Debian Retail on CNN

Chuck Milam writes "CNN is reporting that Debian will soon be available via retail outlets. According to the article: 'The companies say they will donate all profits from the sale of the retail GNU/Linux package to Software in the Public Interest, a nonprofit organization for open source projects.' " I've seen the boxes. They're super sweet. Saw them shipping with a Myth 2 CD.

Comments

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[Analog]

Generally, people who state that Debian is difficult to install have never installed Debian themselves. It is not more difficult than any other distrobution, it is just a bit in it's approach.

I've always kind of assumed this as well, but I hear this so much that I'm thinking that there must be some fire to go with all the smoke. I asked for elaboration in a thread above, and there are already a couple of good responses.

I'm starting to think there is more to the 'technical/non-technical personality' issue than I've generally accepted, and this explains the differences in perceptions of Debian's installation process.

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[Analog]

Not to flame you, but when you hear people complaining about Debian's install and configuration listen to them. Their confusion should be telling you something; ie the simple things are unnecessarily obscure in Debian and thus appear complex and difficult.

I do listen; the problem is, that while people seem happy to say that it was hard, they seem relatively reticent when it comes to pointing out specifics. This is not necessarily their problem; if you flat out don't understand something, it can be difficult to explain to someone what it is you don't understand.

As far as the simple things being unnecessarily complex and obscure, this seems to be the general consensus. I personally don't find it true, though; thus my request for elaboration (and I think your comments are definitely helpful).

So far, I haven't had any problems recommending Debian to people, but most of the people I deal with are familiar with the innards of their computers, and many have previous Unix experience. I'm thinking this makes a bigger difference than I generally give it credit for. I'm also really beginning to believe that Debian is made by people with a certain personality type, and is optimized for that way of thinking. I think this would go a long way toward explaining why some people think Debian installs are cake, while others find it impossible (note that if this is the case, it should probably be changed as soon as is practical).

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[Analog]

First off, a disclaimer. This is not a flame, and I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm serious here.

I hear this again and again about Debian's lack of ease of installation and configuration, but I just don't see it. I don't mean as compared to Red Hat or Suse, etc. (they might very well be much easier), I mean just in absolute terms. Now admittedly, I like getting into the innards of things more than the average Joe (and this may be the entire explanation), but I've never found installing Debian hard. I've installed more Win95 machines than I can count, and I'll take a Debian installation over that any day of the week. I've also had someone that had terrible problems installing Red Hat (one of the 5.* versions) find happiness after I recommended he try Debian. This may have been because I was able to give more focused help after the switch, though.

Keeping in mind that my viewpoint is most probably warped (I like tinkering with things, and I know more about PC hardware than anyone I know) I would find it helpful if you could point out some problems with it. Not as compared to other distros, but along the lines of things that someone with no previous Linux experience (but with experience installing other OS's) would look at and go "huh?". If the person who posted the first reply to your comment could offer some points as well, that would be great.

Again, I have no illusions that what you say isn't true. But as I am obviously reasonably ignorant of or unaffected by the problems, and I fairly regularly get asked to recommend a distro by people trying Linux for the first time, I'm quite interested in hearing an elaboration of your viewpoint. Thanks.

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[Suydam]

You're missing my point partially. I'm trying to say that for someone that walks into Best Buy and says "wonder what the LInux thing is all about. " and walks home with Debian, it WILL be harder to install. You obviously know what you're doing, and that puts you in the same category as me: Debian User. However, my friend dennis for example was a first time insatller about 2 months ago. He installed Debian on one box, Red Hat on the other, and never used Debian again. It is NOT as easy.

great for Debian, bad for newbies

[Suydam]

This is great for Debian! They deserve all the recognition they can get.

But can anyone but me see this as a potential problem? Right now, newbies who walk into Best Buy (for instance) can choose any Linux they want and it runs easily...Debian is, even though I love it dearly, much MUCH harder to get running to the level that a newbie expects.

Without proper packaging and some warning, it could actually damage Linux's inroads into the mainstream if all of a sudden people are getting home and trying to install Debian...

Don't think I'm trying ti diss Debian. I use it on about 3 machines right now. But just because I use it, doesn't mean everyone should...and retail purchases are going to consist largely of people just getting their feet wet with Linux. Seems risky to me.

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[smash]

Debian rocks for getting a bare bones system and working your way up :)

The way I currently install Debian (after about 10-12 installs of it) is this:

Boot from cd/floppy disk
Partition disks
Install base system, configure base system, reboot

Once you perform the first reboot, Debian has all of the "base" files you need to run.

