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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."
That said, much of that DOESN'T have defaults. What's the default langauge/keymap? If you have an odd keyboard you could find yourself in serious trouble. What's the default timezone? And I don't think the machine name/root password/user name/etc have good defaults either.
I think they did a great job, and if the user wants the defaults they can just hit "enter" a bunch of times like you have to in so much software. The "all defaults" setting doesn't really start to apply untill you get to package selections and configurations. Windows does it the same way, and it makes great sense.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
You most likely used the Network Install from Debian 3.0 (boot-floppies) which is 2 years old. The current installer is available from http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ for testing and fixes most of the problems you mentioned with respect to autodetection, etc. It has worked well for me for the past year.
Debian's current installer is absolutely horrible. The Solaris text based installer is even easier than Debian's! I've lost more than a few potential converts based just on the fact that they got lost trying to figure out how to do something simple like setup their network card. Off to Mandrake they went and they're happy. Oh well.
The look ncurses-style tui wasn't intended to be changed. All the actual code, questions, autodetection, etc are new though. Also, the installer is now modular which should help keep Debian from having to take years to fix the installer between releases like was the case with the previous installer.
you can install debian over the serial port on x86 boxes.
Try that with a GUI!
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.
I've installed debian on 2 boxes. You need some other unixy box to start with where you:
/etc/xinetd tftp entry to find out where the root is) Also install the tftp client so you can `tftp localhost` then 'get tftpboot.img' to make sure you have access to the file.
:/` in my bootparams file.
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_no_pmtu_disc /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range.
1) Make sure tftpd is installed. Put the 'tftpboot.img' in the tftp root (check
2) Install dhcpd. Give the SGI box an entry like this:
host babybox {
hardware ethernet nn:nn:nn:nn:nn:nn;
fixed-address 192.168.0.51;
}
You can get your hardware ethernet address in the boot command monitor on the SGI.
3) You may need bootparamd, but I can't figure out exactly what it's doing. I just put `192.168.0.51 =
4) There are 2 odd instructions on debian site that are necessary if you're installing using the 2.4 linux kernel as host:
echo 1 >
and
echo "2048 32767" >
Hope this helps!
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Yes, the problem with Arabic and Hebrew is noted in Beta 3's errata. It'll get fixed.
Rick Moen has a great page of alternative Debian installers if you don't like this one.
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
Come on, it has been stated multiple times that the new Debian installer, when done, can easily be hooked up to a fancy GUI frontend!
From the "About the Debian Installer" page:Anyway, it's still in development, and much that's being changed is happening behind the scenes. When the time comes you will see a GUI frontend, I'm sure! Of course, it doesn't stop there.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me