Debian Installer RC1 Is Out

rekt writes "The Debian crew has just announced the release of debian-installer RC1. You can find versions of it for 11 different architectures at the d-i page. This is one of the most flexible, modular installer architectures out there. As we near the release of sarge (debian 3.1) next month, it's important that we find and work out any bugs in the installer. Grab a copy and give it a shot!"

Comments

A nice tall glass of...

[Ads are broken]

fr1sty posteeez!!!!!!!!1

Re:A nice tall glass of...

[Anonymous Coward]

The installer may be out, but as usual Debian is still a few years behind the times.

Debian is like BSD - a sick old dog that should just die already.

(Posting courtesy of the Melbourne Linux Users Group and Linux Users Victoria.)

Id say FP

[Anonymous Coward]

but i know it isnt going to be

Why fuss over some linux distro. New versions are released constantly

Gentoo > *

Re:Id say FP

[Anonymous Coward]

but i know it isnt going to be

And me without mod points. That was funny.

Re:Id say FP

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm.. no, sir. THAT is funny.

Full RC1 torrents.

[eddy]

.. available at suprnova.org.

Debian 3.1 (Sarge) Release Candidate 1 - CD 1 of 12 ...

Re:Full RC1 torrents.

[lambent]

It's great and all to be using bittorrent to help spread the bandwidth around, and in all likelihood the distribution is completely benign, and i know SN only provides links ... it's just that most people have learned long ago not to trust applications delivered by warez outfits.

I would personally much rather see that torrent being hosted somewhere more official.

Re:Full RC1 torrents.

[eddy]

The question of checking the signature after download not withstanding, if you check the torrent you'll see that the tracker is... cdimage.debian.org.

It's up to you to decide if that's "official enough".

Re:Full RC1 torrents.

[Anonymous Coward]

CD 1.... of 12?!?!?!

Re:Full RC1 torrents.

[lambent]

And how easy would it be to trick someone who browses SN and casually decides to give this linux thing a try? How many people, after compulsively snarfing as many free files as they can get, habitually check the trackers that they use?

Re:Full RC1 torrents.

[Anonymous Coward]

CD 1.... of 12?!?!?!

Yes, but hardly anybody uses the CD version of Debian. All you need is the installer (which can be cut down to about 30 megs if you don't have any very unusual hardware) and an Internet connection, and you only download the packages you want to install.

Seems debian isnt the same

[Anonymous Coward]

heres some info about this installer. I dont like it.

Re:Seems debian isnt the same

[wirah]

Argh, slashdotted in the comments.

I trust the debian team though, perhaps not their Qt packages, but generally I trust them :>

Re:Seems debian isnt the same

[Anonymous Coward]

YOu fuckwad. THat's the second time I fell for that this morning.

Re:Seems debian isnt the same

[Anonymous Coward]

YOu fuckwad. THat's the second time I fell for that this morning.

If that's so, then one of you, the troll or you, is a moron, and it's not the troll...

Re:Seems debian isnt the same

[Anonymous Coward]

But they were different links under different domains each time! One was the original and the other (this one) was a link to another domain which then redirected to the other.

Fortunately, it's simple enough to close one browser window without killing your whole session. Also, fortunately enough, my girlfriend already knows I'm a latent gaymo. :P

Re:Seems debian isnt the same

[Uniball]

Great photo!
I'll add it to my goatse, tubgirl and smurf bundage collection ;)

Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

I burned a disk of this, booted up with it, surfed a few sites, then immediately realized I couldn't use any of the games and apps I use because they didn't exist for Linux, immediately took the disk out, rebooted, and did some real work in Windows.

I'll probably repeat this useless exercise a couple years from now.

Re:Knoppix

[wirah]

What apps were those? Were you trying to run MS Office from the terminal again? Get back under your bridge.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

It took you that long to work out that Windows apps don't run natively on Linux?
And you keep repeating the same thing over and over again?

Jeez.

Re:Knoppix

[Tore S B]

Okay, I'll bite.

I couldn't use any of the games...immediately took the disk out, rebooted, and did some real work in Windows.

Hee.

Re:Knoppix

[Anonymous Coward]

'll probably repeat this useless exercise a couple years from now.
We await the results with interest. Do let us know how you get on.

Re:Knoppix

[tehcyder]

Wow, I'm impressed that you could get on the Internet at all. Big, isn't it?

Security Support for Sarge

[arturogatti]

Security support for sarge is scheduled to begin today. Woody users may want to consider upgrading to sarge now, testing the upgrade path, and help out with reporting/fixing any bugs they encounter.

Re:Security Support for Sarge

[Anonymous Coward]

testing the upgrade path, and help out with reporting/fixing any bugs they encounter.

Uh oh, this sounds familiar. I don't know about you all, but I hate being a test subject.

Re:Security Support for Sarge

[Mr.Ned]

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004 /08/msg00003.html

It's now scheduled to start on the 12th.

Re:Security Support for Sarge

[Psiren]

Uh oh, this sounds familiar. I don't know about you all, but I hate being a test subject.

Well, it's a good job not everyone thinks that way, otherwise nothing would ever get tested. This don't just become magically stable you know.

Re:Security Support for Sarge

[The Almighty Dave]

You're always a test subject, for damn near everything. Get used to it.

Only the hash needs to be official

[Anonymous Coward]

Only the md5sum needs to be hosted somewhere official.

Re:Only the hash needs to be official

[lambent]

Good point. You needn't have posted anonymously.

While no sane person who knows what they're doing would install an OS without first verifying data integrity, i think that virtually nobody will bother to d/l the sums separately and take that extra step.

Me, i'm just paranoid. I wonder how many others are, too?

Re:Only the hash needs to be official

[Anonymous Coward]

And you needn't advise folks on how to post or assume you know the motivation behind posting anon. Plenty of reasons... account-snob.

screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the installer supposed to be sort of a GUI-based installer this time? So uh.. why haven't I seen any screenshots of this? I'm not going to toss together a new machine and burn an ISO and go through the install process just to see what the installer looks like now. Not that i have any intention of installing a new version of debian on my production box, but...

Re:Screenshots

[GammaTau]

It's not based on Progeny Anaconda. It has been written from scratch.

Some screenshots are available at http://people.debian.org/~madduck/d-i/screenshots/

Re:screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

AIUI the installer is still text-based and looks pretty much like the old boot-floppies, but this time with good hardware detection, aptitude instead of dselect , and streamlined to minimize the number of questions.

However, the installer is very modular and it should be possible to write a graphical front-end. In fact, a prototype exists, but I'm pretty sure it won't be used for the release.

Re:Screenshots

[utopist]

No it is not based on anaconda.
Screenshots

Re:screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC the author of the GTK installer lost much of the interest in it, because the framework wouldn't allow him to make a true graphical interface over the Debian installer.

Instead, all he could do was mapping every widget to its GTK counterpart, which then would make not much difference from the text-based installer. This way it is not possible to include, for example, a GTK partitioner app really integrated to the framework.

I think many people was looking forward for the graphical installer...

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

What?! That's it?!

Those screenshots may just as well have come from the installer with Woody that I've used umpteen billion times. I don't see any different in this "new installer" over the old one. When I hear "GUI" I think "point and click windows/mac style installation". This is just the same curses/ANSI/whatever installer it's always had.

I love debian and I don't see what the big deal is with installing it as it always has been (it's by far the simplest linux distro to install and more straight forward, too) - but ever since I started hearing about this great new graphical debian installer, I've been envisioning something red-hat-ish or something.

*shrug*. *yawn*

Re:screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, as long as you can still use dselect during install *if you want* then I'm happy. I don't need your new fangled aptitude thank you very much! heh

Re:Screenshots

[Mehmet Kse]

new installer has a 'working' hardware detection (thanks to progeny at this point) and extreme modularity. I think grafical interface will come from http://www.userlinux.com/userlinux

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at the screenshots I miss one thing compared to YaST from SuSE: On the left side YaST has a pane with lots of help text for every dialog. The really big advantage is that it's very helpful for newbies or people who never have bothered about that part of a setup but at the same time doesn't get into the way of experienced users. Just perfect! Documentation whenever you want it and streamlined installation for the know-it-alls.

