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Interview with Debian Project Leader
brunotorres writes "I've interviewed Martin Michlmayr, Debian project leader. In this interview we talked about the upcoming Debian release, Sarge. An excerpt: 'We heard for years that Debian is hard to install and the old installer wasn't very easy to maintain or advance, so we we decided to throw the installer away and start from scratch. The new installer is much more modular, which makes it easier to maintain and extend.'" Reader ron_ivi points out that new Debian/Hurd CDs are available. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.
We heard for years that Debian is hard to install and the old installer wasn't very easy to maintain or advance, so we we decided to throw the installer away and start from scratch. The new installer is much more modular, which makes it easier to maintain and extend.
:)
heh, so if I'm reading this right, they know the old installer is hard to use, but they really don't care. The new one is easier to extend and maintain, and that's all that's important.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
but this looks like stormix... I wonder what happened to those guys, stormix was a great deb based distro.
moo
I've always thought there should be two versions of linux: bleeding edge, and ignorant housewife editions.
Red Hate falls squarely into the ignorant housewife category, where gentoo and LFS are for linux users with balls of steel.
Unless you can do source on the fly, I don't see the gentoo-type crowd getting excited over this.
Just my $.02 (that's $4.00 canadian)
they didnt say that the new one was easier to use from an end user perspective.. wasn't that the first complaint?
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ They will mail (snail) you 10 copies for free... The installer is nice and the desktop looks pretty damn good... Uptown (not an Ubuntu salesman) Joe
All the other architectures I tried (Suns, _old_ x86s, _new_ x86s) worked great.
I really reall really like the fact that the minimal install and the installer itself doesn't require the X-windows bloat.
only, what about all the other posts.
Is Your Development Project a Sinking Ship?
So now, is HURD so unimportant to slashdot that news related to it is just grouped under some other news? The same slashdot that carries a front page story about even release candidates of the Linux kernel?
I'm looking forward to a Hurd LiveCD - I understand this is technically pretty complex but when it happens, trying out hurd will be simplified massively.
The new one is easier to extend and maintain
So what he's saying is that if the new installer is easy to use, it's now trivial for a developer to make it just as hard as it used to be!
Perhaps they're going for backwards-compatability?
See what I've been reading.
The only time it gave me headaches was when I banged my head on the desk trying to seewhat type of chipset my ethernet card had, and what type of graphics card was inside the box.
As long as you know what type of hardware you have, debian is simple to install, and very easy to keep updated. I think most people just don't like to read the text on screen detailing exactly what's going on during the install.
Well, I wondered the same thing until I tried out Debian and realized you could do interesting things like downgrade packages to previous versions. In general, the install system had features Portage doesn't, until the next version of Portage anyway.
:)
That didn't stop me from happily moving to FreeBSD, however.
Wouldn't Viagra accomplish the same thing.
Sarge is great. When it becomes the new Stable, I may just switch from Testing to Stable.
See what I've been reading.
"The desktop is very important for us and we know that our current release cycle is just too slow. We are currently discussing moving to time-based releases (the model which, for example, GNOME follows and in which a release is made every n months according to a very thorough and well-planned schedule). Obviously, the big question is how often we should release, and here we have to take two conflicting requirements into account. The server people don't want to upgrade too often, while many (but certainly not all) desktop users want to see frequent releases. At the moment, a 12- to 18-month cycle is in discussion. We are also working on security support for our testing distribution, which will allow people who want cutting-edge but tested software to use testing."
It's great to see that the debian guys are actually acknowledging this problem (wheras some debian diehard user will tear your head of if you even dare to mention it)
Either having a time based release schedule or adding security support to testing would certainly the step needed to make debian really a great desktop solution.
Way to go debian devs!
Why does each and every distribution need to reinvent the installer and the package management tools and the portage system and the system layout?
Can't we have just one installer, one package management tool and one portage system that is shared by all the linux distributions, the bsd variants, OS X fink, windows cygwin, the comercial vendors, and all the rest?
