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

Oh, wow...

[__aaclcg7560]

Etch-A-Sketch runs Debian?!

Re:Oh, wow...

[hey!]

Etch-A-Sketch runs Debian?!

This call for a reference that dates back from what, for the computing world, was the transition of the classical period to the early Middle Ages. This joke was popular among DOS apologists:

Q: What's the difference between a Macintosh and an Etch-A-Sketch?
A: You don't have to shake the Mac to clear the screen.

Re:Oh, wow...

[fat man with a monke]

yes, but [insert name of gui here] always comes out square!
...
Fine, I'll keep lurking.

Monitor

[Anonymous Coward]

> The installer is designed to work at a resolution of 600x800

Hm, looks like a rotated old LCD monitor.

The Brits may have a problem.

[8127972]

"We will also be able to set up encrypted partitions during installation. "

Isn't this a potential non-starter under the British Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA)?

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/15/165 9233

Re:The Brits may have a problem.

[fireboy1919]

Did you even read the title there? Illegal to refuse to decrypt.

Not illegal to have encrypted partitions. A non-issue if you give the police your password when they ask you for it.

On the other side of the ocean, it's a potential starter for when HIPAA-level security is required.

Even if your physical location can't be secured you can still keep the data private.

Re:The Brits may have a problem.

[qbwiz]

Even if your physical location can't be secured you can still keep the data private.

What about hardware keyloggers?

Re:The Brits may have a problem.

[andreyw]

Flaimbait? It's true. Palladium would have allowed for *secure* remote connection, with the data from the keyboard being decypherable only on the receiving end.

Re:The Brits may have a problem.

[tehcyder]

Not illegal to have encrypted partitions. A non-issue if you give the police your password when they ask you for it.

Yes, but if you genuinely forget the decryption key, you are potentially in serious legal trouble.

Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[RobotRunAmok]

I am teh Old Skool. Any Debian installation that does not require lamb's blood, sulfur, salt, mercury, a transcription from the original Assyrian, Fermat's Enigma, and a Circle of Power etched in holy chalk consecrated on Michaelmas is a Debian installation for which I have no use.

Friggin' noobs...

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

[andrewman327]

I believe that installation is one of Linux's biggest stumbling blocks to larger adaoption. I spend most of my Linux time running Live CDs where there is no OS installation at all (I love you Ubuntu). The issue for many home users is software installation. While there have been significant inroads made in this area over that past few years, it has generally not yet reached Windows' "double click the .exe to run" simplicity. Linux has a huge following among the geeks, nerds, and geeky nerds. It is also growing into mobile devices where people will have no idea they are running Linux and schools on the desktop. The biggest market that needs to be tapped is the "average" computer user at home. People need to feel that Linux is user friendly and can easily do everything that they want to do. Firefox and OoO (both of which I run on my WinXP laptop) have brought it that much closer to the goal. Now easier software installation is the next step.

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

[daranz]

I'd say that Ubuntu already has easier OS and app installation than Windows. You can run the installer from under the booted-up OS, and you can actually be using the system during the installation (to, for example, read some guides).

For apps, you have apt-get, the synaptic gui and even the simplified Add/Remove Applications proggy that Ubuntu (at least Dapper) provides by default. If you wanna install something, you mark it for installation and hit OK. Apt then downloads and installs everything for you, most of the time. No need to navigate to a website, find an installation proggy. Apt/synaptic will inform you what you need to make the app run, and handle everything by itself. It's easier than Windows, for Joe User: need a spreadsheet ap? Mark the checkbox and click apply.

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

[petermgreen]

installing stuff provided by your distro is easy, arguablly easier than installing stuff on windows (you don't have to go searching for download sources etc first)

the problem comes when you wan't something more custom. Something from outside the distros "walled garden" the distros are very resistant to universal packaging efforts like autopackage.

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.

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

[Kjella]

While there have been significant inroads made in this area over that past few years, it has generally not yet reached Windows' "double click the .exe to run" simplicity.

True, but.... making it very easy to double-click to run some binary from some server is one of the nice ways to get a ton of crapware (adware, malware, spyware, trojans, viruses, backdoors). And if you're installing credible software, then top it off with an equally crapware-laden crack, then you're just as bad off.

I must admit that I haven't tried to get a piece of software into a repository but I can't imagine it's that terribly hard if you're willing to package it yourself. Those who don't are because they contain anti-competition clauses (Sun's "Thou shalt not include any other Java but me") or no redistribution rights (many examples even with free/shareware), and I don't feel very sorry for them because they chose it.

Yes, Linux lacks a good way to download and install non-free-as-in-beer software, because the repositories don't want to act like online shops (except Linspire) and there's no universal package format. I really can't say I have any example that concerns me, but maybe it's a chicken and egg thing. Overall I think the problem is 98% "This software isn't made to run on Linux." and 2% "We didn't come up with a good installer for Linux." though.

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

[xiao_haozi]

I agree with you. But (I think) what the poster was referring to may have been a more general reference to linux os installs. Yes, there is the ease of Ubuntu which is far easier than most windows os installs in my opinion. But there can also be the more comlex (but not always) installs of slack or vector, etc. For someone who has done partitioning etc, then this is no biggie. But for someone who is a non-power user or not for computer saavy then they may not even understand partitioning let alone installing without a 100% gui base. But overall, I think linux has grown exponentially in expanding its ease of to an audience that now encompasses just about everyone. And with more and more package management systems available with gui bases this is making things even easier than ever. Thats just MHO.

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

[yankpop]

I can understand where you're coming from. If you have no experience installing a distro like Mepis or Ubuntu, haven't spent the ten minutes required to learn how to use Synaptic, and yet still feel compelled to comment on a topic you know nothing about, why wouldn't you resort to the old 'linux is too hard for joe-sixpack to install' line? You'd be joing hundreds, even thousands of others who have gone before you. Ignorance loves a crowd.

What I don't understand is how this bullshit gets modded +5 insightful.

yp.

