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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"
Etch-A-Sketch runs Debian?!
> The installer is designed to work at a resolution of 600x800
Hm, looks like a rotated old LCD monitor.
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...
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.
And for those of you who are noobs, here is how to install Linux on a dead badger.
qntm.org
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.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Hah, you had it easy--in my day, we had to use dselect!
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I mean, even Gentoo has a graphical install now (though not a very user-friendly one, of course...)
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
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
GUI doesn't necessarily mean easy to me.
.iso file are too damned confusing.
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?)
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.
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.
Penny - plain text accounting
One of its real advantages is that it allows installation in nine new languages that cannot be displayed in the regular installer.
2 006/08/debian-testing-gui-installer-1.thumbnail.pn g2 006/08/debian-testing-gui-installer-paritition-dis ks-2.png
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/
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/wp-content/uploads/
The important thing is not to stop questioning --Albert Einstein.
The catch is that you need to tilt your monitor.
From TFA:
The installer is designed to work at a resolution of 600x800;
No, but to be fair, granny doesn't really know how to install windows or OS X either.
Badass Resumes
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.
Badass Resumes
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
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
apt-get install scroll-knobs
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"
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