I mean really, reinventing a new tool to do something that people have been doing for 30 years is the height of arrogance. And even if they do invent their own package management system, does it only have to run with their own custom portage system? Can we have multiple interfaces to just one portage system that works across all posix systems?
Ideally I should be able to pop in a DVD, and have a single installer come up that lets me mix and match my kernel with my package management system and select what packages I want to install and then have it install them in a known location that is the same as everyone elses in the world.
I should be able to deploy a software package one time and just have it compile and install itself on any unix like system. And work.
All you separate distributions and operating systems need to get off your high horses and share the labor for things that are common between all of you. This is why we don't have unix on every desktop right now. The fragmentation is killing adoption of unix on the desktop.
Because it has some inconsistencies during the installation process:
during the first part, Spacebar is used to select Items and Enter to advance in the process.
In Tasksel at the end, its the reverse.
The first time i tried to install Sarge, i installed an email-server instead of a Desktop System
Debian's installer was one of the most flexible out there, which was a god-send for things like diskless clients. I hope in responding to people's requests, they don't throw away the the things that made Debian so great.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
I didn't think the old one was all that hard. Quite similar to OpenBSD's dead-simple 2 minute install.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
I recall setting up debian machines about five years ago and it took me a bunch of time each time, like a day for each setup (I did about a dozen over the span of a year). I loved the update mechanism expect when I mixed stable and unstable one time and never managed to straighten things out. Debian is so freakin' solid it's a beaut. Looking forward to checking out the installer just for fun. Cheers
IIRC, ubuntu uses the new debian-installer.
One of the things I like most about debian is how easy it is to compile stuff from source if you are so inclined. I haven't found anything similar in any other binary distribution.
To answer the grandparents assumption, as someone who is using gentoo now for a long time I can assure you that something like this will appeal to the gentoo crowd. At least to the majority of the gentoo crowd who use gentoo because it's a great system and not because it makes same feel 1337.
Gentoo is as easy as talking a walk in the park with your nanny. I've used Gentoo on several architectures, and even done a networked install of Gentoo on a MIPS-based SGI-box with no problem whatsoever -- and I don't even know a single programming language. Gentoo is perfect for ignorant people. It may even make them feel they're learning something, although they don't.
Now, configuring GRUB to boot the Hurd, that was a bit more difficult the last time I tried. If you want to harden your balls, you can try the Hurd.
The problem with all installers (Fedora included) is that dependency tracking is extremely difficult and complex, and packages don't always accurately describe their dependencies. They also don't have any good way of handling multiple flavours of (essentially) the same product. They also don't talk with each other, so don't expect apt or rpm to know about anything you installed from CPAN or CPANPLUS, even though there's absolutely no reason why you couldn't have a program to rationalize the contents of different installer databases.
However, that is not the fault of Debian, but rather the fault of the problem being solved. It is extremely complex, and no good solution currently exists.
As a distribution, I like Debian a lot. No, that's not just because they included my FOLK patches as an alternative kernel (though that is a factor, because it means Debian is far more capable of including interesting ideas than almost any other distribution). Debian is simply a damn good distribution. It's comprehensive, it's consistant in approach, and it's been able to maintain a very high level of quality, despite having a very large number of contributors. (Or maybe because they do.)
There have been a lot of distributions, over the ages. Some have failed because the maintainers gave up (SLS, for example). Some failed because they appealed to too specialized an audience, so there wasn't a userbase to keep things going (QLinux is an example of that). Some failed because of political reasons (Stampede Linux got busted over a "trademark infringement" that pushed credibility a little far). Some failed because the maintainers went commercial (Red Hat Linux, I'm talking to you!).
Given that kind of turbulent history, it's impressive that Debian has done as well as it has. Those involved in the project should feel proud of themselves. IIRC, Slackware is the only other distro that has lasted as long, or atracted such a following.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Debian have broken copy/paste in openoffice where it works fine in the OOo applications. No sign of anyone fixing it either.
This unfortunately means you cannot trust Debian for office work, especially when you recall how they broken evolution for several weeks.