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

[MrNemesis]

Too true. I remember thinking, six months after I bought my first computer, how easy it was to install Mandrake 8.2 as opposed to the windows 2000 reinstall I'd done the previous week. I was a complete computer n00b then, and I can't really believe that Linux hasn't become any easier to install since 2001.

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

[Pryon]

The biggest market that needs to be tapped is the "average" computer user at home. People need to feel that Linux is user friendly and can easily do everything that they want to do.

I see this a lot. Can you explain why Linux needs to tap any markets?

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

[quanticle]

But there can also be the more comlex (but not always) installs of slack or vector, etc.

And can you give me any reason for a newbie to be installing Slack or Vector? The entire reason for having different Linux distributions is to allow some to cater to new users (Ubuntu, SuSE, etc.) while still allowing others (Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, etc.) to cater to power users who want manual configuration for all settings.

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

[Jugalator]

No need to navigate to a website, find an installation proggy.

No, you just need to ensure your repository has the software you want to install.

Linux installs like these are powerful as long as everything is set up properly.

It's a bit like having a nice database set up with metadata and dependency information across packages and everything simply there, ready to go. Unfortunately, you don't always have all software you want in that tidy database. And once it's not in that database, you need to look up and add a new repository, and before that find which one that have your software. And then you're on a bit thinner ice. For Windows, there are no concerns like these. You go to the site and download the software package, run the installer, and then you're done. No worries you might have to edit some text file or configure a "Software Manager" to find the software and its metadata to download (no need to even involve the equivalent of Synaptic in the first place!), and no worries you might be using the wrong repository.

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

[Toby_Tyke]

I'd say that Ubuntu already has easier OS and app installation than Windows... For apps, you have apt-get, the synaptic gui and even the simplified Add/Remove Applications proggy that Ubuntu (at least Dapper) provides by default.

Really? Thats all there is to it? Great! Could you tell me the names of the DVD player software, and which media player to install that will play WMVs?

Yeah, that's a troll. And yes, I know those two particular examples aren't in the repos because of patent and licensing issues. The point I was rather sarcastically trying to make is that the app installation in Ubuntu is only easier than in windows if the app you want is in the repos. Yes, you could add additional repos, or you could download a .deb and use dpkg, but once you do either of those things I'd say you're reaching a level of complexity somewhat beyond "download .exe and double click".

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

[penthouseplayah]

If you're using a debian variant, either the program is in the repository (98%), has a .deb or google-earth-style-install (1%) or only a tarball (1%). I'd say that 1% of the software I want to install is difficult, the rest is dead easy. For windows everyf****g time you want to install something you have to find the software, click I agree 10 times, only to find out it doesn't work and there is no uninstaller. Of you have to type in 25 char codes and click I agree 20 times.

What would be harder: Windows-Debian migration or Debian-windows migration?

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

[ttrafford]

And can you give me any reason for a newbie to be installing Slack or Vector?

If I, as a fairly ignorant high school student, could manage installing and configuring Slackware 2.3 as a first Linux experience- anyone can. Seriously, it just involved reading stuff; and, uh, several attempts.

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

[x-vere]

You make a very good point about software installation being a hurdle for Linux. My immediate response would be that it desn't get much easier than apt-get or urpmi (mandriva). The challenge here is that apt and urpmi offer a completely different concept to installation of apps. That is the concept of easily installing anything you want as long as it is packaged by your distribution. Most distros are extremely good at maintaining very diverse repositories. The problem is when you have to build something from source. However, I don't actually view that as a problem for the everyday user. Every application a home office needs is an apt or urpmi away. Therefore, the problem of software installation for the average user has been conquered from a technology perspective.

The windows operating system doesn't aim to include every possible piece of software that one needs to perform day to day tasks. That is an advantage of Windows where adoption of Linux is concerned. Buy Windows and run whatever compatible software you want.

The move toward Linux on the desktop faced a major obstacle. They didn't have access to the hordes of commercial software out there that Windows has. You can't run to office max and buy whatever you want. So Desktop projects like KDE and Gnome started developing their own flavors of office productivity software, educational tools etc. They're trying to provide the whole gammut. I like that route better personally, but it requires a different mindset about software and computing in general.

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

[Lennie]

windows-debian is harder, but just because all your data is 'savely' locked away in closed-source applications and proprietary formats.

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

[Orange Crush]

the problem comes when you wan't something more custom. Something from outside the distros "walled garden" the distros are very resistant to universal packaging efforts like autopackage.

Personally, I think it's a good thing that Joe Averages can't as easily install software that hasn't been made a part of the "walled garden." The "double-click, execute/install" method for Windows software from Jimbo's Shareware Hut is right up there with discs that execute software on insert as far as security and malware are concerned.

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

[EvilIdler]

"Download, click, use" isn't happening on Windows, because you don't get
all dependencies. Just try installing .net apps for the first time (and mistakenly
thinking 2.0 is a better choice than 1.1, therefore removing 1.1).

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

[John Nowak]

Its a loose/loose choice.

Tell me about it -- Those users are so incontinent. I mean incompetent. Right.

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

[xiao_haozi]

good point. and I would agree. I just pointed this out as it was something I encountered a few years back when I was trying to jump into linux and was experimenting with vector and slack, etc., as these were touted by a few resources as probably running better on old architecture and low memory machines.

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

[rapidweather]

I believe that installation is one of Linux's biggest stumbling blocks to larger adaption.
I run XP on a Dell P4 HT with a gig-o-ram.
XP takes longer to get to a useable desktop than my livecd linux on the same box.
And, once the knoppix cheatcode you want to use is entered, no further questions are asked by the system, and your desktop is soon ready.
I also can beat the time XP takes on the Dell, on a 200 MMX with 256 MB of RAM.
All I enter is:

knoppix fromhd=/dev/hdd7 myconfig=scan

I do have the CD "installed" in hdd7, a 7200 rpm 160 GB hard drive.
That is done only one time, and that's it. Takes only a few extra minutes. You do nothing but watch, or go fix a cup of coffee.
Once you are up and running, the system does not write to it, like a real linux hard drive installation, such as RHL 9.
I would imagine that eventually, a lot more people will be using a "livecd linux", when
security problems overwhelm Windows.