I nonetheless are very eager to try the new installer.

Re:screenshots

[datadriven]

Kind of looks like the slackware installer to me.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Those text-based setup screenshots really take me back, back to the times I spent fixing my mother's DOS PC. You know, in 1989 or so.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

What?! That's it?!

Those screenshots may just as well have come from the installer with Woody that I've used umpteen billion times. I don't see any different in this "new installer" over the old one. When I hear "GUI" I think "point and click windows/mac style installation". This is just the same curses/ANSI/whatever installer it's always had.

I love debian and I don't see what the big deal is with installing it as it always has been (it's by far the simplest linux distro to install and more straight forward, too) - but ever since I started hearing about this great new graphical debian installer, I've been envisioning something red-hat-ish or something.

*shrug*. *yawn*

The new Debian installer has automatic hardware detection, an improved partitioner (automatic "wipe the drive and do it for me", or manual with options like non-destructive resizing), and as of several months ago, gets you an installed Debian system in 11 keystrokes, 10 of which are Enter. It's also incredibly modular (based on installing miniature Debian packages), making it far easier to maintain and to extend.

Re:Screenshots

[gabbarbhai]

I really don't care about graphical setups. Fedora (IMVHO) does a good job of making a GUI setup. Debian on the other hand (again IMVHO) fills what otherwise would be a gap between something overly for-the-average-user (Mandrake/Fedora/maybe SuSe) and something for the control-freak (My beloved Slackware), and the installer portrays that fact..

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are some pretty shallow observations there.

What I see is an installer that keeps with the Debian traditions but streamlines and improves.

Did you notice that there are more features? Look at the module selector, the network configuration, the partitioner, or the LVM and RAID stuff. How about its ability to display Chinese, Cyrillic and Greek characters? I thought that was pretty cool. You don't see that in many console applications.

"Graphical" installers mean nothing. A graphical installer would ask the same questions but cause an unnecessary hardware dependency, which complicates things. A graphical installer would make things sluggish and error-prone, and you can forget about serial console. "red-hat-ish" installers are much worse than this thing. Stick to the basics. Stick to what works.

Re:screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

I just noticed this too; looks verymuch like the slack installer. :)

-Adam

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're apt to mistake eye-candy for functionality, maybe you should go back to playing Doom 3 instead of commenting on modern OS installers?

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, modern my ass!

That installer can't even set up DSL that uses PPPoE.

PPPoE is only used by all the baby bells you know the largest DSL providers in America and it's also used by major providers in Canada and EU, but the Debian developers said ti was too niche to bother to support so now when you install you gotta spend an hour screwing around tyring to fix PPPoE which is a pain in the aass if you got no internet to read howtos and fine manuals.

I now debian prides itself on being a 90s throwback but you really need to be able to support DSL out of the box...

Re:Screenshots

[Alan]

It also gives install options like LVM and raid (finally)!

However, it's still not all that impressive looking, still the same white text on blue that's been the same since I first used debian some 7 years ago. It's not bad, it's just not all that exciting.

Re:Screenshots

[base_chakra]

Mods and flamers get ready: I'm about to criticize Debian (even though it's my favorite distro).

The fact that there are 231 screenshots of the new installer should raise some flags. 231!! Excluding a handful of error screens and progress bars, that suggests that in some circumstances the user would have to field more than 200 interactive prompts during the installation process. I should hope that many of these can either be consolidated or eliminated.

I had high hopes (too high) about the new hardware detection; I would be happy if these kinds of prompts disappear from the final build. You know the kind... the ones that require either clairvoyance, a second computer for hardware research, or the degree of advance preparation that only the IRS would demand.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Screenshots to the GTK+ frontend here.

Not great (reminds me of the Tk-based pre-2.6 "make xconfig"), but a work in progress.

Re:Screenshots

[Daniel]

I used an older build to install a system the other day, and I hardly even had to hit the Enter key. (ok, the system didn't work once it was set up, but that turned out to be my fault, not the installer's :) )

If you scan through some of those screens, you'll discover that the reason there are so many is that you can take branches in the installer: for instance, if you choose to set up RAID, you get a bunch of screens about the RAID configuration; if the network can't be set up via DHCP, you get screens about setting up the network. A fair number of the screenshots are also screenshots of progress bars, which are noninteractive. (and a huge improvement over the old installer, where you just watched a message like "Setting up the base system..." while the hard drive churned)

Daniel

Re:Screenshots

[nofx_3]

The way it has been explained to me, there is a damn good reason that Debian still uses an ncurses installer. Basically becuase it supports so many architectures (a good thing) with so much diff hardware, the ncurses installer is the best interafce to make sure a single installer can support each and every supported architecture. I think broader support for a good distro like Debian is much more important that a true GUI installer. Besides, I find the Debian installer to be the easiest to use, even though maybe its not the prettiest, but thats just my opinion of course.
-kaplanfx

Re:Screenshots

[Afrosheen]

Pardon my french, but this looks like the same old crap to me. When are they getting with the times and making a decent graphical installer? I want to be able to mouse around and use nice partitioning tools like Diskdrake.

Re:Screenshots

[Afrosheen]

Mandrake still embraces both styles, you can use a text-based installer with prompts like the old school Redhat installer if you want, it's a commandline switch at boot time. Best of both worlds, or a work around for wacky video hardware.

No gap here.

Re:Screenshots

[runderwo]

Guess what? Many of the machines D-I supports don't even have a framebuffer console. A text-based setup is the lowest common denominator for all the machines that the Debian can run on. There are install images with PGI for i386 only, if you just have to have that eye candy.

Re:Screenshots

[nofx_3]

mmm but xconfig is so tasty now. I haven't tried the gtk version but the qt version is quite sweet, I installed x and kde on my last machine before building my 2.6 kernel, just so I could use it. (not I would normally install kde anyhow, just usually after I built the kernel)
-kaplanfx

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

When mandrake will run flawlessy on 11 architectures... I know it's the same old story but it's not easy to have HW detection on all these different architectures.

Re:Screenshots

[zelyan]

well, let's see...never.

Debian, unlike most distros, supports 11 architectures _with_a_single_installer_. That means installing over the biggest variety of hardware of any Linux distro. That means supporting installing with a serial terminal, among just one obvious piece of hardware which doesn't support graphical.

Plus graphical != user-friendly. The sarge installer has been user-friendly for several betas now, even though it's a curses user interface, not a graphical one.

Re:Screenshots

[rseuhs]

You use the installer only once (well - at least not very often) there is no need for it to be "pretty".

All it should do is just work and detect as much hardware as possible automagically.

Re:Screenshots

[zerblat]

Um, in what way are they the same? They're both curses based, but in what way do pretty graphics make inte easier to install an OS?

There are many alternative ways to install Debian, if the default one doesn't suit your needs. Debian needs an installer that is flexible, powerful and portable in order to be usable by all the diverse users of Debian, not to mention the dozen or so different architectures Debian runs on.

Of course, the Debian developers could have delayed the next release a year or so in order to get a pretty graphical installer working on some platforms. I guess their priorities are different.

Re:screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Although graphics support was initially planned for the new debian installer, it was dropped for Sarge release. Expect a graphical installer for next debian release.
But well, is this so important to have a graphical installer ? Personnaly I prefer a good text based installer to a crappy graphical one.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake isn't designed to run on 11 architectures, they BRANCH for things like that. There's a separate installer for AMD64 and the somewhat older PPC version.

Debian should branch as well. Having a single install cd for 11 architectures is much too limiting. Would it kill them to fork the distro to i586, i386, etc?

Re:Screenshots

[cmacb]

Be careful what you wish for. The best Windows installer IMHO was the one for NT. After that they started trying to detect too many devices that would hang the whole process.

I think the original plan for this Debian release was for a graphical installer, but to be honest I'd rather have one that JUST WORKS, producing a bootable system that can be tinkered with to deal with anything that's not perfect. The new installer, from my experience has improved the detection of devices, reduced the number of questions asked of the user. Once all these things are perfected (or nearly so) I suppose making it graphical will be a nice way to, um, slow down the whole process like Windows does. I can live without it.