This is why commercial distros are the trusted options for serious users who use their machines to achieve tasks, rather than play with 97% complete applications.
RTFA.
Wow, defaulting to DHCP without even asking seems like an awfully annoying idea to me :P
God Fucking Damnit
Why does it matter if the wheel is constantly re-invented? No one is forcing you to do the reinvention and you don't have to use the new wheels.
Freedom to tinker is a major part of the driving force behind free software at the moment. As for fragmentation "killing adoption of unix on the desktop" (assuming that you are including GNU/Linux with unix), there are more *nix systems on desktops now than there ever have been previously. Strength through diversity, etc.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
"I wouldn't recommend Debian on the desktop for people who are new to Linux, but it's perfectly suited for people who have some experience with Linux or have an admin who takes care of their machine."
I like the comment, though it's probably been said a thousand times before. I would say though, that it still takes SysAdmin-type powers to be comfortable with most Linux distros, at least in my experience. Everybody that I ever came across that said "use Linux, it's great" turned out to have a decent amount of tech knowledge and (it later turned out) had climbed the sometimes steep learning curve that goes with it. I went through/still am going through that same curve and finding it immensely enjoyable and rewarding - I'm even seeing people that would benefit from using Linux but the hoops you sometimes have to go through to even get a printer to work would fox these people. If I'd let it loose on em, it'd mean constant calls every day/week.
The comment made me think about this again, thats all. We're close I reckon, but not quite there...
Well, Debian and OS X Fink do share an install system - apt-get. "All the Linux distributions"? Would be nice, but there are a fair few .deb-based ones out there now. RedHat and Cygwin share a system I believe (I'm prepared to be corrected here), because Cygwin was originally has ties to RedHat.
Ideally I should be able to pop in a DVD, and have a single installer come up...
Ah, well you've lost me there already you see. A DVD? I run Debian on a old laptop that hasn't got a CD drive, let alone a DVD. I also run it on a Cobalt RaQ - not even a floppy drive there. A single installer? But on my flashy new hardware I like graphical installs, whereas I would spit blood at anything requiring a graphical install if I was trying to put it onto the Cobalt.
All you separate distributions and operating systems need to get off your high horses and share the labor for things that are common between all of you.
OK. So who gets off whose horse first? I know - let's dump RPM, I always hated it. But hold on, it's used with some of the most popular and commercially supported distros right? So I know, let's dump .deb, after all it's only minority. But hang on, some of the most stable distributions there are use .deb so there must be some merit in it. I know, let's dump RPM...and repeat ad nauseam.
Cheers,
Ian
Oh, you don't know anything about computers? Try our Ignorant Housewife edition. See, it's for stupid people - like you.
How fashionable! Sarge: it's the new Stable.
One of the things I've noticed of late with Debian is that their vaulted upgrade procedure between versions is definitely not working for Woody and Sarge.
/etc directory is a little much.
Upgrading from a fresh Woody install -- of 3.0r0, to be precise -- directly to Sarge as it now stands destroys Gnome completely. It will boot, start X11, but then die horribly for reasons I have yet to sort out fully. (I did this three weeks ago, for an old beater that was a gift) And it would die consistently only in that operating any Gnome application in tandem with another would do it.
The only way I could get the install procedure to update correctly was by using a sarge netinstall CD with a beta from August.
I believe the kernel versions changing has a lot to do with this. Of course, blaming Debian for this is not fair, but expecting users to suddenly know everything about the kernel version, the module loading/management procedure and the deep changes to the
I don't care about a GUI installer. I do care about Debian's stability between versions. I used to think Debian's upgrade process flawed (speed of releases) but essentially fine for those people who didn't want to think about dependency hell when using an online upgrading service. But now I am wondering if they really have it under control; I think they've taken policy as far as they can go.
They should commit to a regular timeframe for stable/server/stale versions and stick to it. Once a year is plenty of time.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
Though just about anything, including poking one's eyes out with a sharp stick, would be better than the old Debian installer. I've been a hardcore Unix user/developer since 1982, and Linux since 1991, and yet I was completely baffled at some of the questions the old installer asked, and at the sheer number of questions.
