for XFree 4.3 only to find out that OpenGL is broken. I'd never use Gentoo on a server, but I can't point to a single time where a machine rebooted spontaneously. I did have to recompile mplayer once because it was unstable, but that took all of 3 minutes? Seriously. Most of the people that moan about Gentoo are either:
A) Trolls
B) Debian Trolls
C) Not using the distro they should.
Gentoo isn't afraid of you.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
"The next dialog asked him about his "Keymap" which seemed to be something similiar to a keyboard layout, which actually should have been affected by is former selection but appearently was not"
NO - this setting is NOT the same. In my workplace we have german (Swiss-German and German), english (uk and us), french keyboards. Since these "i18n" efforts started - life has become hell. A few examples:
- Outlook suddenly decides that since I'm using a swiss german keyboard. When everything switches to German - how do I switch it back (since I dont know the language?)
- The ClearCase plugin in Eclipse suddenly switches itself to German since the keyboard is German. I have no clue as to how to switch it back (again - I dont know the language well enough to switch it back)
- ArgoUML's webstart version naturally switches to German (hey - the guy is using a german keyboard, right?) and does not provide _any_ visible way to switch back (I asked a german speaking colleague to see if I could change the language settings, but no). Apparently this has been fixed in later releases(?)
- For some reason, opening an Italian document in Word had the nice effect that when I installed QuickTime (at roughly the same time) - it switched all language settings of the quicktime install to Italian.
It sure was a lot easier to work in international environments before these i18n efforts started.
Why exactly - marketing aside - should the installer care about an average luser? People with no clue nor willingness to acquire one are the main source of virtually any computing problem we have, be it security, spam, worms, whatever.
I don't want Joe Idiot being able to install a computer. No matter how you do it - and Debian is quite good in warning users about unsafe settings - Joe will fuck it up and bring another machine that's already as good as compromised online. Thanks a lot, Joe!
Please, care about the clued-in sysadmin. Give Joe the finger. In fact, IMHO the install should fail and tell the user in no uncertain terms that he's too dumb to run this system if he tries something like setting an empty root password.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
One nifty trick with swap is that you can have multiple swaps on multiple disks ( on multiple controllers).
supposed to have a noticable performance benefit.
just add all of them in fstab
Just as in some performance sytems it would probably be desirable to have swap and the massively accessed partion on differend controllers.
Why are other peoples sig's always more witty ???
Gentoo threads get overrun by people talking about how great Debian is. That starts flamewars.
You almost never see a Gentoo user start an anti-debian thread in a Gentoo story. It's always started by some anti-gentoo/pro-debian comment.
Debian threads (like this one) get overrun by people flaming Gentoo for no apparent reason at all. It's always a Debian user that brings Gentoo up like some ex-girlfriend that slept with their friends and dumped them.
Level headed people like myself that use both OS's step in and start shooting down the zealot posts.
Moderators that use Debian mod those posts down no matter how on-topic or sensible they are simply because the post is pro Gentoo, or just honest.
A lot of the slams on Debian are from Debian users with a sense of humor. I've seen a ton of these. In fact, the joking slam in this thread was started by a Debian user if I'm not mistaken. This inevitabley lead to an anti-gentoo post for no apparent reason, like the guy that complains about the ex-girlfriend that slept with his friends then dumped him, and consequently can't find anyone that wants to go drinking with him anymore after work.
Debian is great.
Gentoo is great.
They both have their place. Gentoo isn't your ex-girlfriend that slept with your friends and dumped you simply because it's better at a lot of things.
Debian is great on servers, and that's what it should be used for when your bosses aren't screaming for Red Hat because Oracle likes it, or because Polyserve likes it, or because EMC likes it, etc.
And no, I'm obviously not new here.
A lot of you need to rest your necks. The jokes are funny. I love slamming Debian once in a while if it's a damn funny time to do it. I'll also step right up to the plate and slam Gentoo as well. It's when the zealots start getting all serious about their pet OS and start making ridiculous assersions about another ones that their true colors show. Imagine what someone that has never used either Debian or Gentoo thinks after reading this stuff? They'll walk away thinking that Gentoo is too hard for them (and it isn't. A braindead monkey could follow the install instructions), or they'll think (wow, them Debian users are kinda extreme, foaming at the mouth, radicals). That isn't good for anyone.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
MacOS only has to run on about 5 different computers of the same architecture. Minimal hardware options. Most of the hard work of the base system has already been done for them by the BSD guys.
Windows XP has to run on only 2 architectures (32bit and 64bit x86), but with many hardware options.
SuSE, one or two architectures - but good boasts a good GUI installer, that autodetects most things and partitions a dual boot system for you. Pretty cool, but expected of a distribution of this nature.
Debian has to install and run on 10 + 2 architectures (some that you may never even have seen or heard of) and with all kinds of hardware.
I agree that the graphic/text could be more clear.
boot is way more correct than "start installation"
because he isn't installing untill a later step.
I suggest: boot into installation program
or: have a comment that says what will happen after boot.
The hard drive partitioning also looks like it needs work.
I appreciate this article, I didn't see the issues that I had with woody dealt with. (reiserfs, and other things) but it might have been skipped.
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
Have you tried a Mepis install? It runs like Knoppix off a CD and has a GUI installer right on the desktop. The job is done in 15 minutes.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This is the very first time that I have seen someone call Debian a handholding OS.
I tried the new installer yesterday (and Debian for the first time) and was everything but impressed. It very much reminded me of the days I spent with the text base install from RH6.1. The console keyboard settings were wrong (especially annoying with vi) and after installing XFree I had to configure stuff I hadn't touched in years (being a long time RH and now FC user).