I have an unusual approach to security in a livecd linux, running web browsers.
(I put three in the CD, Firefox, Opera and Flock.)
Check out my Getting Started Guide for details. This approach makes encryption unnecessary.
And, yes, I do have the Guarddog Firewall, preconfigured, started automatically during bootup.

--Rapidweather

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

[quanticle]

That's a good point. I have not yet seen a "low resource" distro that is also easy to install.

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

[JackieBrown]

Install gdebi When you download the deb all you need to do is single click -much easier than double clicking :) - the deb. It will install the package and any depencies that it needs.

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

[vain gloria]

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"?

Correct me if I'm wrong (it happens!) but wasn't a graphical installer one of the major features of Ubuntu's last release, way back in June?

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

[joshua]

It's not so much apt-get as the vast number of really good packages. If you want to install something, you're far more likely to find it packaged and packaged well on debian than on redhat.

Re:Major New Features

[Walles]

For me, apt-get isn't the big thing with Debian, it's the huge selection of packages. Unstable has 20968 packages, Testing 19533, and Stable 17014 (counted from wc -l of the full packages lists at packages.debian.org).

AFAIK no other distro is even close to that, and you're thus forced to install lots of third party stuff.

For me, if I can't apt-get install it, it doesn't exist.

Re:Major New Features

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a major new feature.

I agree with you but probably for different reasons. I've been using Debian for two years now and I think their regular installer was very user-friendly and easy to operate - and I'm not particularly smart or linux savvy either - so, personally I would have preferred that the project spent their time on something else especially since the installation is run only once.

Re:Major New Features

[jamstar7]

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.

I used to use the RPM style of apt in my older RH/Fedora machines. Loved it. But it's just not supported anymore with FC5. Apt/Synaptic beats out Yum/Yumex in my book any day, hands down. Guess which one FC5 supports? Yup, good old 'Not Invented Here' syndrome.

Re:Major New Features

[garcia]

Regardless of what level of a user you are the installer's looks are meaningless. My current machine (running Debian unstable -- which, as a side note, has been very unstable lately) had Debian installed in October of 2002.

Think it matters much when you will probably use the installer once or twice ever?

Not to me it doesn't.

Re:Major New Features

[JPribe]

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.

It makes me sick you got modded insightful. In this world looks are *everything* and there is nothing you can do about it. What a stupid comment. Open your eyeballs, man. A GUI installer adds everything to the installation.

Let's take a walk back in time...to the first time you booted up a *nix distro and stared at a CLI. Oh wait, let me guess: you knew *exactly* what to do, because you are so special, so smart and sexy with your intimate knowledge of partitioning and installing an OS. It seems you are forgetting not everyone speaks in binary or assembly.

Back to the looks issue, let's consider the impact of how something looks. Hummer H2. Giant piece of crap vehicle that is mostly OTS (off-the-shelf) parts. But it *looks* cool, right? But it costs $100 to fill the tank. So who cares how it looks. The focus should be on how fast, durable, economical and tough the vehicle is, right? NO! It is all about the looks, and quite frankly the H2 is none of those things. How about a Ferrari? Except when you hit something, you aren't wrapped in a carbon fiber cage like in a real race car. How about your favorite restaurant? If you walk in and watch the roaches open the door for you, are you going to head in and eat?

Perception is the key here, man. Perception is everything. As the saying goes, "Your perception is your reality." Try to be intelligent and apply that. Quit being so narrow minded. And pull your head out of your ass.

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:Major New Features

[El_Isma]

Remember that Debian is (mostly) about stability, not feature-ness. A graphical installer doesn't add much, either. Just how much time does it take you to install it? Compare it to the time actually running linux... You spend a very very little time of your linux life installing systems. So, most polish there is just mostly wasted effort.

Re:Major New Features

[just_another_sean]

Well coming from a guy who likes to recycle a lot of older 486's* and early pentiums I kind of appreciate the text based installer. I guess you could argue that letting the person installing pick between the two or falling back to text based automatically when faced with a limited resource system would be the way to go (ala RedHat) but as another poster pointed out the Debian installer does work on a number of different architectures.

As far as I'm concerned the Debian installer *is* graphical. I just can't use the mouse. But it's a pretty stragiht forward process, gives you a number of customization options and if you don't need to customize then it lets you pretty much walk through it by hitting Enter over and over.

I don't typically use Debian on my desktop machines, I use it on my servers. My favorite aspect of Debian is that they don't release new stuff because it's cool and fashionable, they release it when it's ready. When I want pretty graphics I use Ubuntu. Kind of like using Windows Server vs. Windows Pro IMHO. Except with Debian (and Ubuntu for that matter) I don't *have* to use the graphics if I don't want them on my server. But hey, as they say, YMMV.

My take on it is Debian is not about flashy software, it's about *Free* software and the philosophy that surrounds it.

Re:Major New Features

[MartinG]

and how many packages for redhat are available from apt repositories? No more than a couple of hundred last time I looked.

And most of the few that were available have moved to yum.

Can you even get official security updates for redhat via apt?

Re:Major New Features

[just_another_sean]

As an admin with RedHat 7.2 server at the moment I find apt-rmp a bit lacking...

Actually if any friendly /.'ers could point me to a decent repositiory for a sorry SOB
in my situation I would be extremely grateful!

Re:Major New Features

[Hoplite3]

$ apt-get install apt
bash: apt-get: command not found

It's not working...

Re:Major New Features

[CRC'99]

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.

Ahhh yes. Now lets have a look how hard that is shall we? :)

# yum search apt | grep apt.i386
apt.i386 0.5.15lorg3.2-6.fc6 extras-developme

Hmmm - so apt is already in the Fedora repos.... that means running 'yum install apt' and you're done. So remind me again, what makes Debian so special? Surely it can't be apt if apt is available elsewhere....