It's nice to read an interview from a distro project member where the problems/limitations of the distro, (such as the long release cycle), are openly admitted. All too often distro maintainers (and users) make excuses for current limitations in their distros and stubbornly refuse to address them in a rational manner.
As a side note, I'd really like to see someone try to do this with Windows. Upgrading from 95 to 98 to 2k to XP and replacing HDs, CPUs and MBs under that system, while not having to reinstall all your applications and redo all the settings.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
I and others have mentioned this before, sometimes with accompanying downmods. The rallying response is that "choice is good," but let's face facts here. At some point there comes a bottleneck where the number of conflicting choices is hindering stable progress.
.NET and OS X programs which let you just copy an app to a folder and delete the folder to remove the program.
Just as an example, the CEO of Cakewalk has stated on the Cakewalk forums that they would release a Linux version of Sonar if there was enough demand for it. Which platform do they target? Which kernel, which libraries, and which desktop environment? What if Adobe wanted to port Photoshop--which toolkit do they use? How do they get it easily installed and uninstallable?
There needs to be a universal desktop installation/uninstallation API. Either that, or implement the so-called "xcopy installation" of
As OpenBSD folks would say, "show me the code or shutup". /. all day and bemoan how innefective others are, like 90% of the other fools?
Are you going to be a jackass you posts on
Let's see what you can do.....
"Can't we have just one installer, one package management tool and one portage system that is shared by all the linux distributions, the bsd variants, OS X fink, windows cygwin, the comercial vendors, and all the rest?"
No.
You must be new here.
Taking what you are saying a step further, why can't we just have a single distro? No we can't. The different free distros cater for different needs. Gentoo is for putting together a distro from the source. Debian is a distro with virtually all the apps out there and with a lot of ways to install the packages and supports many architectures. Fedora is for new users and people who want the latest eye candy apps. The commercial distros like SuSE and Mandrake *can* be unified but they're just in it for the money and they wont do it. Try convincing them.
Now, why can't we have a single package management system/installation system? Same reasoning - different distros do different things. You can't have a single package management system for both pre-compiled and source code distros without putting extra overhead on one of them. Same thing goes for installation system. And commercial distros just won't do it. Again, try convincing them.
Exactly! It would solve that, and anything else Micro and Soft.
Get rid of everything Micro and Soft: Buy Viagra and/or Linux
I'm building a new PC and finally decided to dedicate a partition to and install linux; I have no prior experience with linux. Which is a good linux for a newb? Debian? Mandrake? Redhat? Something else?
8700 packages for Debian GNU/Linux? Great. New installer? Nice. If I buy a small server, though, I can't even get a stable version that ships with SATA support. Debian may be a wonderful community project, but it is becoming too bloated to move forward like it used to.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
No, he's saying they're changing it so that it will be possible to maintain it and advance it, which will lead to it being easier to use. After using the new installer a couple of times, I can assure you it's true. It's the simplest GNU/Linux install I've seen to date.
Oh, you must be from vulgaria.
P.S.: This really helps to establish your credibility. Well done.
Press Ctrl-C to kill ISC's DHCP client, I have to do that everytime I forget to plug the TP cable into my Debian PowerMac-clone.
Numerous commercial apps seem to install fine on just about any distro without a unified package manager or installation API, I have used Oracle on Linux (Mandrake 8, Redhat 7.3 and 8, Slackware 9) and VMWare (Redhat and Slackware) with no problems at all. I don't see that having different install mecanisms for the base distro and related tools prevents Adobe from making a Linux Photoshop port.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
(after you've chosen a boot often such as "vanilla" or "bf24" and then selected a language)
/proc/pci
ALT+F2
cat
voila! Hardware devices (well, PCI/AGP anyhow).
They'd do it the same way that opera or vmware do it i suppose.