Getting Debian on my system was like reliving long lost memories, but not necessarily good ones. Fedora installs so nicely on all of the hardware I tried it so far and I hear that SuSE works like a charm too.
Don't get me wrong though, there are reasons for why I tried Debian and I would very much like the distro to strive and get a modern hardware detection and installation system. Knoppix so far holds the crown in the former IMHO. And before I forget, a stable release with more recent software would also be quite nice ;-).
I feel so sig.
I'll have a Frutti Di Mare then with extra garlic and cheese, please....;-)
And yes, I know I suffer from selective perception, but does it have to be a bad thing?
I feel so sig.
I liked the part where it explained that GRUB lables the partitions differently than Linux. Just fix GRUB (the smaller of the 2) so they are the same. Doesn't it seem silly to put text out there to explain that the programmers were lazy? Or if they must remain different for some compelling technical reason, provide automatic translation and hide the difference from the user - at least during the installation.
Firstly to install a very basic Linux system which will allow you to get onto the Internet and download all the latest packages.
Second use is to install a system from the CD tailored to your needs.
In both these cases I feel Debian's installer requires too much fiddling around. What it needs is menu with "Typical role for this installation" and options like:
[] Desktop computer
[] Web Server
[] Database Server
[] Minimal install
[] Custom
The custom option would allow you to setup the packages you require and allow you to load one of the presets to base your custom selections on.
Also why can't the installer be a bit more intelligent and read the current disk layout and make some clever suggestions?
Dont get me wrong, debian is great. its predictable, stable, no license issues.. ( and you can pretty much assume they will be around forever, unlike most commercial distributions. )
But as everyone knows, they are always behind the times for 'releases'.. Always playing 'catch-up' with the rest of the world.
Seems this installer is in the same boat.. But it looks like it will be better then what we had before.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
What's kept me from Debian/other linux distros has never, oddly, been the install stuff. I'm willing (and able) to decipher/accept default when I don't know what's going on. The one thing that keeps me from keeping linux on a system is the networking issues.
If someone can make networking transparent then I'll buy in completely. Right now, if I plug my (MS XP) laptop into my network, my desktop 'sees' it and my laptop 'sees' my desktop, printer, internet connection, etc. When I had RedHat/Debian, etc. on my laptop I would plug it in but I couldn't see my Desktop shares, I could get to the internet connection, which was ok; but I just couldn't find my printer and my desktop shares. Make this happen without too much difficulty, and you'll have converts for life.
While having a 'pretty' install is great, it's these other issues, I think, that are more important. There's finally easy package (un)install, a great office system, and numerous desktop choices, but transparent networking is necessary before I'll make the switch permanently.
Bob here used fdisk? I'm impressed. From my experience with "users," Bob would've asked his friend Ted to do it, since Ted's a 'puter technician, yep!
Now, after Ted did that there fdisk thing, I reckon Bob's just gonna go on n' install that Luh-eye-nux thingie.
The point is, once poor Bob saw the blue and grey screen, a paramedic would've been over there to help out the poor geezer with a cardiac arrest. He knew what partition means? Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle!
* slaps knee. *
People discover the meaning of life between getting piss drunk and the following hangover.
Hardware detection seems like a pretty important difference to me. I guess it doesn't to you because you probably know intimate details about every piece of hardware installed in your machine.
Some of us, though, like to be able to install an OS and have IT tell US about the hardware in our machines. GUI installation doesn't really do anything for me, on the other hand.
I like FreeBSD's installer. This seems very similar to that.
+++ATH0
So what's your point?
There is relatively little criticism of Gentoo on /. and most of it is confined to jokes about the style of its advocates. The parent poster clearly indicated that he has been using Gentoo for 18 months on multiple machines and will continue to do so. I have installed Gentoo three times on both x86 and ppc hardware. I've found much to appreciate in the distribution, but many flaws as well. You seem to think critics are either lying about Gentoo's merits for the sake of a reaction or lack a presupposed savy neccessary to get the most out of it. This isn't the case. Indeed, installing Gentoo from stage1 doesn't take "work". It takes patience. If you want to call people lazy you should stop wrapping "./configure --foo && make && su -c 'make install'" with "emerge foo". If you want to crow about speed you should start with gprof instead of march=overclocked-barton. If you want to use an OS that makes you feel like a member of an exclusive club you should code your own. If you want to talk down to the rest of us you should keep in mind that we might not care.
You assume a great deal. Maybe if you typed out the post you thought you read I'd have any idea at all what you are talking about? Gentoo is what I prefer on desktops. Debian is what I prefer on servers. Enterprise Red Hat is what I use when I have too. FreeBSD when it doesn't have to be Linux, etc. I also deployed a lot of Digital UNIX/Tru64 when it was viable. Great stuff, I'm sad to see it go. You read way too much into the post then shot from the hip. Try reading it all over again and imagine a mellow, level-headed voice in your head instead of an insane, screaming zealot.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
I abandoned X a long time ago because even at its best (that is, after weeks of frustrating tweaking and configuration), X is much more klunky and harder to use than Windows. If you install cygwin/xfree86 on windows you get the minor benefits of X and the major benefits of windows. If you network that windows box with a debian server as your firewall, you get the best of both worlds and redundancy to boot.
OT: It amazes me that Apple got OSX to work so well. It's a very complex system built out of a moderately complex unix base and what must be an even more complex presentation layer. The linux community doesn't have the unity of purpose that Apple has and so I have doubts about its ability to generate a stable, useful GUI layer. If someone does manage to create one, my gut tells me that it will not be much based on what we currently have in X.
crap post
karma will be mine
no offense to the parent
main(0)