Re:Major New Features

[Eudial]

It makes me sick you got modded insightful. In this world looks are *everything* and there is nothing you can do about it. What a stupid comment. Open your eyeballs, man. A GUI installer adds everything to the installation.

If how your the installer of your headless server system looks is a major factor, the world needs priorities.

Let's take a walk back in time...to the first time you booted up a *nix distro and stared at a CLI. Oh wait, let me guess: you knew *exactly* what to do, because you are so special, so smart and sexy with your intimate knowledge of partitioning and installing an OS. It seems you are forgetting not everyone speaks in binary or assembly.

Well... no, I read the manual. I hardly call being able to read special. I knew the school system had gone south as of late, but I didn't expect it to be this bad.

Back to the looks issue, let's consider the impact of how something looks. Hummer H2. Giant piece of crap vehicle that is mostly OTS (off-the-shelf) parts. But it *looks* cool, right? But it costs $100 to fill the tank. So who cares how it looks. The focus should be on how fast, durable, economical and tough the vehicle is, right? NO! It is all about the looks, and quite frankly the H2 is none of those things. How about a Ferrari? Except when you hit something, you aren't wrapped in a carbon fiber cage like in a real race car. How about your favorite restaurant? If you walk in and watch the roaches open the door for you, are you going to head in and eat?

Roaches is a sanitary issue, not an aesthetical one. And I hardly see anyone plowing a field with a Ferrari. They may look good, but they're hardly useful vehicles. If you need a useful vehicle, you don't get one based on how it looks.

Re:Major New Features

[IpalindromeI]

Actually, it doesn't, because Debian is pronounced with a short 'e' sound.

Check it.

Re:Major New Features

[Sketch]

If you just want updates, upgrade to 7.3 and use fedoralegacy.org updates. (Though it looks like they are going to discontinue them at the end of the year. It looks like it may be time to consider upgrading, if you don't want to do your own security updates...)

There are a few other repos, but it looks like they are in the process of merging their repositories to rpmforge.net. There's a package list here, and links to the 3 seperate repositories:

http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/rpmforge.php

DAG provides packages for RH7, but not all of the others do.

There's also another potentially useful Yum repo run by NORLUG:

http://norlug.org/rpms/

Re:Major New Features

[init100]

Yup, good old 'Not Invented Here' syndrome.

AFAIK, Yum wasn't invented at Red Hat either. The name, Yellow Dog Updater Modified suggests that it was created for the Yellow Dog Linux distribution.

Re:Major New Features

[smilindog2000]

I think this is a sign that Debian developers are getting pissed that Ubuntu is stealing all their glory. What's so great about Ubuntu? It installs easily! And, it generally works on your machine without much fuss. I see this comming rift between Debian developers and Ubuntu as the biggest threat to the worlds best hope for a Windows replacement (Ubuntu).

Re:Major New Features

[just_another_sean]

Hey, thanks for the info. I'm mostly interested in security updates. They seem to be difficult to track down at this point.

Bottom line is I just need to get off RedHat and use a different distro. I didn't buy RedHat so I don't hold a grudge over this. It's just a bit of a PITA. I'm thinking Ubuntu LTS Server is a good option for long term support. It's a co-located server in a tightly controlled NOC so it's tough for me to get at it through anything but ssh. I would love to try the macho approach and reinstall remotely but I can't afford to screw up so I just need to make the arrangements and visit it.

In the meantime I will follow up on your suggestions. Tx again.

Re:Major New Features

[Bronster]

So remind me again, what makes Debian so special? Surely it can't be apt if apt is available elsewhere....

Um... that would be the fact that apt isn't a second class citizen on Debian and it really is well integrated, plus the repositories "just work"[tm]ed much more easily for a long time. Debian does some things stupidly, but a lot of things very sanely - it's a set of tradeoffs that some people really like.

(then again, I'm running Ubuntu these days on my desktop - Sarge on servers, so what does that say about me?)

Re:Major New Features

[00lmz]

Well, here's what the Debian people say (in a section titled "Quality of implementation") -- I've marked the important part :) :

People often say how they came to Debian because of apt-get, or that apt is the killer app for Debian. But apt-get is not what makes the experience so great: apt-get is a feature readily reproduced (and, in my opinion, never equalled), by other distributions -- call it urpmi, apt4rpm, yum, or what have you. The differentiating factor is Debian policy, and the stringent package format QA process (look at things like apt-listchanges, apt-list-bugs, dpkg-builddeps, pbuilder, pbuilder-uml -- none of which could be implemented so readily lacking a policy (imagine listchangelog without a robust changelog format)). It is really really easy to install software on a Debian box.

This resembles cargo cult (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult) religions: that is, apt-get is the visible aspect of Debian's policy system, the same way that cargo-cult practices saw runways and other characteristics as the source of western goods ("cargo"), and built their own replicas, complete with fake wooden headphones for control towers. In the same way, other distributions have created the shallow visible aspect of Debian's packaging infrastructure, without addressing the deep issues of policy. Worse: the conflicts of technical requirements and marketing / economic imperatives often work at cross purposes. Less perversely for most GNU/Linux distros than for proprietary software, but still clearly present.

Red Hat, Mandrake, and other distributions in the class have really massive base installations. Why? I do believe it's because it's a PITA to install software. Even with RPM, it's a kludgey procedure, impossible to codify. With Debian, it was a breeze.

So the killer app is really Debian policy, the security team, the formal bug priority mechanisms, and the policy about bugs (namely: any binary without a man page is an automatic bug report. Any interaction with the user not using debconf is a bug). As the Wiki page Why Debian Rocks (http://twiki.iwethey.org/Main/WhyDebianRocks) puts it:

This is the crux, the narthex, the throbbing heart of Debian and what makes it so utterly superior to all other operating systems. Policy is defined. It is clear. It is enforced through the tools you use every day. When you issue apt-get install foo, you're not just installing software. You're enforcing policy - and that policy's objective is to give you the best possible system.