I've been thinking about this. Ever notice that when you insert an ethernet cable, you'll get a notice like "Link changed, 100MBps Full duplex" or something similar.
I wonder if there is something one could set somewhere to check if the cable is plugged, then go for DHCP.
Why didn't they took Suse's Gpled Install tool Yast and modief it to their needs?
The RAID support by itself was worth it.
I went about installing a new machine about a month ago. I was expecting that I'd have to chew through a couple hours of howto's, config files and recompiles to get SATA software raid(intel 875 chipset) on a boot partition. I figured I'd try out the new Debian installer for giggles since I didn't have anything to lose. Ten minutes later, I'm sitting there flabbergasted as the machine happily goes and downloads its packages onto a spiffy new raid1 partition.
Didn't have to read any instructions outside the installer either
I've installed Debian a number of times and the only problem I've had on clean installs is getting X-Windows to work with a non-standard driver.
Upgrading, on the other hand, has killed my machine twice in the last year. I had to do total reinstalls in both cases. And I have a computer science degree! At this point I should probably be required to turn my card in.
heh, so if I'm reading this right, they know the old installer is hard to use
Well, indirectly, since the new installer isn't "easy". The "easy" route is picking from a list of a whopping 7 choices. Pick "Desktop Machine" if you are okay with KDE, GNOME, and several other WM's being installed, and lots of random cruft, OR you get to do "Manual Package Selection", and wade through Debian's 8000+ packages. Neither the 7-super-mega-package-selection, nor the Manual Package Selection, is an option for most sane people. The only way to do it really is just installing the base system, and proceed with a self-paced Gentoo-style bit-by-bit install using apt-get. The difference in time spent installing, for me, was statistically insignificant.
This isn't necessarily bad, some of us like putting together systems that way, but thats another story...
Actually, it doesn't really change the Micro. Just the Soft.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
"NF: I think there should be framebuffer options in the installation boot prompt, something like choosing resolution. I had to type linux26 vga=791. Do you plan to put resolution options in the boot menu?
MM: Debian-installer works very well in the default resolution; putting in too many options would confuse users. You should use the command line option."
As much as I love Debian this is stupid.
It took me more than a week to figure out what was wrong with my laptop when I tried Potato! (look, it was my second linux installation and the first with debian and my laptop)
This is not helping newcomers!
I also fail to see why not supporting reiser4 (ok, ok, pleas dont flame, I will compile it myself, no big deal... I just tought that, ok Ill shut up)
Gentoo isn't for people with balls of steel.
;).
Gentoo is for lazy people.
Think about it. Is there a better excuse about not handing in your homework on time than "I'm sorry sir, I couldn't print my project because I didn't add the CUPS and foomatic flags to my make.conf and I got lost somewhere in the 5 page document on how to find the driver for my printer. The soonest I can give it to you will be 3 days from now after the compile from scratch is complete"
Having problems installing Gentoo? I laugh at your face.
Having problems with your system because you broke something?
The only thing stopping me from redoing my install is that little part of me inside that cries when I think of the work involved in getting my scanner to work
Can't we have just one installer, one package management tool and one portage system that is shared by all the linux distributions, the bsd variants, OS X fink, windows cygwin, the comercial vendors, and all the rest?
And if it doesn't do what you need it to do? Then you're fucked. Have you ever seen the redhat install reboot repeatedly on slightly off-spec hardware only to have the debian install which doesn't rape the system anally by probing for every little thing that might possibly be there work just fine when given the right settings? I have.
Is this a 386 you need set up quickly as a firewall? Wow, your "interfaces to portage" idea just went down in self-compiling flames, but then you don't care about that, because its not YOU.
See, the people who come here and sob and cry about having to choose completely fail to understand "maybe all of this isn't aimed at me!" Of course, most of them are too damn lazy to read the appropriate project websites to see what IS aimed at them. When they do, the selfish bastards that they are demand that everyone drop what they're doing for someone else and work for them. For free, because ain't that what this "free software" thing is about? Working for YOU for free?
