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New Debian Installer Coming Soon
gnuman99 writes "Debian just released the 4th beta of the new debian-installer, this time for 9 architectures. Some of the improvements include experimental support for the 2.6 kernel, on i386 only. The 2.4 kernel remains the default and recommended kernel for most hardware. Detection of existing operating systems. The following operating systems can be detected and will be added to the boot menu of the installed system: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, GNU Hurd, DOS. Note that by experimental support for 2.6.x kernel simply means that it is experimental in the installer, NOT the actual OS. Debian supported 2.6.x in the Sarge/Sid before 2.6.x was even officially released."
Actually, there is an excellent Debian installer out, and it's been out for a while. It's called Knoppix. You can test compatibility at the store by booting into it, get a live preview of everything, and install a complete system with a recent set of packages with one command. While it uses KDE by default, it's easy to switch to Gnome.
I tried installing debian once, here were my impressions:
- X & video driver didn't install properly (but I fixed it).
- USB scrolling mouse (logitech) didn't install properly (but I fixed it as well).
- I couldn't get the sound card to work.
- I couldn't get the network card to work (this one sucked because I had to keep switching back and forth in order to get suggestions and then to try them).
- The people on irc.debian.org were very friendly and helpful.
It was the first time trying linux (about a year and a half ago), and I haven't tried it again, however I'm waiting for a slightly nicer installer. Maybe I'll try it now (It's Sunday, nothing else to do).
If you're going to try the installer, don't forget to take a look at the errata. The installer also has a lot of untriaged active bug reports which Joey Hess has asked for help dealing with. Sure, file a report of something doesn't work, but make certain that it isn't a known issue first.
Help triaging those bug reports would be a helpful task for anyone knows how to work their bug tracker.
It's probably compiled with -march=i386 -mcpu=i686.
This means you could still run it on 386, but it's optimized for PII, K6 and PIII.
It's probably worth mentioning that development of the new installer has been the chief technical obstacle to the release of a new version of Debian stable. So with debian-installer nearing completion, this means the next version of Debian stable is also nearing completion.
Rizzer (Drew Parsons)
Numerous posts here on /. suggest that it's the missing hardware autodetection and lack of a graphical installer.
You need to insert some kernel modules manually during install (for NIC, sound, etc.), which means you'd have to know what hardware you're running. Familiarity with the Linux kernel's 'make menuconfig' module selection is an advantage here too because the selections in the Debian installer are the same (ie. same groupings). The new installer detects hardware automatically, which is fine if it works - I've tried it twice, so far no problems.
The point about the graphical installer is really non-essential, unless you can't navigate with a keyboard. The new installer is reworked and more modular as stated on the "About the Debian Installer" page, and as such it's should be easy to put a graphical installer ontop of it. Should make some people happy.
I've always loved the Debian Installer! For me it was a more hands-on experience, and with the ability to select kernel modules during the install, I was able to make my old parallel port CD-burner work correctly without a fuss. But that's just me. One cool thing about the Debian installer is the fact that you can follow the standard sequential set of dialogs during the install process, like any other installer, but you can also get a list of all the tasks and jump to anyone on the fly, at any stage during the install. This is helpful if you suddenly find out that you mistyped your IP-address or forgot to create a partion, things like that. Both the old and the new installer support this.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
I installed sarge from cdrom the day before yesterday, and there are still a few usability issues to sort out. I ran in circles for five minutes trying to partition the HD, imo the old installer is way easier to use (although not as powerful).
And after the reboot the setup got stuck in an infinite loop when the dhcp failed to provide a good default route (small thing really, but still). An option to _not_ use dhcp would be nice or at least a confirmation that it is ok to use one if it is found.
No problem!
I forgot to mention another cool thing about the installer.
The base install - for which only the first cd is needed - is quite light. The last step in the installation process is configuring APT (Advanced Package Tool) and optionally fetching the rest of the packages from the Internet (or more CD's), depending on your needs of course. If you skip the package selection, you're left with a small system that has a configured SSH server (protocol 2 only, no root login), mail and print, but no X Window System, Window Managers, or anything like that. Pretty neat.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Michael
Use the expert mode, there's an option for static IP in that mode.
There is discussion from time to time about optimizing for a more recent version of the x86 processors. So far no-one has presented convincing (ie, non-anecdotal; not subject to placebo effects) evidence that this actually makes things significantly faster for most packages. In addition, the more optimizations you do for one particular CPU variant, the more likelihood that you actually make things slower on others. For instance, targetting i586 is a terrible idea (according to common wisdom, anyway) because it actually decreases the performance of code on more recent x86 processors.
Some packages that do see significant benefit (for instance, OpenSSL, libc, the kernel) are already compiled for all x86 variants.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I hope you also sent these comments to the installer dev team? This is beta software, after all. Posting complaints on slashdot may help others avoid the problems you encountered, but is unlikely to result in the problems actually getting fixed.