What Policy defines are the bounds of Debian, not your own actions on the system. Policy states what parts of the system the package management system can change, and what it can't, how to handle configuration files, etc. By limiting the scope of the distribution in this way, it's possible for the system administrator to make modifications outside the area without fear that Debian packages will affect these changes. In essence, Policy introduces a new class of bugs, policy bugs. Policy bugs are release-critical -- a package which violates policy will not be included in the official stable Debian release.

Let me reiterate, because that is the whole secret: A package which violates policy will not be included in the official stable Debian release.

Re:Major New Features

[teg]

Apt is old tech, and doesn't work too well on Red Hat in e.g. cross platform scenarios. Things like multiarch confuses it to death. Also, occasionally, it wants remove a ton of packages when updating.

I prefer RPM to dpkg as a format capabilitywise, and yum to apt as a front end - and not by a small margin either.

Re:Major New Features

[jamstar7]

Yup, good old 'Not Invented Here' syndrome.

AFAIK, Yum wasn't invented at Red Hat either. The name, Yellow Dog Updater Modified suggests that it was created for the Yellow Dog Linux distribution.

Noted, but YellowDog is a Redhat fork to work on PPC machines, IIRC. Kinda like Mandrake forked off Back In The Day...

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[SamSim]

And for those of you who are noobs, here is how to install Linux on a dead badger.

GUI installer screen shots?

[wysiwia]

Are there any screen shots of this GUI installation (links)?

O. Wyss

Re:encryption ?

[JavaScrybe]

stolen HD? yes, but no good against stolen computer (and only good if the crooks cannot do the above two)

Yes, good against a stolen computer, as mounting the said partition requires the right passphrase.

Re:Support other items out of the installer?

[Reverend528]

I haven't testing LVM, but I know that the sarge installer supports software raid. I wouldn't be surprised if it supports LVM as well.

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[pb]

Hah, you had it easy--in my day, we had to use dselect!

Scrolling

[quokkapox]

Yeah, but the dang scroll knobs don't work.

Re:Scrolling

[spongman]

apt-get update

apt-get install scroll-knobs

About time

[makomk]

I mean, even Gentoo has a graphical install now (though not a very user-friendly one, of course...)

Re:Newsflash

[mverwijs]

FTA:

About 35 minutes after I slipped the CD into my drive, I was looking at a GNOME 2.1.4

So it would actually be 2002. ;-)

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:GUI = easy ?

[Kjella]

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

The answer is "any" (or well not CD 2-X of the set, unless you get disc 1). It comes in many different sizes, but the only difference between netinst, businesscard, cd-iso, dvd-iso is how much you need to download during install, which is a balance between having to redownload (if you install on several machines or need to reinstall) and downloading packages you don't need. If that is really too complex for you, well... Debian is not for you.

Re:GUI = easy ?

[petermgreen]

what cds you wan't depends on the number of machines your installing and your ease of access to the internet during installations.

if you are planning to work away from an internet connection get the whole damn set of main CDs/DVDs.

if the machines don't have CD drives get the boot root and net-drivers floppies

if you are just doing one box and don't plan to use the cds after initial install get the netinst CD

if you wan't it to fit on a buisnesscard and don't care about ending up with an 486 optimised kernel (you can install an optimised one later from the net if you wan't) get buisnesscard.

otherwise get main CD 1.

Re:GUI = easy ?

[Mr.Ned]

"I've had no problems with the Ubuntu alternate install."

The Ubuntu alternate install is a modified and rebranded version of the Debian installer. If you didn't have problems with that, you won't have problems with Debian's.

Re:GUI = easy ?

[Aladrin]

It also means you probably need a blasted mouse to install the thing. I view this as a huge step backwards.

Re:GUI = easy ?

[evanbd]

Which iso? Easy answer:

i386 netinst image.

That's the minimal network install image, which makes for a quick dl and then gets just what you need.

HTH.

Re:GUI = easy ?

[marcosdumay]

Those instructions are missing at Debian.org, or, to be clearer, are too confising to be used.

Where's the screen shots?

[9Nails]

This article is worthless without pictures!

Re:Where's the screen shots?

[CRC'99]

This article is worthless without pictures!

And for the old timers among us:

This linear sequence of discourse inscribed in an electron-based medium yields no value whilst lacking lithography, daguerreotypy, or other for of relevant pictorial representation!.

Why yes I do fark. ;)

LSB?

[bogaboga]

I did not see anything about LSB in the official announcement! Is LSB dead? Debian should have mentioned something about LSB. Could somebody please breif a slashdotter on what is happenning on the LSB front? I'll appreciate, thanx.

Re:LSB?

[asuffield]

Is LSB dead?

Yes. The purpose of LSB is so that proprietary software vendors can produce binaries that run on any LSB-compliant platform (it's unnecessary for anybody who is willing to ship source for the user to build on their own platform). Most of the current platforms support LSB and have done for years. The proprietary software vendors have been completely uninterested in producing binaries for it, preferring instead to produce them for Redhat and SuSE. So you have a plethora of LSB platforms and precisely zero LSB applications. Ergo, LSB is dead.

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:Installer Screen shots

[nick.ian.k]

Those drop shadows are friggin' horrible. Debian is doing themselves no favor by making their first graphical installer look like a bad ISP advertisement from 1996. Lose it!

Re:encryption ?

[tppublic]

Like almost any form of security, encrypting a HDD does not provide complete protection against any form of attack. This is one aspect of protection, just like a stability control program in a vehicle adds to the seatbelts, anti-lock brakes, and airbags to protect you in a vehicle accident.

What one needs to analyze in a security sense is what threat model you are attempting to protect against. In the case of an encrypted partition, you are protecting data "at rest". This provides NO protection against someone who can get access to a system while the system is operating (ACLs will provide some protection there unless you're 'rooted')... however, mounting the encrypted HDD (due to a system being shut down because it was physically stolen) is effectively impossible.