(having a network connection, here is where i configure apt to point to the nearest unstable mirror, and install the rest from unstable :)

From there, do not install one of the preconfigured setups.

Run dselect (argh, i know, i do network installs and use apt-get ;) and pick the things that you want to use.

Do not concern yourself with packages you dont know about, if they are needed, Debian will install them :)

So for a minimal system with X, you would for example pick WindowMaker, the X server to match your card, and any X apps/C compilers you are going to use.

Debian will automatically select and install which packages are required to install what you want to use :)

I recommend WindowMaker if you are running a p120 with 32 meg. Should run about the same speed as fvwm or so, and it looks MUCH MUCH nicer :)

smash

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[Daniel]

I think that although many people have many opinions -- probably someone will say that "it's too ugly" or "dselect sucks!", there is one and only one problem: the entire lack of a package hierarchy. This problem is peculiar to Debian since no other distribution actually lets the user list every program which could potentially be installed on his or her system, but that's no excuse for not solving it :)
The current system provides a few broad groupings of packages (net/, devel/, etc) with no strong policy [that I know of] about where packages go -- libraries can be found in every section (for example, libmagick4g is in graphics/) and no consistency in package organization. This leads to two problems:

1) When setting up a system for the first time, the new user must examine each and every of the 4000 packages and determine which ones he/she wants to install. There's no way to know ahead of time what the next section of packages holds, and so you have to examine it. (in some cases, libs/ and devel/ might be eliminatable)

2) There is no way to get a quick listing of all available software of type X, and no reliable way to do it (besides the needle-in-a-haystack approach). Because of this, installing software on an already-set-up system also requires a huge amount of work.

Both problems are exacerbated by the fact that dselect refuses to merge the different priorities and overarching sections (there's a case to be made for non-free and non-us, but separating Base, Optional, and Extra from one another by default is indefensible), meaning that there are actually *multiple* occurences of each section! So I actually have to search three or four versions of web/ and x11/ to find Web browsers.
More annoyingly, these are not just problems for newbies, but also (IMO) hinderances for experienced users -- good organization of information is just a good idea.

I posted a message some time last summer on debian-devel about this but it was mostly ignored, so now I'm working on actually implementing a working system of tagging packages to put them into a logical hierarchy. (yes, another curses APT frontend) I just started, though, so I don't expect it to be able to do anything particularly exciting until after potato is released.

Daniel

PS - historically, the huge number of questions asked in the process of unpacking packages has been a problem. Either in potato or in potato+1 this will be solved in a surpassingly elegant way by debconf.

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[Daniel]

you can't possibly tell me E0.16 will be in potato

It already is :)

Commonness of packages

I think you should be aware that (as opposed to RPMs), most Debian packages are distributed by Debian itself. This means that just because you don't see a package listed on Freshmeat or on the homepage doesn't mean you can assume that no package exists, or that the version reported is correct. And unless you need to have the version released last week, unstable is generally fine -- note I said generally, some *specific* maintainers have been slower about keeping up with releases. This is generally with big and complex pieces of software (eg, XFree) in which multiple patches and fixes have to be backed out or put back in inbetween upstream releases, and which require coordination between multiple developers. PHP3, Mysql, and Apache were significantly behind for a while last spring, I'm not sure what the status is now (I haven't tried using them recently)

There are very few programs which I haven't been able to get as Debian packages; for those which I can't, I usually build a package myself. For most software (read: software which uses autoconf and automake) this takes about 5 minutes+time to compile. The only recent examples were squaroid, xarchon, and sawmill (which I'm too lazy to download :P ) -- of these, xarchon and sawmill are going into potato RSN. squaroid I don't know about, but I didn't find it to be that interesting a game, so.. *shrug*

Daniel

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[trog]

The Debian installation program runs you through a series of very easy to use screens, which all correspond to the installation documentation found at
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/. Contratry to what Red Hat does, Debian's installation program is just that - an installation program. It doesn't configure packages for you.

The reason that dselect is so intimidating is because of the thousands of packages available. While I recomment apt-get for more experienced users, for first time users, it's very good. It won't allow you to install packages without installing their dependancies (as does apt - they are both front ends to dpkg). It's description area is generally very informative, and warns of necessary further work, or package conflicts.

Now, it is a LONG process to use dselect, but it gives you important, accurate information every step of the way. If you are willing to invest the time in the instilation, you will have a tailor-made system, running only what you want to run.