Unlike Windows, the Linux install process is not a monthly maintenance task, so I hardly think it matters how it looks.

Re:Screenshots

[einhverfr]

They're both curses based, but in what way do pretty graphics make inte easier to install an OS?

They make people more comfortable, and comfortable users have a greater ability to figure things out. I think having a graphical *option* is important if one wants to bring Linux to the masses. Of course, I am not really sure that this is in Debian's list of goals, so this may not be so important.

OTOH, the last two times I have installed Fedora (Core 2), I have had to fall back to the text-based installer because it is more stable than the X-based one. Probably for reasons of memory consumption....

Also text-based installers are important for another reason-- they allow you to install Linux on specialized network appliances which may not have the hardware for a graphical installation. For example, I run a highly customized Red Hat 9 on my firewall, which has 32MB RAM, and a VGA video card. Works great.

Re:Screenshots

[0racle]

Have you ever done a headless install? No? I didn't think so. Not every system has a video card, monitor and keyboard attached so a graphical installer would be a huge pain in the ass.

Re:Screenshots

[Fenris Ulf]

The new installer can get debian installed in 11 keystrokes -- 10 of which are 'Enter'.

Re:Screenshots

[Afrosheen]

I'm not asking for a mandated GUI installer, just an optional one that ships with the CD. Mandrake has been doing it this way for years.

And yes, I have done headless installs. 2 of my servers are nearly purely ssh beasts with no keyboards or monitors attached, thank you. No cdroms in either one.

Re:Screenshots

[lspd]

My understanding is that the graphical front-end is more or less abandoned. I tried building it from source without any luck a few months back. It would be nice to see someone hack up a working installer using the GTK udebs, even if it's simply a gtk version of the current menus.

Re:Screenshots

[Daniel]

non-destructive resizing

Note, however, that this resizing does not work with NTFS, so you can't use it to split the hard drive on any computer sold in the last 3 years or so.

Daniel

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

However, it's still not all that impressive looking, still the same white text on blue that's been the same since I first used debian some 7 years ago. It's not bad, it's just not all that exciting.

What's wrong with white text on blue? It's not like it's going to put Windows users off - white text on blue was what I got last time I installed Windows, after all.

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

What ignorance! The Debian Installer was built from the ground up, designed to be modular so that people could add a GUI later. No-one from Debian has suggested that the new DI would actually have a GUI this time around. Instead they have worked on hardware detection and a decent installation. The idea was because Debian is installed on 11 architectures that a GUI installer might not work on all arches. A GUI one can be made for i386 later.

BTW, Windows XP still has a crappy text-based partitioner and installer. So why do people give Debian a hard time?

Re:Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

I hardly even had to hit the Enter key. (ok, the system didn't work once it was set up, but that turned out to be my fault, not the installer's :) )

That's the sort of dangerous mentality that the open source community needs to get away from. If accepting too many defaults gets you into a mess, it will never be acceptable to the vast majority of users.

I count myself amongst that 'vast majority' in a lot of ways. I gladly use Linux on my servers, but find other platforms more suitable for my desktop machines; they're simple and I'm happy to blame the OS for my poor choices. The free alternatives punish me for a moment's carelessness, and I sometimes slip into the mood expected by the platform and community: I accept responsibility for using a computer when I'm tired and thank it for its inconsideration in doing exactly what I told it to do. I convince myself that I'm glad to be using such a powerful, direct system. That is the mantra, isn't it?

Re:Screenshots

[pnot]

When are they getting with the times and making a decent graphical installer?

From http://wiki.debian.net/?DebianInstallerFAQ :

Question 5: Is the DebianInstaller going to be graphical in nature? / Is there any prebuilt/downloadable graphical DebianInstaller?

Answer: The DebianInstaller will not be graphical by nature, but modularity is a key in its design. It would allow the use of different kinds of frontends, including those of a graphical nature.

There is a project underway to create a GTK frontend to the installer. For more information on the current status of this frontend see here. Unfortunately the project hasn't seen much activity lately.

Re:Screenshots

[Daniel]

That's the sort of dangerous mentality that the open source community needs to get away from. If accepting too many defaults gets you into a mess, it will never be acceptable to the vast majority of users.

The problem was that I then ran a bunch of site customization scripts that I wrote, and one of them installed a piece of software that caused all X programs to segfault because of hardware incompatibilities. (non-nvidia cards don't like nvidia drivers, imagine that! :) ) Do you really think that was the installer's fault?

Daniel

Re:Screenshots

[Lord Bitman]

Ah, so the screenshots arenot merely worthless because they look just like the old one and so dont show any of the things which have changed, but they are also worthless because even if they did show a change, it wouldnt matter anyway. Thanks for clearing that up.

Re:Screenshots

[Fred_A]

ADSL ???

If SLIP was good enough for your dad, then it's good enough for you !

To stay on topic though, I realy really really liked the "copy data from this partition" feature in the partition tool in the new installer. It was realllly useful to reorg my disks prior to a fresh install.

Of course since I was installing sid on an AMD64, it rather went downhill from there...

Re:Screenshots

[base_chakra]

If you scan through some of those screens, you'll discover that the reason there are so many is that you can take branches in the installer ...
A fair number of the screenshots are also screenshots of progress bars, which are noninteractive

I realize this, and all of these points were implicit in my post. However, this is still a catastrophe. The fact remains that users with certain configurations must navigate a huge number of screens in order to complete the installation. Extremely few users preconfigure unattended installations. But let's consider that the average number of interactive prompts is 50. That is still far too many.

Re:Screenshots

[Daniel]

let's consider that the average number of interactive prompts is 50.

Where did you get this figure?

Daniel

Re:screenshots

[Cro Magnon]

I don't need a GUI installer, but I DO want an installer that can actually detect my hardware. Every other distro has done that since the 90's!

Re:Screenshots

[base_chakra]

It's just an example to show by comparison the severity of the problem. In other words, even if the average number of prompts is less than 25% of the maximum number of possible prompts (a relatively small proportion), it's still way too much--regardless of the nature of the required input. I'd like to say more about it, but I'll reserve comment until after I've tried the final build for myself.

Re:Screenshots

[Daniel]

It's just an example to show by comparison the severity of the problem.

In other words, you made it up. Please try the installer yourself before commenting further; I have, and the common case *is* streamlined.

Daniel

Re:Screenshots

[ArsonSmith]

50 is a little high. The new installer's minimum is 10 hits of the enter key and one tab key (to select yes I want to format my drive)

Now if you want more controll over your install you can select non-default settings and probably get 100 or more. I don't think you could ever do 1 install and get all 212 screens because if you use dhcp then you don't get the network setup promts but if you don't use dhcp then you are never promted for it.

Re:Screenshots

[EvilIdler]

Windows XP's installer isn't graphical, either. It installs everything
in a curses-like interface, then reboots into graphical to *configure*.

Re:Screenshots

[IamTheRealMike]

By definition for 95%+ of users if supporting multiple architectures means something as fundamental as a graphical installer is lacking, then extreme multi-arch support is not a good thing.

Re:screenshots

[MemoryDragon]

I tried it, and it is awesome, pretty much like a knoppix install, no hardware questions, everything except reiserfs worked out of the box (reiserfs refused to mount but I had a problem in my machine) and the install went smooth with a net install after the first machine. Partitioning about 3 times enter, that is it.

Debian documents are improved

[vivekg]

Yes, it looks like documents are new and improved. http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/

Screenshots

[anandpur]

Screenshots please. Is it based on Progeny Anaconda

At least!

[Teppich]

In short words: At least - with the bits taken from RHs Anaconda the installer ist "just more fun". Sarge looks very promising, but lets hope the next release will not take 5 years and more again. GO Debian!

Re:At least!

[wasabii]

It has nothing to do with Anaconda.

Re:At least!

[reynaert]

hmm, now I'm wondering what the important/difficult issues for sarge+1 will be

• gcc 3.4 with incompatible abi on some arches
• amd64 inclusion / multi-arch
• removal of gfdl-licensed documents and other controversial non-free stuff

anything more?