So... at least two CDs for KDE/GNOME.
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
Now you will log into the system and enjoy it.
Yes, SIR! Appropriate for a release called 'sarge'.
Wah!
What about make for installs, tgzs for packages, and a reliable sysadmin for 'portage'?
Works for me.
You remember correctly.
(installed it yesterday on my laptop, it included the new debian installer)
An example:
Here we have the typical video driver selection screen. Can you seriously expect anyone who wasn't weaned with a transistorized soother to understand this screen?
Who but the eternal geek will know that VESA is only used for ancient systems or vmware, or that trident means the old, ancient trident chipset, and probably not the one that could show up in their laptop? - actually I don't even know myself on this one. I'd just have to try a bunch of installs to see, something a user should not have to do.
A little description beside each cryptic 4-5 letter identifier would be EXTREMELY helpful here.
Better yet would be some kind of auto-detection mechanism for the most common modern cards like other distros do.
Debian is not the only offender in this category.
Here's my favorite:
This is priceless.
What the hell is Simple, or Medium, or Advanced? Who's going to know what method will get their windowing environment working properly? (and really, that's all the user wants anyway)
Debian seriously needs a real user-interface designer to do their installer. So long as it's done by geeks, it will continue to be useable only by geeks. The folks at debian are assuming too much arcane knowledge upon their users, and because of that, they will continue to alienate the majority of users right from the outset.
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ They will mail (snail) you 10 copies for free... The installer is nice and the desktop looks pretty damn good... Uptown (not an Ubuntu salesman) Joe nopes, not anymore.. Though you can still download cd isos from:http://www.ubuntulinux.org/download/ their download page.
... Disclaimer: I barely know how to Read, please dont expect me to spell right!
You have it backwards; Viagra helps you extend and maintain, not maintain and extend.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why does each and every distribution need to reinvent the installer and the package management tools and the portage system and the system layout?
Debian is "reinventing" the installer, because it needed to be. The Debian project needed an installer that could be run on any of the dozen or so architectures it supports. Not only that, but they did an excellent job of separating the installer from the frontend it uses. Now that the installer is near completion, it shouldn't be hard to create a GUI frontend to the install scripts.
Not to mention, your question can be answered with the same answer that is used to argue why we shouldn't all just use one operating system, one brand of processor, and one computer manufacturer.
No comment.
It's all moot anyway, if this is any indication.
I'd recommend going with MEPIS. It's Debian-based, but very newbie-friendly.
I've been helping a friend get into Linux. I recommended MEPIS to him, and he loves it.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Understand that at least part of the reason that Debian has built their own installer, and it's still text based, is that it has to be able to run on practically every hardware platform known to man. That's a pretty tall order, but Debian gets it done.
"And now, Frank N. Furter, your time has come. Say 'goodbye' to all of this, and 'hello'... to oblivion!"
Debian should address security problems of vintage distros such as woody (stable). Good example is a PHP exploit (well known trough phpBB) that hasn't been patched because Woody has PHP v4, and that version of PHP is not patched or supported anymore by PHP developers because it ancient.
Where are my mod points when I need them. This is the most important statement I've seen in the entire thread.
Being able to do this would greatly simplify debugging too... My first Mandrake experience was that it installed 90% of the way, and then something in X failed, and it refused to make a bootable system. I didn't even want a GUI, but the damn thing refused to install anything just because some GUI thing failed. That's when I gave up on that entire distro and never tried it again.
(note, that you can use the debian installer in this way -- install the minimal stuff, then "apt-get remove" the damn MTA they install by default, and you have pretty close to a minimal system)
No, cuz Viagra works with a completely different kind of 'installer'.
And your sig is largely concerned with itself, not hobbits.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
RedHat and Cygwin share a system I believe (I'm prepared to be corrected here), because Cygwin was originally has ties to RedHat.
Ok. Cygwin has the *worst* package management ever, but one of the best front-ends. Go figure.
