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Debian Lenny Installer RC1 Arrives

Posted by timothy on from the not-lenny-from-of-mice-and-men dept.

nerdyH writes "It appears that Debian 5.0 (aka "Lenny") will soon take its big binocular eyes out into the wider world. Only two months later than expected, the Debian project has completed the first release candidate of Lenny's installer. Featuring much faster installation from "live" CDs, and expanded support for ARM-based devices such as NAS servers, Lenny has gestated for 19 months, compared to 21 months for the previous "Etch" release. Lookout, world, Debian releases are picking up speed! The download is here."

13 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. why bother with a liveCD? by thermian · · Score: 3, Informative

    Lets be honest, almost everyone interested in Debian won't be put off by its already excellent text based installer. Has it suddenly become 'old fashioned' or something?

    Anyone of the livecd liking type is likely to be better off with Ubuntu. Well I think so anyway.

    --
    A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
    1. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by squisher · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Nope, I disagree. I have no problems with a text installer, but I still think the live cd installer is a useful feature. I'd prefer to use that if I have the option.

      I just think it is nice to have the option to do something with the computer while it's installing. Installing is I/O heavy, so i.e. surfing the web or playing a little game does not slow it down.

    2. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by renegadesx · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Knoppix: "Hey, I'm still alive you know!"

      Poor old Knoppix, really was the first to prefect the whole LiveCD thing and now its commonplace amongst distro's most people forgot where it really came from.

      --
      Make SELinux enforcing again!
    3. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by mpapet · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've been a Lenny user for at least 6 months and performed a number of server and desktop installs with some versions of the new installer.

      The most important part of the installer that has changed for the better is you can easily start the installation by selecting from gui and text options from a menu. The Etch installer you had to type something to start the installer.

      The Lenny installer runs circles around the Ubuntu installer. Among other cool details you can configure LVM, or software raids prior to the disk formatting and installation.

      I got KDE4 packages from http://kde4.debian.net/ Absolutely the best way to go for kde4.

      --
      http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
    4. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by rcw-home · · Score: 3, Interesting

      most people forgot where it really came from

      Yggdrasil?

    5. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Informative

      I'm inclined to agree with you on that one. I have nothing against text based installers(heck, I don't mind the bit in the OpenBSD installer where it recommends a calculator); but LiveCDs are really useful on occasion, and making a LiveCD that can also be an installer is an obvious convenience measure. I wouldn't mind having the LiveCD installer just be the text based installer in a window; but LiveCDs are an obvious good, and once you have a LiveCD, adding an installer is simple and useful thing.

    6. Re:why bother with a liveCD? by thermian · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oh go fuck yourselves mods!

      Dude, if we could do that, we wouldn't be here modding comments, would we....

      --
      A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
  2. Don't install Lenny! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It has very poor mouse support.

    1. Re:Don't install Lenny! by eln · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Oh come on mods, this was funny! I think someone needs to get a little culture.

      It's well known that Lenny does not do well with mice. Or puppies, for that matter.

    2. Re:Don't install Lenny! by the_humeister · · Score: 3, Funny

      Or women...

  3. Re:What about bugs? by jonadab · · Score: 5, Informative

    > What about release critical bugs? Currently there are 173 of them:

    Most of those bugs are not in the installer. If you read the summary (not even the actual article, just the summary) carefully, you'll note that this is a release candidate of the *installer*, not of the whole distro. I would imagine the distribution as a whole is probably still on schedule for the originally promised timeframe of "when it's ready".

    --
    Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
  4. Using Lenny now by chrome · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Been running Lenny on my servers, and its been pretty solid. I notice a lot of people suggesting Ubuntu for servers. I'm not keen, for several reasons. Mostly, because Ubuntu generally keep things 'fresher' they also tend to drop in beta or alpha quality versions of things that they shouldn't. Case in point was the DRBD packages recently were broken on Ubuntu because they dropped in an unstable development version. Oops. Ubuntu is great for the desktop, and Debian is great for the server farm.

    1. Re:Using Lenny now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      debian is great for everything.

      ubuntu is great for laptops that want an easier way to get 2.6.27 running their wireless until testing gets un-frozen.

      that's the only reason i'd recommend ubuntu for longer than a week