I've had a few friends install Debian who never used Linux before. I was there just to answer questions. I found that Debian's install process actually fosters knowledge of your machine. It may take a new user a bit longer the first few times, but longer != more difficult. The Debian install process helps to create more knowledgable users.

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[trog]

Generally, people who state that Debian is difficult to install have never installed Debian themselves. It is not more difficult than any other distrobution, it is just a bit in it's approach.

Having switched to Debian from RH about 6 months ago, I find that Debian is very easy to install. The only component of a system that posed any diffuculty to me was setting up X the first time. It took me a whole twenty minutes. With the inclusion of the excellent Debian manual, I don't see any one with reasonable intelligence having any problems with the installation.

Ever try to install rpm's after an install, when they refuse to install because of dependencies, and you have NO IDEA where to get that package? Tell me Red Hat is easier to use....:/

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[mrwiggly]

Ever try to install rpm's after an install, when they refuse to install because of dependencies, and you have NO IDEA where to get that package? Tell me Red Hat is easier to use....:/

I couldn't agree more. I've got a red hat box at home that's stuck on linux 2.0.34 (RH: 5.0). The thought of buying another set of cd's just to upgrade it makes me sick. I installed debian at work, and I love dselect. I'm converting the box at home right now! Long live Debian GNU/Linux

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[Pedersen]

I'll speak up as a person who is a fan of maintaining a Debian installation, but who had awful problems installing it the first time.

I bought the Cheapbytes Debian CDs, and was working with them. I had no problems until dselect came into the picture. After that, it was all downhill, for about a week. It took me about an hour of trying (and reading dselect help) to figure out that I was supposed to put CD 2 in, run update, and then put CD 1 in for the install. If I'd caught that up front, the entire process would have been much less painful. In addition, the interface for dslect is very very far from easy to follow (at least for me).

Now some notes about this experience: I've installed Slackware, and several versions of RedHat, all without a hitch (well, except for the first time I installed Slackware. That was due to total inexperience with setting up an OS, though). I'm not exactly a computer newbie, either. I've been working (and playing) with them since the old days of the VIC-20. Just the interface for dselect lacks a lot in terms of usability.

Now, I know that I could have just settled for one of the profiles, but I wanted to actually see what packages would be installed, and maybe modify the package listings. That process was about three hours of reviewing the listings, and determining if I wanted a package or not. Too many packages, I think.

Next issue was during the install stage of dselect. A few hours worth of package configuring (hindered by the fact that at least a third of the packages wanted me to help them out, and didn't have defaults). All in all, an extraordinarily frustrating day.

Finally, I had two other issues, but they can't be blamed on Debian itself. CD 1, it turns out, was a bad CD (meaning it had some bad sectors), so once those failed, making dselect go again (I thought) meant restarting from scratch. That was a very very frustrating experience, I can tell you. As luck would have it, I also had a hard drive (brand new) which had a bad spot on it, and had to be replaced.

All in all, not an easy installation experience, and one that I would steer newbies away from as much as possible.

My $0.02, YMMV, <insert standard disclaimer here>.

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[danimal;]

I currently run RedHat6.0. Though I enjoy all of the bells and whistles to some extent, I find myself continually miffed at the overhead my system seems to have. I think in my case (being somwhat of a newby) Debian may be a better alternative, maybe you can enlighten me. Though I am not truely a newby (I've worked on UNIX systems for a few years), I am new to the actual systems cosmetic portion and I find it very difficult to configure my system with RedHat. (Note: I have successfully setup a proxy/firewall and webserver, I'm talking here more about the 'look and feel') I know it can be done but I would rather have a stripped down version and build my way up ,rather than a bloated version and work my way down. Does debian have more of this approach? If not, does anyone have a recommendation for a distribution.

BTW: I realize there are options in the installation process, and I have tried different configurations. But it always seems that my changes to certain files always get overwritten by some script at the next boot-up. For example in FVWM I change the menu items and the next time I reboot those menu items are gone. I could take the time to figure this all out but I would rather not. Besides I am on a P120 with 32 MB RAM, my GUI is killing my system, I want something good but simple.

Re:great for Debian, bad for newbies

[bssea]

I do so much like Debian... but yes the installation could be a little better...

1) They fact that you have to select every single package is kinda tedious. Why not have a package of preselected packages?? or put more than one package in an option? Some ppl like this but I'm sure newbies would look at the massive number of packages and say "huh?".. especially if they don't know what "make-3.7.7" or "groff" is?? or better yet I've been asked what gcc was...

