Major New Features in Debian Etch

Klaidas writes "Linux.com reports that the third beta of Debian Etch installer (released August 11, 2006) has some major new features, which might make this version of Debian the easiest to install. According to the original announcement, we will now be able to install using a graphical user interface on i386 and amd64 platforms. We will also be able to set up encrypted partitions during installation. Debian Etch is scheduled to be released on December 2006"

Comments

Major New Features

[iiioxx]

At the risk of sounding like a troll, is this not a sign of how far behind the rest of the Linux world Debian has let itself fall? An installation GUI touted as a "major new feature"?

For years, Debian was heralded for it's packaging system, and yes apt-get is/was great. But the rest of the distros caught up, and easy, automated installation and updating is now a feature that one expects in a Linux distro as standard equipment. Just like a GUI installer.

This is like a car manufacturer in 2006 saying they've just added airbags to their cars, and it's a "major new feature!"

It's not a major new feature. It's about damn time.

Re:Major New Features

[eipgam]

I'm just glad it's optional. I've never been a big fan of graphical installers, they've traditionally been awful and sluggish. And lets be honest, it's not like the current debian installer is hard to use.

Re:Major New Features

[Pecisk]

AFAIK, nor yast nor RedHat eq. is not as powerful and stable as apt-get, so no, it is not just about features, but it is about features done WELL.

Fedora and SUSE still feels very old - because of rpm usage - against Debian and Ubuntu. And that is my expierence after 7 years of using Linux in work and home.

Re:Major New Features

[Eudial]

At the risk of sounding like a troll, is this not a sign of how far behind the rest of the Linux world Debian has let itself fall? An installation GUI touted as a "major new feature"?

For years, Debian was heralded for it's packaging system, and yes apt-get is/was great. But the rest of the distros caught up, and easy, automated installation and updating is now a feature that one expects in a Linux distro as standard equipment. Just like a GUI installer.

This is like a car manufacturer in 2006 saying they've just added airbags to their cars, and it's a "major new feature!"

It's not a major new feature. It's about damn time.

A graphical installer adds ABSOLUTELY nothing to the installation. Unless you're a newbie to Linux (if you are, debian isn't really too suited for you), you will see and understand this. Who the bleeding heck cares how the installation looks? The focus should be on a fast installer that works on as many configurations as possible, not fancy eye-candy.

Re:Major New Features

[Sketch]

> AFAIK, nor yast nor RedHat eq. is not as powerful and stable as apt-get, so no, it is not just about features, but it is about features done WELL.

I find it funny that everyone says apt-get is what makes Debian great. I've used apt-get for years on Redhat. I'd say it's just as stable as on Debian. Sure, it didn't come installed by the OS but it only took one simple command to install it.

Re:Major New Features

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

It's not a major new feature. It's about damn time.

Do all the other distros have an installer that works across 11 arches? (Yes, it's the same back-end across all arches).

The Debian installer is pretty fine IMO - the graphical front end is pretty nice & counts as a major new feature in my book.

Re:Major New Features

[Phleg]

At the risk of sounding like a troll, is this not a sign of how far behind the rest of the Linux world Debian has let itself fall? An installation GUI touted as a "major new feature"?

Actually, this is a pretty reasonably significant step forward. Debian lacked a good installation for a long time, simply because of the vast number of architectures it supports. Debian-Installer was written from the ground-up to support all (eleven? thirteen?) architectures that Debian supports, plus provide hooks for CUIs, GUIs, and scriptable interfaces.

While the current iteration of the graphical installer only works on AMD64 and x86, it's only a matter of time before it's supported across all capable architectures.

Also importantly, Debian has finally gotten this done "the right way", in that there aren't any significant hacks to provide nice things like accurate progress indicators, etc., that other graphical installers have used.

And no, I can't think of any other Linux distro that has "caught up" to Debian in terms of packaging. Debian comes with over 15,000 packaged libraries/software, which is a shiton more than other distributions offer (Ubuntu excepted, for obvious reasons). Not only that, but there's simply no comparison between yum and apt.

Re:Support other items out of the installer?

[MrNemesis]

According to the blurb from FTA, the graphical installer supports everything available in the regular curses installer, so yes, support for installing onto LVM and software RAID should work perfectly.

TBH I can't see what all the fuss is about. To my knowledge, Debian has never marketed itself as a general purpose distro for desktops a la Grandma Linux, it's always just been a damned stable system that's particularly suited to servers (it's utterly fantastic to do an apt-get dist upgrade and be 99% certain that nothing will go wrong). Last I heard, Debian were quite content for others to use this as a baseline to extend Debian into the user-friendly market, hence distros like Ubuntu.

Like I keep saying over and over again - there's a place for Debian, just like there's a place for Ubuntu. A corporate server farm doesn't need a GUI installer - they have one of their code-fu's do a single install and then roll out an image to 300 empty boxes via BOOTP. Someone rolling out Debian on the desktop at a company would do much the same thing. If you've wanted a pretty installer that'll make the process easier on the eye, Mandrake, RedHat and SuSE have been on the game for years. Do people decry LFS for not having a GUI installer?

Disclaimer: I like and use Debian at home and at work. I've never had any problems with the text mode installer, but likewise I've never had problems telling someone to use Ubuntu for their first distro rather than Debian. Different strokes.

£0.02

GUI = easy ?

[jimcooncat]

GUI doesn't necessarily mean easy to me.

GUI does mean slow and many times buggier to me.

GUI means (to me) that, unless shown in a text box, long error messages will be truncated or summarized.

That said, I've never installed Debian from scratch. Instructions to get (which?) .iso file are too damned confusing.

I've had no problems with the Ubuntu alternate install. A few years back I was installing Gentoo and though it was involved, I wasn't confused about what to download, thanks to the Handbook.

If they want to market to Joe Average, they should clean up their website.

Re:Install is (1 of) Linux's biggest problem(s)

[massysett]

How do these posts on Linux install being hard get modded up? First, the article was about the installer for Debian Etch, not about individual application installation. Installing Linux is generally *easier* than installing Windows. With Windows you have to search all over the Internet for drivers. Linux usually comes with all the drivers you need and configures them for you.

Second, even if you want to talk about installing apps, it's super easy to go into Synaptic or whatever tool your distro uses, click on something, and install it. Why is it that people think that "I can't install things the exact same way I install things in Windows" equals "it's hard to install things"? If you want to do things the Windows way, use Windows!

Third, I have seen Linux apps that are easy to install "the Windows way." Google Earth is a prime example; Skype is another. Download, click, and use.

Installer Screen shots

[vivekg]

One of its real advantages is that it allows installation in nine new languages that cannot be displayed in the regular installer.

I have also noticed that GUI installer is bit faster than the regular text based regular installer. However, this installer is not as polished as RHEL or Suse Linux GUI installer but project promises to polish it later on... If you are interested you can see Screen shots -
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/wp-content/uploads/2 006/08/debian-testing-gui-installer-1.thumbnail.pn g
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/wp-content/uploads/2 006/08/debian-testing-gui-installer-paritition-dis ks-2.png

Re:My favorite installer...

[Reverend528]

Have we got to the stage where granny can install your garden variety linux yet?

No, but to be fair, granny doesn't really know how to install windows or OS X either.

Re:yum or the name "rpm"

[Reverend528]

Or you just like the .deb extension more than .rpm?

Lets face it, before yum, rpm was a pain in the ass. Before yum, rpm users were likely to find themselves in "rpm hell" seeking numerous rpm packages that were required by whatever they sought to install. Many people who migrated to debian or gentoo during that period are likely to have only bad memories of the rpm packaging system.