For a home user, protecting data "at rest" on a Linux machine is probably one important aspect of security. The chance that someone breaks into the home and attempts to guess the password or hack the machine while it is running is pretty low, whereas breaking in to remove items from your home (including your computer) is much more likely. Encrypting the data "at rest" protects my identity (meaning tax forms, etc.) from being exposed under that situation.

I realize that doesn't help if the machine is broken into while it is running, but a good /etc/hosts.allow and firewall/NAT in front of the machine makes me a hard target. Impossible? I'll never make that claim. Hard? Certainly. Worth serious effort? Probably not.

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[lord_rob the only on]

Don't worry. It's still possible to use a live CD à la Knoppix, then install the latest debootstrap and use it to install Debian. Well I suppose it will still be possible in the foreseeable future. This is about the only solution when your hardware is too recent to be detected by the installer anyway.

There is a catch using the new installer.

[stsp]

The catch is that you need to tilt your monitor.

From TFA:
The installer is designed to work at a resolution of 600x800;

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.

yum or the name "rpm"

[GodWasAnAlien]

are you saying that you like apt-get in debian better than apt-get or yum in fedora?

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

The obvious long term solution is to aggree on a unified repository that rpm based systems and debian based systems moved to use.

Then .rpm and .deb could be used on a single system (if file locations are also agreed upon).

Finally, a non-vendor name would need to be agreed on. .. .lpf ?

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.

Re:yum or the name "rpm"

[oscartheduck]

I'm a big debian fan, but I need to start exploring scientific linux, which is red hat based. I installed a vm, told it "yum install gaim" and it couldn't find the package. I'm not familiar enough with the yum syntax to be usefully able to help myself out right now; you seem to be more knowledgeable than I am so what do I need to do to perform the equivalent of apt-cache search foo? Thanks!

Re:yum or the name "rpm"

[init100]

what do I need to do to perform the equivalent of apt-cache search foo?

I don't really know what that command does, but a useful command with yum might be

yum list available

which lists all available packages in all enabled repositories. Another command that might be helpful is

yum help

which is self-explaining.

Re:yum or the name "rpm"

[creepynut]

Face it, without apt, we'd have "Deb hell" just the same as RPM hell. Every try installing a program from a deb file and finding missing dependencies?

RPM hell is no more an issue than DEB hell. Any RPM based distro I've used in the past couple years has had a package manager to deal with RPM files, just as Debian has apt-get. Yes, Debian has more packages off the bat, an advantage. However, in order to play DVD files, install Opera, or install non-free/contrib software I've had to edit /etc/apt/sources.list, just as I'd have to add repositories to Fedora.

Re:encryption ?

[nurmr]

AFAIK the encryption key is required during the boot process. If the computer is shutdown during the removal process, then it'll need the key when the computer boots back up. The normal way to do this is to stick the key on a USB stick, which you insert while the computer is booting. Once the machine is online, you physically remove the USB key, and store it somewhere else. This is great if you have a machine at location you don't physically control, and you want your data to be safe from prying eyes if you machine is ever taken without your consent.

Re:My favorite installer...

[westlake]

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

Granny is not a system builder.
Granny buys the PC with the OEM system install.

NO new Features in Debian Etch

[Alphager]

These are features of the installer, which is only used one time in the life of a debian-installation. This is non-news.

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[jimicus]

You don't happen to know of a download site for VüDü?

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[k1773re7f]

You forgot about the virgins!! The only way to insure a uneventful install or upgrade is to appease the daemons with the offering of a virgin! Seesh, amatures!!!

Encrypted partitions in SuSE for 3+ years!

[Terje Mathisen]

I have been using SuSE's encrypted partitions for more than 3 years now, they have always been completely integrated into the graphical installer.

Yes, they do require someone to enter the (very long!) passphrase during the OS startup process, but that's a small price for the measure of peace of mind that it provides.

Terje

Re:Newsflash

[wealthychef]

Hmm, modded down as flamebait? Have you learned your lesson? Never say anything critical about Linux at Slashdot, especially if it contains a kernel of truth (no pun intended). Linux is perfect and cannot be criticized, especially mocked or made fun of. You fool!

Re:Support other items out of the installer?

[brianerst]

According to the blurb from FTA

That's getting a little too familiar with the article for my tastes. But hey, what's a lonely geek to do on a Saturday night...

Re:My favorite installer...

[Anonymous Coward]

DING DING DING, WE HAVE A WINNER.

My mother, grandmother, neighbors, co-workers, and non-technical friends still can't slap an install disk for Windows or OSX in to their home computer without sweating, cursing, and praying. They still don't know how to find and install drivers that windows doesn't ship with, and they sure as HELL don't have the patience to do all of that as routinely as it needs to happen on windows.

As a rule I format my Windows desktop once a year or more after regular use. The typical user, with their tendency to click [Yes] to every piece of spy/mal/shitware on the internet should probably be formatting every 6 months. But they don't, even with how simple the installs are, because they're intimidated even by Windows' "easy" install. (F6 to install drivers the moment the installer starts, and have the driver on a floppy. Still. On XP. When a lot of XP machines ship with no floppy. Anybody like that part?)

Even Mac users tend to sweat and curse when you tell them to do an install that wipes the drive, and that's saying something. The OSX installer is dead simple, and it will pretty much always have drivers for all the base system hardware, yet Mac users still sweat it.

Let's face it, easy GUI installers, while nice, will not bring people over to linux. It's not why they choose Windows to begin with. Let's say the reasons all together now:

"It's what I use at work"
"Microsoft Office support"
"It came with the computer"
"I need Internet Explorer"
"I'm familiar with it and don't want to learn a new system"
"It runs the software I use without any hassle"

Nowhere in the list for Joe Q. Public is "That old text based installer is the staleness. GUI installers are the new freshness, get with the times linux!"