2) The installer uses keys that aren't intuitive to everyone... "+" to add package, "-" to subtract, and do the little stars next to the package mean that the package is already installed or going to be installed... what about underscores... what does the second star mean? Newbie will look at the states of the packages and say "huh?", I know I did at first

3) And when you press "+" or "-" it goes through the dependacies(which I like) but will lead newbies to wonder what is going on, and can get VERY confusing..

The installer is very confusing to start with... It could DEFINITLY be improved... like make the states of the packages more clear... The installer is nice to me(though I take forever to select EVERY package), but to a newbie... I could see myself explaining every single package, and the then they would think and move on...

Debian... Good distribution, but the installer is what gets ppl away from it(That's why many people are looking forward to Corel, because they use Debian AND the installation is supposed to be easier) Imagine, Debian with an easy install. WOW! what a dream :-)

Just my $.02

Re:Installation Process.

[Daniel]

Debian 2.2 is going to replace dselect

No it's not. At least, I hope not; there's no good alternative yet (console-apt is not and may never be; I've looked at the code and that's all I'll say on the subject :/ )

Debian has a 2 disk FULL install

Only if you have a good way to get the base system (ie, a local NFS machine or a DOS partition). There was just a discussion on debian-devel about getting base via FTP -- it looks like it may go into potato.

it can install via PPP

But not [easily] on a network where you need dhcp. RedHat handles this nicely. Again, there are noises being made about fixing this in 2.2 but I don't know for sure what's going on. (now, if I can just get debian-boot-request to handle my subscription messages properly.. :) )
Also, I'm not sure that ppp is in base2_1.tgz. Is it? I vaguely remember having to sneakernet the ppp deb last summer when I had cause to install it on a new system.

There are lots of good things about Debian, but please get your facts straight :)

Daniel

Re:Myth???

[Daniel]

From the Debian Social Contract (emphasis mine):
4. Our Priorities are Our Users and Free Software.
We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free-software
community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We
will support the needs of our users for operation in many different
kinds of computing environment. We won't object to commercial software
that is intended to run on Debian systems, and we'll allow others to
create value-added distributions containing both Debian and commercial
software, without any fee from us. To support these goals, we will
provide an integrated system of high-quality, 100% free software, with
no legal restrictions that would prevent these kinds of use.

Everything that's officially in Debian is free software, and (with the exception of ssh, grr..) you can usefully run a Debian system without ever touching non-free software. But that doesn't stop people from packaging useful non-free software -- in fact, the Debian ftp archives contain some (in the non-free/ section) as a service to the users.

Daniel

Debian needs to get their act together

[Kenneth Stephen]

Dont get me wrong : I think Debian is the best distribution around. But the problems that they have been experiencing seems to offset some of the quality benefits that they provide.

What are these problem?

1. A formless decision making process which takes really long to make any decision. I feel that they really need a leader figure with the authority to arbitrate over any decision that is getting prolonged. This leader can be democratically elected or can be anyone who is accepted by the developers.

Some of the consequences of this problem has been (a) A lag in the versions of the kernels and associated programs that they have released (b) An incapacity to set (or meet when set) internal deadlines (c) Raging flamewars on the developer lists which contribute little or nothing to free software. (d) An inablility to get rid of people who are more of a millstone than a help - for example, developers who dont respond to queries / bug reports about their package or do not update their packages from upstream. These packages could probably have better support if they were just orphaned or listed as unmaintained.

2. Openness : Debian prides itself on being open, and indeed, it is more open than other distributions since almost all of their mailing lists are open to the public for scrutiny.

This openness, however, is relative. There is atleast one private list which non-developers cant read. I question the necessity for existence of this list. What is it that Debian needs to discuss behind closed doors that it cannot discuss in the public eye, since Debian itself is not a commercial organization? Witness the recent uproar over the non-admission of new developers which was discussed on debian-private. Did it help that this discussion was totally hidden from the general public? All it did was convince the general public that there is some unofficial policy being implemented to not allow new developers - all denials to the contrary.

Just my two cents....

Re:Debian needs to get their act together

[Kenneth Stephen]

..The last person to lead Debian (rather than guide it) described it as "herding kittens" and burned out. Authoritarian leadership doesn't work when you're dealing with volunteers.

