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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...
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!
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.
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.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Hah, you had it easy--in my day, we had to use dselect!
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
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.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
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
> 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.
-- OpenVerse Visual Chat: http://openverse.com
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
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.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
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.
No, but to be fair, granny doesn't really know how to install windows or OS X either.
Badass Resumes
apt-get install scroll-knobs
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.
No comment.