Re:At least!

[eldacan]

The transition to L4/Hurd as default kernel for all architectures? (Almost ready... may require some polishing and porting though)

Re:At least!

[ameoba]

The fact that they don't even have a plan for how to do multi-arch AMD64 kinda scares me. I recently had to install Fedora on a machine at work 'cuz Debian's idea of multi-arch is "install 32b in a chroot & work from there".

Very sad.

Re:At least!

[Anonymous Coward]

• xorg
  
• fb-gtk-based frontend for debian-installer
  

Re:At least!

[thinkninja]

people.debian.org/~taggart/multiarch

They have a plan, at least.

Screenshots

[adun]

http://people.debian.org/~madduck/d-i/screenshots/

Because I love all of you.

I've given it a shot

[Avian visitor]

Grab a copy and give it a shot!

I've downloaded a copy, burned it on a CD and gave it a few shots.

This is the result.

Re:I've given it a shot

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 5 PC's in my home. Most of them are crappy.
I tried Installing RC1 on them. It installed
correctly on only 2 of them. Hopefully slashdotters
will help me spread the fact that Debian RC1 doesn't
install correctly on 3 out of 5 PC's.

Re:I've given it a shot

[pyrrhonist]

I've downloaded a copy, burned it on a CD and gave it a few shots. This is the result.

Me too. I got all my shots through the same hole, though.

This is the result.

Re:I've given it a shot

[Anonymous Coward]

You lie! That was a microsoft CD!

debian vs knoppix installer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats the difference?

pppoeconf

[sewagemaster]

I've used the nightly builds (>beta4) about 6 times for installations on seperate occations within the last 2 weeks. Everything works much better than previous versions. No problems when it tried to probe my DHCP internet account. I'm now back at school where my pppoe which isn't DHCP based and obviously it failed detection.

Thankfully the pppoeconf package is unpacked before the initial reboot and is available after the bootstrap. Ran pppoeconf and got my connection. Still, though, I had to do this via virtual console. For the first-time debian user, they may not know pppoeconf as the name to get around this and will be stuck unable to do any sort of net-install.

Re:pppoeconf

[mikefe]

Be sure to file an installation report for this...

good stuff, cd sets?

[falkryn]

Well I'm looking forward to seeing this go stable, my experiences with the beta installers were quite good. Really clears out one of the last stereotypical complaints against Debian and all ("installer is an ancient piece of cruft", which really, part of it was.) I'm more of a slackware user these days, but I often list Debian as the "other" distro that I like. But once sarge gets stable, I might just give it another go. Maybe, I might even go ahead an buy a cd set, since on dialup, downloading packages and such can be rather a pain. Anyone have any suggestions of the best place to get debian cds from?

Re:good stuff, cd sets?

[falkryn]

actually, what would be REALLY good if anyone knows, a dvd set anywhere I could eventually purchase?

Yeah, a dvd set, with all the umpteen debs on it all my disposal, that would be hard to argue against :-)

Re:good stuff, cd sets?

[reynaert]

Debian maintains a list of cd-vendors. Probably far from complete, but better than nothing.

Re:good stuff, cd sets?

[Afrosheen]

Couldn't you just make one? Anyone with the cd set and a DVD burner should be able to put one together for you.

Re:good stuff, cd sets?

[planarian]

linux-cd.com sells woody and sarge dvds. The sarge dvds are updated daily.

Quite simply put:

[empaler]

The resulting system.
Knoppix is stripped-down.

Re:Quite simply put:

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, since Knoppix is based on Debian and not the other way around, this is actually the new stuff that future Knoppix releases will be based on.

Installation of X working?

[Tego]

Hey, the main problem I had with woody was that I never got X to install. Did they get that fixed?

Re:Installation of X working?

[Mehmet Kse]

'discover' and 'hotplug' help people who don't know the name of their VGA card. read-edid helps -most of- people who can't read the specs (something like 30-70, 50-120) from monitor's users guide. so it works for everyone.

Re:Installation of X working?

[Anonymous Coward]

X configurators always say "oh, the sync ranges are in your users guide", but the last eight (8) monitor models I have bought (in work) have NOT included such information in the manual. The "look in your manual" advice needs to go, as monitor manufacturers have long ago stopped including it. Really, in these days of DPMS and EDID, X should just detect whatever is connected and use the list of modes returned - leave the "manual" configuration for people who want to use wonky modes (I used to underclock my 1024x768 monitor to 1280x1024@50Hz...)

Re:Installation of X working?

[Anonymous Coward]

X configurators always say "oh, the sync ranges are in your users guide", but the last eight (8) monitor models I have bought (in work) have NOT included such information in the manual. The "look in your manual" advice needs to go, as monitor manufacturers have long ago stopped including it.

Really? Funny, my Hitachi LCD monitor has the sync ranges in its manual (25-80, 56-75), and that's only a year old.

Oh, and Debian's X configurator, like all others these days, *does* feature auto-detection (not for LCDs though).

In other words, you're either ignorant or trolling.

Re:Installation of X working?

[Beuno]

Did you have a GeForce video card? For some models you need to upgrade de kernel and install nvidia drivers...

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you want the non-i386 archs it's probably a couple more. Here's the rest of the i386 set:

Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 2 of 12.
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 3 of 12.
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 4 of 12.
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 5 of 12.
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 6 of 12.
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 7 of 12.
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 8 of 12.
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 9 of 12.
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 10 of 12.
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 11 of 12.
Debian 3.1RC1 (Sarge), CD 12 of 12.

Re:Yes.

[reynaert]

For the people not familiar with Debian, in the official release, the CD's will be organised so that the most popular packages will be placed on the first CD's, so you don't have to download all of them.

If you're using Debian now and want to help decide what's popular, please install Popularity Contest.

Re:Yes.

[MarsDefenseMinister]

All you need is the first one. Install the most minimal system that you can, connect to the net, and install the rest of the packages from there. The minimal system is just a couple dozen megabytes at the most.

Debian woes

[vuvewux]

I'm sort of new to this linux thing, but there's this directory on my new install of Debian 3.1 called "/usr/bin". It was all messed up when I first went in there. None of the files had descriptive names, and it took me like an hour to figure out they were executables, since none of them had .exe on the end of them. Furthermore, whenever I double click them, they just pop up a command prompt for a few seconds then go away.

I was gonna delete them, but I got kinda afraid that they might be my kernel, so I fiugred I'd ask. It's ok to delete this stuff, right?

Re:Debian woes

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty Awful.

Re:Debian woes

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they're not ok to delete. Those are command-line apps mostly.

If you're new to Linux, I'm not sure that Debian is right distro, anyway.

Oh dammit, post just got modded funny. Stupid me, I thought I was gonna be helpful this time. Meddling Kids!!

Re:Debian woes

[killjoe]

Exe? Just Exe? The proper regexp is more like.

(lnk|asd|hlp|ocx|reg|bat|c[ho]m|cmd|exe|dll|vxd| pi f|scr|hta|jse?|sh[mbs]|vb[esx]|ws[fh]|wmf)

Re:Debian woes

[WWWWolf]

Most of the files under /usr are important system files, and should not be deleted.

As a general rule, do not delete anything you're absolutely sure you won't need, much less if you have absolutely no idea what they're for. There are countless tales of people like you who invariably, no matter what operating system they are using, end up suffering after deleting stuff they think they don't need. Those who don't end up regretting it usually only do so by sheer luck - until something finally goes wrong.

As for deleting things from /usr, it is advised not to do that anyway - these are best done through the package manager (use Synaptic if you use GUI, or dpkg or apt if you are familiar with the command line).

As for lack of .exe or any other descriptive file extensions, it is merely only one of the common idioms of the UNIX environment. Please get used to it, it usually doesn't take much getting used to.

Hope this helps.

(And to anyone who found parent post +5, Funny: Get yourself a pet newbie, or try to answer newbie questions on a public forum for a whole. After a while, questions like that miraculously lose all funniness.)

Re:Debian woes

[grolschie]

> If you're new to Linux, I'm not sure that Debian is right distro, anyway.