I wasnt aware that this had been tried before. However, it may be that the circumstances were different before, and it is time to try this experiment again with the benefit of previous experiences.

Regarding the flamewars :

Who are you to judge? Personally, I'll start worrying the day there isn't a flamewar on the development list, because it'll mean that people have stopped caring.

Two points : Are you off the opinion that because I am not a developer, that my opinion isnt important? What if I were a developer? Would I then have the "right" to "judge"? What is it that makes your judgement superior to mine?

The second thing is that I feel your conclusion is incorrect. No flamewars on lists could mean that (a) Proper arbitration of arguments is being done or (b) People have become politer or (c) People do not care anymore. I dont see why it only has to be (c). In fact, look at the moderated newsgroups on the net. They dont have flamewars and they dont seem to be dying out either.

Why is it you're not publishing all your email on the web? Why is it you don't have a couple of webcams in your bedroom and bathroom?

This is a truly specious argument on your part. My life is not open to the public, and I never claim so. Debian, on the other hand supposedly welcomes the public to participate.

Re:Debian needs to get their act together

[Kenneth Stephen]

>>Are you off the opinion that because I am not a developer, that my opinion isnt important?

Debian is a democracy of sorts, but is a democracy of developers (in the broad sense of the word - people who actively contribute to Debian's development - be it as maintainers, technical writers or submitters of useful bug reports).

>>Would I then have the "right" to "judge"?

I, like my fellow developers, welcome opinions of people interested in Debian, but ultimately what really counts are contributions. I've read one "dselect sucks" too many from people who aren't willing to work on it (or even just give constructive criticism).

I have in the past submitted patches to debian packages, one of which was acknowledged by the developer (who then promptly disappeared out of sight), and incorporated by none. So, yes, I speak from experience.

In the case of the developer who disappeared out of sight, I later sent him mail offering to take over maintaining his package, but I received no response, and his package continues to languish. (If you want more details, you can email me.)

I've sent mail to the wnpp address regarding packages that I would have liked to adopt. I did receive one response. This did not contain all the info I needed, and later queries vanished into some mail-blackhole that exists on the Debian servers. The information on the wnpp page itself is inconsistent - I've seen packages for which the wnpp page listed one maintainer, the bug reports page listed another, and the package page indicated another. But I digress....

The point that I am trying to make is that (1) My opinion is just as relevant as yours and (2) The current setup of Debian makes it hard for my opinion to be accepted as being as relevant as yours.

Also, you seem to be under the impression that a leader must be authoritarian in nature. Not so. They may wield authority, but that does not made them authoritarian (not in the pejorative sense that you use the word for). For example, I read the comp.lang.c++.moderated newsgroup which is moderated by 6 people. But nobody is rebelling against the moderators claiming that they are stiffling discussion or whatever. Linus is an authority, but the kernel developers accept that without any problem. I could make the same statement about several other developers (just in case you reply that Linus is an exception).

I am still of the opinion that a closed list serves no useful purpose for Debian. The analogy that you make (black budgets and so on), do not fit in. Can Debian punish its developers for revealing what goes on in debian-private? If not, how can you prevent the "secrets" that you discuss there from leaking out to other companies. In fact the example you quoted about Corel falls apart if you take into consideration that there may be employees of Corel who are debian developers, and therefore have access to debian-private. So what exactly have you gained?

Re:Debian needs to get their act together

[Ray Dassen]

I feel that they really need a leader figure with the authority

Been there, done that, abandoned it. The last person to lead Debian (rather than guide it) described it as "herding kittens" and burned out. Authoritarian leadership doesn't work when you're dealing with volunteers.

Raging flamewars on the developer lists which contribute little or nothing to free software.

Who are you to judge? Personally, I'll start worrying the day there isn't a flamewar on the development list, because it'll mean that people have stopped caring.

There is atleast one private list [...] I question the necessity for existence of this list.

Yes, debian-private exists. It's one of life's necessary evils. Even in an open project there are sensitive issues. Consider e.g. the recent Corel beta licensing issue - how can you plot a course of action if you're totally open, and the other side is fairly closed? Consider other dealings with companies - they're big fans of testing the waters first.

What is it that Debian needs to discuss behind closed doors that it cannot discuss in the public eye

Why is it you're not publishing all your email on the web? Why is it you don't have a couple of webcams in your bedroom and bathroom?

Re:Debian needs to get their act together

[Ray Dassen]

I wasnt aware that this had been tried before.

We've had a triumvirate, authoritarian leadership, lassez-faire leadership / democracy and I've forgotten probably a few others.

