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Make the Debian CDs Better by Installing popcon
JayBonci writes "Not popcorn, popcon! (Short for popularity-contest) According to a recent message posted to debian-devel-announce, popcon numbers are being used to determine how things get arranged on the 13 CDs of the upcoming Debian stable release. Participation so far has been good, but the project could use more numbers from a broader user base. Please take a moment to install the package 'popularity-contest,' and help us make the distro better by allowing it to send us anonymous package usage statistics. You can see the results at Popularity Contest page."
I hate to point it out, but the first kernel-image is in 2794th place.
The automatic hardware detection is nice.
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
I asked myself this question when buying Unreal Tournament 2004 the other day and when the employee of the store told me they didn't receive any of the Special Edition DVD version. I was kind of baffled as to why they didn't make it a DVD only release, but it kind of makes sense to me.. It's not entirely safe to assume that that many people have DVD-ROMs, at least from a manufacturing perspective. I think that when you register the game you can send your system specs in thus allowing th company to know... Sorry for getting kind of off-topic but the same concept stands true in this case I think. Think of how many people have cd-burners compared to dvd-burners? Probably a big ratio.. so it makes more sense to put everything on a format that almost everyone has access to. (Note: ALMOST)
Actually, the best way is to just use Disc 1, get the base installation, and then do the rest via network (assuming you're on broadband - I shudder to think what an installation would be like over dialup).
This way you get the latest "stable" (oxymoron, I know) and all of the security updates as well.
I install Debian this way all the time (well, every time I'm doing a fresh installation).
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
In case people are reading this and think it's cool and want to try Debian out. I suggest they read this page before they go looking for ISO's to burn.
The Official Debian installer is one the things people heavily judge the distro by.
Do not read this
Debian will release the next STABLE version when it's ready, always their answer. You can think of debian stable as having always done the sort of stuff RedHat, Mandrake and Suse are all looking to do now, build long term releases not "forcing" full system upgrades every few months. That all being said even Debian are hoping to speed up the release process, the next release will be the first release to come out of testing and is ironing out the kinks in that system. Also, it is moving rapidly towards a release. Debian-installer is now usable (for certain values of usable) on 6 platforms and the release critical bugs are dropping down to where a release should be quickly achievable (once all the main pieces are in place). I would be surprised if debian doesn't release before the Autumn (I'd guess June/July).
As the other reply to your post pointed out though, if stable doesn't do you testing (or even unstable) should do it!
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Actually, the best way is to just use Disc 1, get the base installation, and then do the rest via network (assuming you're on broadband - I shudder to think what an installation would be like over dialup).
When you can get a DVD+-R to work in another computer, the DVD's (1 for stable, 2 for testing or unstable) are quite nice. If you have hard-drive space to burn you can also grab the ISO's and mount them using loopback devices.
Unknown means they are running popcon from woody, rather than sarge/sid. The older version of popcon did not send architecture data, while the newer one does.
Er, popularity-contest isn't installed by default. And even when I user installs it they get a blurb saying what the program does and the choice on whether or not to participate.