A package in Cygwin is a tarball, basically run from /. So you can download a Cygwin package with, say, your web browser, cd / in your cygwin install, tar -xzvf *thefile*, and that installs it. It's crap, it's nothing but crap. Dependency resolution? Don't know how they do it, really, unless the database they use to store packages also contains dependency information.
RPM, on the other hand, stores dependency information and some other useful metadata in the package itself. So theoretically an rpm *can* be installed on a non-rpm-based distribution, provided the rpm program (a perl script, of all things) is available, as well as the other tools needed (tar, a few others). Practically, it doesn't work out so well, and I wouldn't really try ot install an rpm into a non-rpm-based system, and there's even incompatibility between rpm-based systems, but it's not the fault of the package manager, it's the fault of the fools that arranged the system in incompatible ways, and for what? Vendor lock-in? Anyway, the problems come in with some of the optional flags. Some rpms can be installed anywhere if you pass a flag to rpm, but some rpms (anything built by Mandrake, one of my pet peeves with them) *must* be installed where they specify. Furthermore, some package maintainers specify specific versions of dependencies that they really don't need to specify, making it so that their package can only install on a narrow range of distributions that came out when that particular dependency was standard at that version. Luckily, most package maintainers don't do that, myself for example. When I put dependencies on pyAlarm, I just specified "pyao" and "pymad", no versions. So it would install if you had them, or if you used urpmi you could install the dependencies too, and it worked fine. (Granted, there were no doubt numerous bugs on numerous other systems that I never heard about, the new system in pyAlarm's much better, because it does its own dependency checking at runtime, but that's not an optimal solution for every program)
Anyway, Cygwin wasn't developed by RedHat. It was developed by someone else (I forget who), and RedHat acquired them. So now Cygwin is owned by RedHat, where previously it wasn't.
Like what I said? You might like my music
>Now, why can't we have a single package management system. ..
remembering those everlasting battles with rpm and rpm-packages I encourage EVERYONE to try apt. It's just much much more better (for average AND l33t users).
class he-man extends man!
I was in Ottakar in Norwich and picked up the CD pack. Started the live version, and was greatly impressed, so after some discussion, decided to install it for my partner who was wanting to move to Linux.
/mnt in a console window and do mkdir to match, and then you mount them. How do you find out what the appropriate entries are? Google. But Google from a different computer...
The installation proceeds nicely until you get to the partitioning section. This is delicate, and would be impossible for the naive user. The default will siimply wipe the drive. I had previously created Linux partitions with Acronis. I now selected and deleted them and reinstated what Ubuntu wanted in the free space. If this kind of thing is beyond you, you will probably get a successful installation of Ubuntu, but you'll lose your Windows installation.
The rest of the installation seems to go easily enough, and you end up with a pretty looking Gnome 2.6 desktop in a sort of desert brown colour.
Restart. The thing seems to take forever, because it is apparently calling home to try to set the clock to ubuntu time. However, there is no network, we are on dialup, so it can't, and we wait until it times out. There are a couple of fatal errors, but it does actually start, and it looks as pretty as the live version. There is, it turns out, some way to disable this, by editing a couple of files previously unfamiliar to me, but probably the naive user will just have to put up with it indefinitely.
This seems a little weird, but what seems weirder is the cross mark that appears unwanted in the middle of the screen and stays there for a few minutes and then vanishes. Where is this coming from? We'll worry later.
Now, where have the Windows partitions gone? Nowhere to be seen. Well, you open up etc/fstab using a text editor, and insert the appropriate entries. Then you go to
Because now you need to try getting dial up networking to work. You go through the various menu options, but there is no obvious way of connecting to the net by dialup. Shades of Red Hat 6 or 7. The built in graphical tool simply did not work for me. And even after you've used it, you are left with no apparent way to connect and take down the connections. It seems to be expected that you will find out for yourself that wvdial is installed, start up a terminal and enter the command. How you then take it down, is not clear. I managed by turning off the modem physically. Because, the connection was up, but did not seem to be usable.
Back to Google, and you find out what you have to do.
First, you create the modem lights panel.