I disagree. Debian 2.2r4 "Potato" was my first ever Linux install. With good instructions printed and knowledge of what hardware I had, it was a breeze to install. Just as easy as installing Windows 95 was in the day, but without having to have driver disks, hardware conflicts and numerous reboots.

The newer versions of Suse et al are easier to install than Windows XP. All partitioning (and resizing of NTFS + dual boot creation if needed) is done by the installer. You just choose 1 of the options from the list.

Theory: If a user can install Windows, that same user should be able to install Linux (GUI vs Text installer is irrelevant).

Re:Debian woes

[Anonymous Coward]

it's cute you think that was a real post. you're adorable.

Re:Debian woes

[strider44]

hey, I deleted dos when I was about 8 years old . . . so yes.

Re:Debian woes

[Anonymous Coward]

you forgot wtf

Re:Debian woes

[WWWWolf]

it's cute you think that was a real post. you're adorable.

Aaaah, I know very well it wasn't a real post. However, as implied in the last paragraph - people ask even stupider questions all the time, they are dead serious to find out answers to them, and people give them serious answers too. To me, it doesn't matter if the stupid question is real or not.

I may find it funny if someone just tells about someone else's stupid question, but if someone asks a stupid question from me, I answer, and there's not much funny about it. It's as simple as that.

Is that still cute? =)

Re:Debian woes

[tehcyder]

It's ok to delete this stuff, right?

Yes.

Your friend,

William Henry Gates III

Bwah hah hah hah.

Which discs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know which discs are needed for what installation you might want? I would assume that a few of those are for different platforms, or maybe include all the source packages. But I am just a normal i386 user who doesn't have any need for source packages, and also don't really feel like downloading 4-6GB worth of data to figure out which. Any information on which discs to obtain would be great.

Re:Which discs?

[jrschulz]

Anyone know which discs are needed for what installation you might want?

For a normal installation you only need to get the first two or three discs. If you have a fairly fast internet connection, you can even go with the netinst image. This installs a base system, reboots, and then you can get every package you want from a local mirror.

j.

It actually works

[n6mod]

I've done four installs with a just-slightly-pre-RC1 netinst snapshot, and in all cases the installer produced a working system with a functional KDE desktop (yes, working X out of the box).

The X settings were pretty conservative, but they were functional.

This was such a shock to me that I really believed I'd burned too much karma and was likely to be hit by a bus on the way home.

I can actually recommend using the native installer instead of Knoppix to do a Debian install now.

Re:It actually works

[sewagemaster]

I used to do knoppix->Debian install regularly, but the main problem is that it has problems upgrading kernels. Modules just didn't work - all this despite using knoppix 3.4 which includes kernel2.6 as a default, so upgrading shouldn't be a problem. As a default (or after dist-upgrade, not sure), hotplug is included in the default install. So if you most of the modules are automatically "modprobe'd" even if you miss anyone of them in /etc/modules.

I did have some problems getting X though, but luckily I had a backup of my XF86Config-4. This was the only real problem I had.

Install is a breeze

[SST-206]

Anyone who still thinks that Debian is hard to install, please think again

A big up to Debian developers everywhere!

Re:Install is a breeze

[Anonymous Coward]

you call that a breeze... crap

Re:Install is a breeze

[ttfkam]

Anyone who still thinks that Debian is hard to install...

...has used at least one other distribution's installer. Much better than it used to be (what was the name of the kernel module for the chipset in my network card?), but still harder than most others.

Yes, I know the reason: unified installer for all supported platforms. That simply tries to justify the difficulty. It doesn't make the difficulty go away.

That said, I'm a loyal Debian user. I hate putting it on a box, but once it's on, I have no real complaints.

Re:Install is a breeze

[cmacb]

The commentary accompanying the screenshots is both amusing and to the point. I've installed Debian so many times now that I hardly read the screens any more (Windows installs are the same way by the way... why are all home Windows machines on a workgroup called, uh, "workgroup"?)

Maybe a future version of the installer should leave the prompts as-is, but take the text for the prompts from a separate file that can be edited by a less technical newbie to eliminate the voodoo element of the whole thing. A world of good could come from just having more explanatory text in each prompt.

History of the Installer

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the summary of the debian-installer from one of the main developers...

Joey Hess blog entry: http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/d-i_retrospect ive-2004-08-07-19-46.html

//fatal

Isn't it time...

[Anonymous Coward]

To go Gentoo?

I mean really? Why should you have to settle for "versions"? Tired of your binary packages demanding specific users and uids for your application? Gentoo increments, it doesn't panic when it can't use UID 500.
Gentoo's security group is more active with linux than debian.
Gentoo gives you a lot more flexibility with the packages you want that debian!
Gentoo has better managed kernel packages than debian.
Gentoo tracks it's dependencies using a state of the art package management, not a bandaided database!
Gentoo has bleading edge stuff! Literally, like 2.6.8_rc3, and it's built from source!
Gentoo has stable stuff, like 2.4.27, and apache 1.3!
Gentoo has complete support forums, and mailling lists, not to mention a newsletter with real content.

Re:Isn't it time...

[nofx_3]

Next you are going to tell me the Gentoo installation is easier than Debian huh? Oh and its faster too. Right... I don't think even a skilled user needs to have or even most packages custom compiled. I usually use binaries for everything that I don't need anything out of the ordinary for (I like having my own LAMP packages, etc) Yes Gentoo is good, and I like it, but it is very much for the hobbyist and I feel is really only "fun" the first time around
-kaplanfx

Re:Isn't it time...

[davegaramond]

Yes, yes, parent is a troll. But...

Debian (stable) is geared towards server, the whole Gentoo thing is geared towards desktop or experimental.

Debian has always had the philosophy of free distribution and legal safety, I've seen none of this in Gentoo. I love the Debian philosophy.

Debian is a mature distribution with a strict QA, I still don't believe Gentoo has a decent QA "department" at all.

None of the datacenters/dedicated servers facility that I know offer Gentoo, for each one you mention supporting Gentoo, I can name 25 supporting Debian.

Gentoo has bleeding edge stuffs, that's why I don't want it.

Debian has complete support forum (debianplanet), a portal (debianplanet), ten times the number of mailing lists than Gentoo, local user groups, not to mention SEVERAL newsletters with real content.

Debian has Knoppix, etc based on it.

Debian has at least twice the number of worldwide mirrors compared to Gentoo;

As for "versions", you can upgrade from between Debian versions pretty much seamlessly.

Re:Isn't it time...

[grapes911]

I can get linux up and running from a stage 3 gentoo install much faster than I can with Debian. Any why wouldn't you custom compile all you packages? Isn't that a big part of linux -- being able to customize everything?

Re:Isn't it time...

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2005 the software in Sarge will be as old as Woody is now. (Think Gnome 1.3.)

In 2005 Sid will be unstable

In 2005 testing will not have security updates. (unless they change the rules)

In 2005 Debian will not offer a stable state of the art Linux distribution with security updates.

Re:Isn't it time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only when there is a need. Otherwise it's a waste of time. When you run servers for $$$ that stuff matters.

Re:Isn't it time...

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2005 Gentoo will be best desktop for the hobbyist.

In 2005 Red Hat/Suse/Knoppix/Whatever will be the best desktop for the non-hobbyist.

In 2005 Debian will be the best server.

Tell us something we don't know.

Re:Isn't it time...

[boudie]

I'm glad to have both Debian and Gentoo.

Re:Isn't it time...

[lspd]

In 2005 the software in Sarge will be as old as Woody is now. (Think Gnome 1.3.)

I don't understand why anyone believes this is a meaningful complaint. I know plenty of people still using Windows 95 and 98 on desktop systems, and I've installed Debian Woody on plenty of desktop systems. My desktop machine tracks unstable only because I need it for development. For the end-user, do you honestly think they want to install a new version of their OS every six months (or download 100+ MB of updates every month and sort out the problems those updates cause?)

The vast majority of computer users do not want to live on the bleeding edge. Your grandma does not know how to pick the optimal compiler flags. She doesn't know how to resolve errors with dpkg or rpm. Why force this nonsense on her?

Re:Isn't it time...