Debian might win over a couple Windows server administrators looking to dabble in linux with this, but that's about it.

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[moranar]

Well, the bit about the virgins is true, but if you sacrifice the nerd, who will complete the installation?

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[kv9]

You forgot about the virgins!! The only way to insure a uneventful install or upgrade is to appease the daemons with the offering of a virgin! Seesh, amatures!!!

are you suggesting that he should slit his wrists after installing?

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[Chris Burke]

And for those of you who are noobs, here is how to install Linux on a dead badger.

Heh, my work place's web proxy blocked the site with the following message (emaphasis unchanged): "The site you requested is blocked under the following categories: Criminal Skills"

Easy Debian installation is now a catch-up game

[timothy]

I'm really glad to see the official Debian project making good moves on installation; though people gripe about the focus placed on installation ("How many times do you install a frickin' OS?" goes the refrain), it really is important. People who might be interested in and benefit from Free software are under no obligation to spend confusing hours getting things to install; it's true that most OSes get stuck on a machine and stay there for a while, but that doesn't mean that installation can be ignored. With Free Software OSes especially, it's actually really nice to be able to install whenever you want, without worrying about intrusive "validation" procedures, etc -- I know I dabble with various OSes, just to check out what's new.

That said, to install a Debian system by means *other* than the official installer can be a pretty easy process, especially if you're a bit flexible (just for a few seconds, I swear!) about what constitutes Debian. (And since I really am a perpetual newbie, I think that I'm not exaggerating the ease I'm claiming.) A few examples:

Xandros: a mix of commercial / proprietary stuff, but it's based on straight Debian. Easy to install, nicely graphical, supports a lot of hardware, and (I didn't realize until yesterday) can read and write NTFS, which their sales reps say is unique among out-of-the-box commercial Linux distros. That sounds unlikely to me, but I can't think of a counterexample off-hand. You don't have to use their proprietary stuff.

Ubuntu: Yes, there are divergences, but there's no denying that Ubuntu is at heart a Debian operating system.

Knoppix (along with Kanotix, and many of the other Knoppix derivatives)is nicely installable.

The eLive Live CD not only is one of the easiest ways to install a Debian system, but also one of the simplest ways to install and play with Enlightenment.

And of course I've named just a few of the Live CDs based on Debian, a great many of which are installable.

timothy

it matters

[r00t]

Navigating an unfamiliar tree in text mode is a pain in the ass. The only decent way to navigate a tree in text mode is via command line with tab completion, but that sucks when you are unfamiliar with the tree. You need tree navigation to customize the list of packages to install.

Not everybody can read a language that works fine with 256 fixed-size characters. There exist languages like traditional Chinese, Thai, and Arabic. You won't get these people to suddenly switch to a more practical alphabet.

Completion bars are more readable with graphics. It's nice to see a diagram of how the hard drive is partitioned. Scroll bars are fast and informative.

Re:it matters

[Eudial]

Navigating an unfamiliar tree in text mode is a pain in the ass. The only decent way to navigate a tree in text mode is via command line with tab completion, but that sucks when you are unfamiliar with the tree. You need tree navigation to customize the list of packages to install.

It's not like you're going to install the system often--and if you are, you're going to need an intimate knowledge of the installer.

Not everybody can read a language that works fine with 256 fixed-size characters. There exist languages like traditional Chinese, Thai, and Arabic. You won't get these people to suddenly switch to a more practical alphabet.

Uh, the kernel supports traditional Chinese, Thai and Arabic charsets...

Re:it matters

[r00t]

The kernel certainly does not support traditional Chinese, Thai and Arabic text rendering. Point to the source code; mere parsing of UTF-8 will not do the job.

Also, WTF? Outside of graphics mode, you get 256 different characters. You can go to 512 on VGA sometimes. You'll need many thousand characters to do a traditional Chinese installer. Text mode in no way lets you do a cursive script, which is required for Arabic. Thai is a bit of both, sort of.

Re:it matters

[PastaLover]

True about the tree, but on debian you can just use a generic target (like "desktop system [x]") and let it install a load of stuff for you. Sure, you might want to trim the packages a little, but if you're doing that you also might just install the bare minimum and go from there, and then you're no longer a basic user.

I agree with you that graphical interfaces can make some things more easy. However, debian has traditionally focused on making the installer work on as many architectures as possible. I still think it's not quite a good installer (there are some bugs they never got ironed out before sarge) but it's supposed to work on a lot of comps. Debian's goals are just more technical than the other distros.

Re:Support other items out of the installer?

[MrNemesis]

What can I say? The prospect of a new Debian stable gets me all in a tizzy and causes me to... er... maybe I've said too much already.

Re:ubuntu - deb done right

[Pedersen]

I love ubuntu. easy install, recognizes all hardwrae, even my wifi.

I was mightily impressed by Ubuntu as well. I'd been running a progressively more and more unstable Debian MythTV server, and finally decided to give Ubuntu a try. Long story short: As soon as I get the time over a weekend, Ubuntu is going away.

Short story long: Debian had become unstable over the years on this machine, due to new alpha and pre-alpha drivers being installed, crashing bad reboots due to the crashing, etc. Especially when I had to hit reset, the file corruption that was occurring was destroying the machine. So, last month, I installed Ubuntu. Remember the crashing I mentioned? It would happen every 3 or 4 days. With Ubuntu? At *least* once/night, and usually more often than that. Maddening doesn't begin to do it justice.

Looks like it's down to a video driver issue, though. If I drop my video driver all the way back to vesa (which looks worse than absolute crap on this setup, let me tell you!), the machine has finally become stable. In other words, it's been up for almost 4 days running now. I'm happy to get 4 days out of it. That is pathetic. Ubuntu is going away, and I'm switching back to Debian, where I expect I will have my stability completely returned by a nice, clean install.