Then you run pppconfig from a terminal.
This will create a file with the name of your service provider, and you then need to use a text editor again, and find the default provider file and edit that to put the same values in. Then you use the graphical interface again. How do you know this? Well, from another computer again, you use Google.
Incidentally, you can't just open and use a text editor. You have to start the text editor with the command line while in root console mode.
Now you have a dialler. The dialler will with any luck connect to your ISP, and even allows you to disconnect. Mine did. This may seem like everything that you wanted, but it is not. At this point pinging to a known address (eg your ISPs name server) works fine. But you cannot use those name servers from your clients. Why not? Google again, but this time no-one knows. However, there is a fix. You have to install pump, resolvconf and dnsmasq. How do you do this? You must have to use Synaptic, there is no other obvious method.
The fun continues. You cannot of course do this from the dialup connection because it isn't working. You download them from the other computer, and copy them to floppy. The Synaptic package makes all kinds of references to repositories and the like, but there seems to be no way to install anything from a flo
nitpick: The the evolution of a square wheel is a pentagonal wheel, the triangular ones are a devolution.
He who defends everything, defends nothing. -- Fredrick The Great
KDE 3.3.1 had just made the Sarge mirrors. I doubt they'd pull it out and go back to 3.2.3 for release.
A new name is chosen better to reflect the true inner nature of this project:
Deb Nuqm Fornever
I have the ubuntu distro installed on my work pc. Its been great. Out of all the deb based distros it has worked the best for me, I like that it automatically mounts my USB pendrive with no intervention.
At least when I used the new installer I could also select "Task select" and then I had quite a few more options. It was still the same type of "Windows system", "Desktop", "Webserver", "File server" etc but quite a few more than 7.
I don't think it was quite complete though because at least I wanted more options than were available. But it sure is a step in the right direction.
Oddly, Ubuntu borked X-Window, and Sarge set it up correctly. WTF was that?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Obviously portage can downgrade a package, but it totally fucks up the dependencies. Want to downgrade kde or gnome in debian? Just click on the version you want and apt takes care of it...without hosing your system from here to kingdom come.
Don't get me wrong. I like gentoo and portage. But downgrading packages is not functional yet on gentoo.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Good luck getting gentoo on a small machine with no network connectivity.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Easy peasy.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
According to the FTP sites for new installer for i386 (ISOs here and Torrents here), it looks like we can expect around 15 CDs worth of "sarge" goodness . . .
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
You obviously don't know enough about Cygwin packaging to comment here.
The dependency information IS contained in the setup.ini file (compressed as setup.bz2 for download) and the setup.exe program handles selecting dependent packages.
There are also postinstall and preremove scripts which must be run by setup.exe, which you omit from your simplistic description.
There is also a database of installed packages, and a cygcheck command that can tell you which package a particular file came from, the installed version of every package on the system, and even do an integrity check of each package.
It is NOT just a simple tarball extracted to the root, but that's what you might think if you never read the documentation.
From the page I've scanned (not read) numerous times:
So yes, deep down inside a cygwin package is a tarball you extract from the root. As I mentioned, I don't know how dependencies are tracked, but I'm fairly confident they're *not* in the package itself, which you confirmed.
Maybe I didn't say it the way you wanted it said, and maybe how I said it reveals something about it you'd prefer not to see, but I fail to see how what I've said is wrong enough to matter. It's not like I was trying to give a how-to guide to build cygwin packages. Nope, instead I was comparing them to RPMs, and none of the corrections you've made change my post in the slightest.
Like what I said? You might like my music
The packages are not meant to stand alone. untarring a package by hand is not supported and will break your Cygwin distro in several ways. You cannot compare a cygwin .tar.bz2 package to a .rpm because the Cygwin packaging relies on setup.exe to handle dependencies, package tracking, and scripting. It was not designed to be a standalone package, so it's not relevent to compare it to .rpm. Cygwin packaging is a combination of the packages themselves and setup.exe. Your comparison is misleading, and that's what I was pointing out.