[True Grit]

1. Debian (stable) is geared towards server, the whole Gentoo thing is geared towards desktop or experimental.

....

1. Gentoo has bleeding edge stuffs, that's why I don't want it.

To add to the parent:

In contrast, those wanting to use Debian on a desktop and use the bleeding edge stuff can do that too, using Sid (unstable).

What Debian calls "stable" more accurately should be called "static", because the Debian folk assure non-breakage and long-term stability by literally not allowing anything to change (except security fixes). To Debian, "unstable" is called unstable merely because it is constantly changing. However, "changing" doesn't always imply "broken", or even "constantly breaking", since Debian's package system and the QA makes updating stuff moderately painless for most folks, and the possibily of major problems only occur with a small number of critical packages (which for the most part are managed by the smartest and most responsible of the Debian folk).

Hundreds, probably thousands, of others, myself included, routinely update their systems against Debian's "unstable" tree on a monthly, weekly, or even daily(!) basis, in order to get the latest stuff, and a large majority do so without problems. I myself have had one major breakage and maybe 2 or 3 dozen small breakages in the last ~2.5 years, while updating 2 to 3 times per week to Sid. With almost all of these problems, the solution was simply to put the broken packages on hold in aptitude, wait a few days for the packages to be fixed, and uploaded to Debian, then install/reinstall/upgrade them. No sweat on my part, the Debian Developers do all the work for me (thanks guys). For something really important, you can revert to the old version immediately if you really need that package to continue working, but since we are talking about desktop systems, this shouldn't be as much of an issue as it is with servers.

To be fair, that one major breakage, involving glibc, was fairly nasty, but frankly, a) I don't see it as all that different with other distros that are regularly (more than once every 3 months) updating their systems (Debian Sid is being upgraded continously, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week), and b) when you want to live on the bleeding edge, you have to be willing to pay the price, and the occasional minor problem, and the relatively rare major problem is the price that must be payed.

I've seen the complaints about "unstable", but you have to keep in mind the sheer number of people using Debian, the fact they are using it for different reasons and purposes, and are therefore using different packages or different combinations of packages that may create problems, but only for the people who have the exact same combination, and the fact that since unstable is in a constant state of flux, it might get broken for an hour or two, or four, until the DD (or someone else) hears about the problem and uploads a fix, which means a few unlucky people have some pain (maybe a lot of pain), but the majority of users who upgrade later never see that problem.

My suggestions:

• Only upgrade the software you are interested in on significant version changes, not minor x.x.N changes, and not the (even more) minor x.x.x-N Debian updates (unless the package is broken for you).
• If the software is not important to you (its there because of dependencies), then allow upgrades only when other packages' dependencies require it.
• Never update a major component of the system, or any large component, soon after its been uploaded to Debian, wait a week...
• Use aptitude, not apt-get, for fine-grained control of updates (so you can follow the above suggestions). This takes more time, but avoids the massive automatic updates of the entire world that apt-get always does (when its usually unnecessary and sometimes risky). This may be controversial to some beca

From my experience as a alpha/beta tester...

[Anonymous Coward]

...for the upcoming release (and mostly for the new installer), I have observed that a few of the Debian developpers have been less than responsive to major bug reports (like, big common average things not detected automagically as it is with other distros). This, with the fact that Joey Hess quit as release manager just recently, i.e. at a critical stage of the Sarge release, has me starting to wonder about Debian's future.

Has Debian hit the ceiling in terms of what a volunteer org. can acheive? I mean, are projects of this size be developped and delivered successfully by orgs such as Debian?

It took *forever* for Sarge to come out and my impression (I hope I am wrong) is that the installer will compare negatively with other distros installers. This and other config/post-install details that are bad in my mind make me truly wonder if Debian can continue in its current shape.

Is it because of the incessant splitting of hairs on "political" issues or what, I don't know. But to push Joey Hess to quit, something bad must be happening at the core of Debian.

Maybe I'm overly pessimistic because I'm transposing my personal non-tech feelings on everything today (I am in the doghouse with the girl-friend, long story), but the bad vibes I got when learning of the resignation of the Debian Sarge release coordinator do pre-dates my current predicament.

I wonder if Joey Hess did say anything (interview, somewhere?) about all of this. Joey, if you are reading this, can you comment with some insider's perspective?

Re:From my experience as a alpha/beta tester...

[Homology]

Maybe I'm overly pessimistic because I'm transposing my personal non-tech feelings on everything today (I am in the doghouse with the girl-friend, long story),

Your girl-friend is not a canine, I hope. Not that this is any of my business, though.

Re:From my experience as a alpha/beta tester...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is more an issue of management. I feel that debian has stagnated. Much like XFree86 has. People get too tied up in arguing over whether or not to make the background blue or black, and things like that, than getting any real work done.

Debian is important, not so much for the distro anymore, but for some of the projects that offshoot from the distro.

Besides, debian release cycle is just a wee bit too long *wink*

Re:From my experience as a alpha/beta tester...

[Anonymous Coward]

Semi-replying to myself:

BTW, the "...other config/post-install details that are bad in my mind..." I alluded to in my original posting include the fact that when you choose to install a desktop system you get *BOTH* GNOME and KDE. Think about the required diskspace and download time, it's insane! If there is one thing I'd change *right now* in the installer, it would be to split the DEs and ask the user which desktop he/she wants: KDE, GNOME, both or another one?

Now, if this was the only sore point in regards to Sarge, I would not be so pessimistic. But there are more. I know no distro is perfect, but there are more bone-headed decision (?) in the current D-I, and enough of them that Sarge does not compare well to other distros. A lot of work has gone into Debian Sarge, only to be spoiled IMO by bad choices like what I mentionned above.

p.s.: my very non-tech girl-friend is not a canine (the dog-house thing), she is just cheesed with me because I was late yesterday. Again, long story.

Re:From my experience as a alpha/beta tester...

[joey]

In fact I am reading this and you seem to be seriously confused. I've not quit anything.

Re:From my experience as a alpha/beta tester...

[zerblat]

[...]the fact that Joey Hess quit as release manager just recently[...]

AFAIK, Joey Hess was never release manager. OTOH, Anthony Towns, the previous RM recently resigned. I don't know why he chose to resign, but I'm guessing that it has to do with the fact that being RM is an extremly stressful position, and there's been various incidents, e.g. the discussion about the inclusion of non-free non-software in sarge, the attempt to force amd64 into sarge, etc. I don't know.

Has Debian hit the ceiling in terms of what a volunteer org. can acheive?

I don't see any reason to believe that.

It took *forever* for Sarge to come out[...]

So did woody. Woody was delayed because d-i wasn't anywhere near finished, and they had to pick up boot-floppies and hack it into something installable. Sarge was delayed because d-i took a while to finish -- in part because very little work was done while boot-floppies was worked on for woody.

I wonder if Joey Hess did say anything (interview, somewhere?) about all of this.

Joey has a blog where you can read his thoughts. Of course, I'm guessing you're really interested in aj's comments.

Re:From my experience as a alpha/beta tester...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oops. Sorry. Somehow I have managed to confuse you with AJ Towns. But my questions/concerns remain: why did the Sarge RM quit at such a critical moment? Has there been some unseen friction within the inner sanctum of Debian or something? What could push AJ to resign?

AC

just go directly to cdimage.debian.org

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no need to use suprnova. You can get the .torrent files from the offical site

No, it isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running gentoo and I like it but that doesn't mean that it is superior to other distros, nor that everyone has to like it too, nor that it meets everyones needs.

So please do yourself, slashdot and most of all gentoo a favor and STFU! Trolls like you are giving gentoo a bad name and the people working on gentoo clearly don't deserve that.

I don't have an account

[Anonymous Coward]

... N/T

Hate these condescending usability studies...

[Anonymous Coward]

get a REAL bob.

Pretending to be bob is never experimentally valid.

New installer?

[Wm_K]

I've started using Debian about a year ago (or even longer ago) and from what I can remember I've never used an other installer for Debian than the one I see in the screenshots posted in this thread.

Have I just been using the beta version of the installer all along or is this install just a minor version update over the previous installer?