Re:ubuntu - deb done right

[b17bmbr]

that's interesting. I use the nvidia driver (which I know isn't gpl'd) and haven't any problems. of course I've had iBook problems (mouse and video) that most others have not. I'll give ubuntu some time as I have it on my classroom computer. If it crashes, I'll go another route. So far it's been stable for the last few days. I'll have to see.

Big deal, not

[jones_supa]

Even Sarge's installer is not hard to use. You don't have to do anything from scratch, you just answer questions. If you can't install the system with that, you probably couldn't use it either. There will be a lot to tweak after the installation anyway. Implementing a straightforward installed is probably not one of the biggest problems. It does not count as "major new features".

Re:Too Little, Too Late

[boethius]

This may not counter your position, but Debian *is* the foundation for Ubuntu, which has come out of nowhere and taken the Linux desktop into a position it's often longed to have.

As a community-driven OS, it definitely has its place.

The release cycle for Debian has indeed been glacial at best. I think I lived a few lifetimes and was incarnated a few times while waiting for sarge. I think also everyone involved with Debian acknowledges how horrific their release cycles were. They seem to be getting better.

I wouldn't call it a "nice try" - Debian has a reputation for being stable and risk-averse over the bleeding edge cycles of other distributions. They are arguably the most "BSD-ish" of the Linux distributions in this respect. This is why a lot of server admins, including myself, pick up on using Debian over say CentOS or RHEL. I've used it for years on production systems and have never regretted it.

apt-rpm is the suck

[brunes69]

apt-rpm is orders of magnitude slower than apt-deb because of the goofy wat the RPM packaging system is designed.

You can rightfully expect apt-get install to take about 3-4 times as long on a RedHat system than a debian system.

Sorry, but I do disagree...

[scheuri]

In my opinion "Installing a Linux distribution" is not the biggest problem anymore.
The graphical installation GUIs are uprising and the ncurses installation "GUIs" are very common (and in my opinion totally sufficent).

What is more a problen is:
Which software does what and what kind of linux software does make the same like the software I was used to before? How is it named and how do I install it (and I dont mean "make install", I mean distribution based install)?

so long

Please, please don't compare it to Ubuntu...

[Anti-Trend]

...anymore, Ubuntu people, as there's nothing Ubuntu can really do that Deb can't. It's true that Debian is more geared towards proficient Linux users, but that's one of the reasons many of us love it so; it is clean, powerful, and stays the hell out of our way. For me personally, just the fact that it has a properly implemented root account rather than that crazy sudoers implementation in Ubuntu is enough to keep me with Deb. (What's up with that, anyway?)

Re:Please, please don't compare it to Ubuntu...

[Vexorian]

I would agree on the other points but sudo works all right for me, if I ever want to keep the root permissions for a good while (which happens rarely) sudo has an argument that allows a fake login as root. Otherwise it is faster than logging in as root just to make install

Re:My favorite installer...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

To be even more fair, granny knows that she doesn't want nor need to learn how to install any OS. She'll just ask me to do it, she's a pretty smart cookie

Extra Virgin...

[Dareth]

When the install ask for the virgin's blood, the average slashdotter need only dilute theirs with some Extra Virgin Olive Oil.... this dilutes the "virgin" quality down to a reasonable level... after that the install works just fine!

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[dberton]

Maybe you've been stuck in an archane version of Debian, if so: you should probably update. The current Debian stable install (3.1) is comprehensive, straightforward and consists mainly of chicken-pecking the return key. In fact, in many respects, it is as complicated and difficult as your average graphical installer (for example, the recent ubuntu installer).

Those who fear Debian because of the installation process need not. Even the Debian stable branch (which, granted, contains a lot of older, albeit stable, software packages) is more than adequate, and in many instances is fast, usable and elegant for its intended purpose: to install the OS.

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[forkazoo]

I am teh Old Skool. Any Debian installation that does not require lamb's blood, sulfur, salt, mercury, a transcription from the original Assyrian, Fermat's Enigma, and a Circle of Power etched in holy chalk consecrated on Michaelmas is a Debian installation for which I have no use.

Friggin' noobs...

Don't worry. It will use a GUI, but it will still work basically the same. They would piss off too many users who have already invested in Lamb's blood if they made it all useless! The only change is that the circle of power will appear onscreen.

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[Abcd1234]

*shudder* I remember the first time I tried to install Debian after using Slackware and then RedHat for some time. I'm still suffering from the dselect-induced post-traumatic stress...

Hmmm

[phorm]

Better than the old RPM-based (without a package-updating/downloading frontend) distro that I've been having fun maintaining lately. Try upgrading glibc on one of those babies and watch all your apps blow up.

Used it

[phorm]

I used this recently to install an AMD64/testing debian machine. While I can say in some ways it was quicker to click the various options, I've found that it sometimes has an annoying lack of consistency (probably due to the porting from curses). Notable that sometimes one must click on an option, and then choose "Continue", while other times you can (or must) double-click the option in question. Particularly annoying is when I've set an option, and it goes back to the selection screen, when I hit continue it asks me to set the option again rather than going on to the next step...

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[Entropy]

Actually, that sounds far closer to a Gentoo installation ..

Validation

[kantier]

With Free Software OSes especially, it's actually really nice to be able to install whenever you want, without worrying about intrusive "validation" procedures, etc -- I know I dabble with various OSes, just to check out what's new.

Oh, but debian does have a validation: if you can't get through the installation it means that you're not a Genuine Debian User

(note: I haven't installed debian myself, just head about it's installation from friends)

Re:Validation

[smash]

Debian has been fairly simple to install since about 2001 ish.

Hell, it's always been simple to install, it's dselect, the old package manager that was a bitch.

Re:Graphical Install For Debian?!? Bah!!

[tehcyder]

And for those of you who are noobs, here is how to install Linux on a dead badger

Is this anything to do with "Badgers on a Hovercraft"?

Re:Newsflash

[dreamchaser]

I started installing Linux when you were probably in grade school. I was merely poking fun at how far behind most other CURRENT distros Debian's installation procedure is ;-)