Re:New installer?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the new one just looks identical to the old one. It can have a GUI thrown over the top, though, by anyone. Debian just hasn't done it because it's low priority and most Debianites are of the opinion that it's perfect as it is (I agree).

The new features are hardware detection, auto-partitioning, and hooks for a gui. Some people have worked on one... not sure what links to give you because I don't personally care.

I'm with the crowd that thinks graphical installers are ridiculous: they have higher hardware requirements, increase the chance of "killer" errors by several hundred percent, and they change nothing except appearances and the input device. Instead hitting the down arrow a few times and then Enter, you move a pointer down with your mouse and click Yes. All the same questions have to be asked, in the same order. The practical implications are so overwhelming compared to the aesthetic ones that it's just no contest, in my mind. For example, no graphical front-end to the installer will work on all 11 architectures that Debian could be installed on. Just expensive eye candy...

Re:New installer?

[Daniel]

Well, the new installer is superficially similar to the old one (it looks the same: it's a sequence of text-based menus), but it's a lot slicker behind the scenes and does stuff like hardware detection for you. For instance, if you were asked to manually insert modules into the kernel, then you probably didn't use this installer.

Daniel

Re:New installer?

[saroth2]

The Debian Installer needs improvement, a GUI would be nice, but it wouldn't make it more usable, bootloader configurator would, though.

Why 3.1 instead of 4.0?

[davegaramond]

I thought Woody still uses 2.2 kernel? Doesn't a jump to another kernel series merit a major version upgrade?

Re:Why 3.1 instead of 4.0?

[ari_j]

Not necessarily, but a jump to the default compiler being gcc 3.x certainly does.

Re:Why 3.1 instead of 4.0?

[zerblat]

Or what about the jump to a new installer?

Whatever, the version number ain't nothin' but a number. The only thing that matters is that it increases for every release. Of course, the easiest thing would be to just skip the minor number and increment the major number for every release.

Re:Why 3.1 instead of 4.0?

[ari_j]

Or skip 5 or 6 whole numbers, Slackware? Or add digits of pie, TeX? (Debian could start that now.) Or pick a random number, Futurama?

Let Parent be a lesson, kids!

[BerntB]

First, it starts as a serious question so the reader's fingers starts twitching when s/he starts thinking of a reply.

Then it gets more and more weird until you realize it's a quite funny joke.

What made it work was the lead up. I guess Seinfeld et al could do better, but the point is that you have to think through the path that the readers/users will think when reading the joke. (I've read that artists think the same way when {composing, writing, painting}).

My point is that software and documentation is usually better when you've thought through the way the user thinks will be thinking and accessing it. But (if it's not a joke) you need to put those assumptions at the top of what you write.

Sorry for this irrelevant rant -- which probably is too obvious for people other than me -- but this is something I've been thinking about for a while. (-: And if some of you guys (names withheld) read this and grokks, I've made the world a better place for all of us! :-)

On topic, I installed with a Beta a month or two ago and it worked well (except for not setting the partition type when it formatted partitions(!) which made grub confused, which confused me. -- yes, I reported the bug).

Imagine.....

[Anonymous Coward]

A beowulf cluster of these

Exactly

[empaler]

Knoppix is a stripped-down Debian.

debian-installer retrospective.

[Anonymous Coward]

Joey Hess has written up a
retrospective on the new installer. It's a good read.

Windows Woes

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sort of new to this windows thing, but there's this directory on my new install of windows called "c:\windows\system32". It was all messed up when I first went in there. None of the files had descriptive names, and it took me like an hour to figure out they were executables, since none of them had any extensions on the end of them. Furthermore, whenever I double click them, they just pop up a command prompt for a few seconds then go away.

I was gonna delete them, but I got kinda afraid that they might be my kernel, so I fiugred I'd ask. It's ok to delete this stuff, right?

Look, legal torrents...

[nurb432]

Be sure to send that link on to congress..

12 disks.. damn..

Anthony Towns was the RM, not Joey Hess [nt]

[Anonymous Coward]

[nt]

Getting a .img onto a usb drive using Windows

[Jakeg]

Okay... so finally I was going to take the linux plunge with this. I don't want to use a CD okay, so don't go and suggest I do. I want to boot from a usb drive with a minimal install and download packages i want over the net.

I want to gunzip the boot.img.gz directly onto my usb drive and then boot from that. As per the instructions at: http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apb.ht ml

But how the hell do i get the boot.img.gz onto the usb drive? I could do it if I was already running linux apparently, but I'm not. Any ideas? I can gunzip it fine, but I need to write it directly to the usb drive. From what I can find, there's no program which can currently do that in windows. Th e catch 22 is that i would need linux first to do it. If anyone can please,please help tell me how to write the .img to a usb drive using windows then please please do! That's currently the only thing stopping me using linux.

Re:Getting a .img onto a usb drive using Windows

[CoolVibe]

Get a floppy drive.

Re:Getting a .img onto a usb drive using Windows

[Daniel]

Personally, I would recommend using a CD :). I know you said you don't want to hear that, but the USB drive approach is completely new and probably will have a lot more snags than just burning an ISO image (which, if you use the netinst images, is just as small a download as the USB image). I also don't know of any way to create the USB image from Windows -- which isn't to say there isn't one; I just don't know how to do it.

Daniel

Re:Getting a .img onto a usb drive using Windows

[Jakeg]

Gee, thanks, hadn't thought of that one. Come on.. how hard can it be to put the .img file onto a USB drive. There must be a Windows appliction to do that out there SOMEWHERE???!!! Its not like its technically impossible - there's obviously a Linux application that can do it. Here's why this is so important to me: most new computers, especially laptops, don't come with (internal) floppy drives. Mine doesn't have an (internal) CD drive either. I've got a big 512MB USB drive though. And a broadband Internet connection. All I want to do is install Linux... please....

Re:Getting a .img onto a usb drive using Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay... so finally I was going to take the linux plunge with this. I don't want to use a CD okay, so don't go and suggest I do. I want to boot from a usb drive with a minimal install and download packages i want over the net.
. . .
If anyone can please,please help tell me how to write the .img to a usb drive using windows then please please do! That's currently the only thing stopping me using linux.

Okay, I was going to switch to Linux, but I can't find a distro that comes with a free Ferrari. If anyone knows which one does, please tell me! That's the only thing stopping me using Linux!

Sound silly? So does your "problem". Why on earth does the minimum install you use have to be on a USB drive? How is that any different from burning the minimal installer to a CD and downloading the packages you want over the net, like everyone else does? There is absolutely no difference between the two techniques after the first boot.

Re:Getting a .img onto a usb drive using Windows

[Jakeg]

Did I mention I only have an external CD drive and whenever I've tried to use it before I've had all kinds of problems?

Re:Getting a .img onto a usb drive using Windows

[Daniel]

Mine doesn't have an (internal) CD drive either.

If you have an external USB CD/floppy drive that you can boot from, that should work just as well.

Daniel

Re:Getting a .img onto a usb drive using Windows

[Krunch]

If you can boot from CD you could use Knoppix or any *nix Live CD that come with USB support for you drive and dd(1) the thing to it. If you can't boot from CD, you can boot from floppy and if you can't boot from floppy you can boot from HD (using loadlin) or network.

Maybe you could also try NTrawrite and see if it can write USB disks.

Re:Getting a .img onto a usb drive using Windows

[elemental23]

What year is this?

Seriously, I haven't owned a floppy drive in years now and haven't used one in longer than that. One of my two Debian machines has a floppy drive in the case, but that's only because I didn't have a cover for that space and didn't want a gaping hole in the front of the case; I didn't bother connecting the drive to the power or mainboard.

GUI Installer

[nurb432]

Nope, its still console based ( i asked this last time this came up around here.. )

But, if you are running a i386, you can goto progeny.com and get a sarge+anaconda installer set..

That said, the 'new' debian installer isnt bad for someone that knows what they are doing, the main target for stock Debian anyway...

Re:GUI Installer

[wasabii]

Not true. The new installer can install with essentially only one answered question. The only thing a "GUI" would add to it would be just that, a GUI. Maybe with AA fonts. ;)

Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

The most sensible answer to this stupid troll thread.

I want some of those mushrooms dude!

[Anonymous Coward]

Knoppix is NOT stripped down.. It's a heavily preconfigured and tweaked Debian. Of course it can not hold averything tahat makes debian but it's still 2GB of software.

Re:I want some of those mushrooms dude!

[empaler]

How else would you define taking away all the surplus/extraneous stuff from a distribution?
It's been stripped down to one bootable CD, even if this CD is full of heavily compressed data.

ARM version?

[torpor]

Anyone know if this installer supports the ARM architecture?

I want to use Debian, but not on x86.

Re:ARM version?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people know, like anyone who bothered to read the article.

Re:ARM version?

[AigariusDebian]

Yes all 11 architectures (+, unofficially, th amd64) are supported as of this release. Please read the article.

You gotta be shitting me!

[Like2Byte]

I just spent the better part of Friday night and yesterday reading, downloading and installing debian "Woody" via jigdo-lite. Damn, back to the drawing board.

{{throws hand in the air}}

Interesting.. :)

[CptnHarlock]

I don't have a 128MB usb drive... But this is what I would try..

The .gz file seems to have an bootable filesystem image. Extract it using wizip, winrar or gzip/gunzip. Get the rawrite2 utility and use it to put it on the USB drive using the USB drives letter. Download the "Debian netinst CD image" (as stated on the page you linked to) and copy it to the now correctly formated USB drive........ Profit!?... :) ... Please post success/failiure reports.. :D

Disclaimer: these are just suggestions and I haven't tried it mywelf! If you damage your hardware.... then you must have done something pretty wild..

Cheers...

Re:Interesting.. :)

[Jakeg]

Thanks CptnHarlock. I tried your cunning plan, and I'd seen rawrite before but in the docs it only mentioned floppy dries... and when I tried it and I said drive 'e' it spewed out: "Drive was E; must be A or B" So... looks like it won't work. Unless there's a way to make ti appear as A or B instead, perhaps? More ideas?

Re:Interesting.. :)

[CptnHarlock]

Hmm... Pitty... I've borrowed a friends 256Mb mp3-player and will try to make this work. I'll post results here. :)

Re:Interesting.. :)

[rvega]

How about a version of dd for Windows? There appears to be a standalone version here (including some usage examples), or you can install Cygwin.

Re:Interesting.. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't recomend cygwin... It's too cumbersome.. Looking at dd right now.. :)

/CptnH.

Re:Interesting.. :)

[Jakeg]

Thank you so much... its actually worked! At least, I did the dd then stuck the usb drive in the PC and it booted from it and has given me a debian install screen "press f1 for help or enter to boot" great!

Oh, noes!

[Anonymous Coward]

You have stated an opinion that differs from the majority "correct" opinion. Please report to your nearest LUG center for reprogramming. Thank you.

Seriously, that's exactly what happened with the Windows XP SP2 RC2 the other day. Some guy couldn't get 3/5 of his PCs back up, and suddenly from a sample size of 5 PCs everybody laughs and points at the 60% failure rate. Give me a fucking break.

OFFTOPIC:
Does anybody know if there is a way to crack or otherwise get around the 24 hour reboot in Windows PE?

Then use GRP!

[oldosadmin]

I'm tired of all the "I don't want to compile everything" gentoo trolls. Gentoo now has binary packages for quick installs. I personally love the customization, but there are other options.

FFS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop being an elitist prick and come with some constructive ideas!!

there are a few 3.1s floating around./

[Anonymous Coward]

i just picked up the 12 3.1 sarge fiscs form the debian stand at this weekends http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2004/. cool huh?
havent installed them yet i think i lost cd 1 d'oh!

anywayys.

ebay

[boffy_b]

I always get my *nix CDs from ebay, it's much cheaper than the official sets, and there are loads of people who burn in bulk and sell cheap.

My results...

[CptnHarlock]

I succeded in transfering the filesystem to the USB drive from windows but my comp seems to be unwilling to boot from the USB device. Try what I did and maybe your comp will react better.

This is what I did...

1 Get the dd utility from here. Unzip it and put it into your c:\winnt directory (unless you want to mess with env. variables [PATH]).

2. Get the boot.img.gz image from here. For some unexplainable reason Windows unpacked it for me to its real size (ca 123 Mb). Maybe because I have winrar installed? Maybe not. Winrar should be able to unpack it anyway.

3. Get the bootbf2_4-xfs_iso.zip and read this to be able to unpack it. I like this ISO because it the kernel has XFS support. Choose any other you prefer.

4. Start a cmd.exe and use "dd --list" to see your devices so that dd can use them. (dd is used to copy raw data). My usb device was I: and in the listin I could read:

\\.\Volume{45e7b0b0-e981-11d8-be69-00a0c9ca4794}\
Mounted on i:\

5. After finding your USB device in the list dd the boot.img to the device:

dd boot.img.gz \\.\Volume{45e7b0b0-e981-11d8-be69-00a0c9ca4794}\

6. If that worked copy the unpacked bootbf2.4-xfs.iso file to your USBs root directory.

7. Reboot the comp and enter the BIOS setup. Set it to boot from your USB (or USB-ZIP) device.

The filesystem on my friends USB drive is fine and I can mount it from windows and Linux. The filesystem si 128Mb big and the device is 256 so it seemd to have worked fine (since the iso was supposed to have a 128Mb fs). I have one comp that is supposed to be bootable from USB but the USB device (mp3-player) itself seems to not react untill the OS is up. maybe that's why it won't boot? I hope. Hope you have better luck!.. :)

Cheers...

Re:My results...

[Jakeg]

What I did (and it seems to have worked so far, at least to boot) is download the img.gz file, un gz'ed it, then: dd if=c:\documents\downloads\boot.img\boot.img of=\\.\e: bs=1440k It took about 2 minutes to finish then told me: 87+1 records in 87+1 records out There weren't any errors displayed :) I'll let you know how the rest of the install goes... although I should really be going to bed soon!

Re:My results...

[Jakeg]

Dog darn it... I stopped the install process and now I can't get the bloody thing to work again. Every time I try it just doesn't notice the usb drive there. Definitely bed time now though

cool

[CptnHarlock]

I didn't get errors either.. But my comps are too old for this fancy-shmancy USB stuff I guess.. ;) .. Go to bed? Oh you're in europe too.. :)

demographic slewing joe sixpack debian user here

[louden obscure]

i am a debian user (four boxes, desktop is sid, NAT/gateway is woody, ramsey fm10 yardcasting sound source is sarge and my xbox dual boots to woody) and installing was never a huge problem. i'd like to see some nice tools that do hardware detection and interact when you want to roll your own kernel from source rather than an eye candy GUI installer. but that's just the lazy me. and i'm annoyed by the qt powered xconfig that kernel 2.6.x brings forth, i liked the old tcl deally. o well, progress i spose.

i don't do update/upgrades till late Sunday evening on my sid box. so far so good.

Installation reports

[sewagemaster]

Be sure to file your installation reports here:
http://www.nl.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/re port-template

ALSA out of box...?

[Anubis350]

While Debian is my favorite distro and I run testing as my primary desktop, my one problem with it has always been setting up ALSA drivers. On the current setup I have now, I just stuck with the OSS drivers, setting up ALSA was too much of a pain in the a$$. anyone know if the stable release of sarge will include better alsa-driver compatability?

Re:ALSA out of box...?

[Noltar]

Well, I've been building my own from the alsa-source package for the last 9 months, but before that I had no problem setting up the alsa-driver package with the precompiled binaries. Even with the standard package, the most work I had was a single window for selecting the driver (emu10k for an audigy card in my case), which was already highlighted as the detected default.

I haven't taken a peek at the new installer lately, but I believe it detects and suggests the correct alsa driver reliably for all but the most obscure cards out there.

you don't need any CD, floppy nor USB key

[Anonymous Coward]

you don't need any CD, floppy nor USB key to boot most linux installers. Feeding the kernel and the initrd image to LILO or GRUB or LOADLIN is enough. You just need some operating system already working on the machine.

http://marc.herbert.free.fr/linux/win2linstall.htm l