However, it may be that the circumstances were different before, and it is time to try this experiment again with the benefit of previous experiences.

They were; the project was quite a bit smaller back then. I can only imagine that the burnout would occur quicker with the current number of developers to be managed.

Are you off the opinion that because I am not a developer, that my opinion isnt important?

Debian is a democracy of sorts, but is a democracy of developers (in the broad sense of the word - people who actively contribute to Debian's development - be it as maintainers, technical writers or submitters of useful bug reports).

Would I then have the "right" to "judge"?

I, like my fellow developers, welcome opinions of people interested in Debian, but ultimately what really counts are contributions. I've read one "dselect sucks" too many from people who aren't willing to work on it (or even just give constructive criticism).

What is it that makes your judgement superior to mine?

I'm not claiming my judgement is superior to yours. I am claiming it is more relevant though, as I am an active participant in Debian's development. In Dutch, there's an ironic saying that the best sailors are standing on solid land: it is easy to criticise people and organisations, but have you walked a mile in their shoes?

Most of the developers seem to find the current situation (flamewars and all) workable - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

a) Proper arbitration of arguments is being done

By whom? An authoritarian leader?

(b) People have become politer

The developers are polite, most of the time. But people do feel strongly about issues, and occasionally express themselves in less polite terms. I'm a big fan of polite conversation myself, but having an outlet in the form of e.g. cursing or flaming is necessary occasionally.

This is a truly specious argument on your part. My life is not open to the public, and I never claim so.

I'm trying to draw an analogy. There is a notion of privacy; that notion isn't restricted to individuals but applies to organisations as well. A better analogy would be a democratic government which still has a need for "black budgets", closed sessions and espionage agencies.

Debian, on the other hand supposedly welcomes the public to participate.

We do. That doesn't mean we have to do everything in the open. debian-private is like closed senate sessions: unavoidable, but only used when necessary.

Re:Debian needs to get their act together

[extrasolar]

Well. I am not a developer at all so my opinion should be just as an important as both of you (yes, I am using your elitism against you... that is if you are elitist).

I have found that private mailing lists are far more common for free software projects than you might expect. It is just that most of the time you don't know about them. Once you start contributing, someone may let you in. I know that Debian, Gnome, and UDE have private lists or forums, but them are just the projects that I look-up daily. There are probably more, much more. Even small projects probably have just a couple developers they e-mail directly, it is still a closed list, just smaller.

Debian's organization may not be optimal but the important thing is that it works reasonably. There really isn't an optimal solution, I don't think. Linus seems to be burning out because of his authoritarian leadership. Perhaps a hierachical system would be best...

The biggest problem I think is when a developer refuses a patch. Ideally the person who made the patch would realize his mistake and walk away. But that person probably gets upset at his own wasted effort and may do any number of things to hinder development.

--

Installation Process.

[jelwell]

I've been using linux since 95. I bought Slackware 95 (might have been 96) that year and was pleased when I had similar tools at home that I had at school - but I gave it up. A couple of years later I wanted Linux at home again and I went shopping for a new Linux distribution. I had heard that Redhat was *really* easy to use, but I also heard that Debian was better overall system. I'll tell you what the only reason is that I chose Redhat over Debian. It was because Redhat had a 2 to 3 floppy disk ftp install and Debian had a 7 to 12 floppy disk installation.

I hear a lot of people moaning that Debian installations and maintenance can be difficult for newbies. So I'm thinking - didn't redhat GPL it's installation program? Couldn't Debian use that? I mean *everyone* uses the SysLinux boot floppy that so and so created, why not share Redhat's installation process between distributions?

The only obvious reason I can see for Debian to not use Redhat's installation process is mindshare. Debian stands to lose mindshare if their distribution uses technologies in other distributions. But I know the Debian project to be about freedom. So I hope that they'll have the freedom of mind to make the right decision. Which might mean writing their own installation wizard. Who knows.
Joseph Elwell.

Re:Installation Process.

[Ray Dassen]

and Debian had a 7 to 12 floppy disk installation.

But there are relatively few systems (mostly older ones) where you need to actually make them. On most systems, you can use a zero-floppy install (using a bootable CD) or a one-floppy install (when booting from CD isn't supported).

Debian should come with warning stickers...

[slothbait]

"Warning! For advanced users only."

Debian is great, but I would never recommend it to a newbie (such as someone who might stumble upon a box in Best Buy). Its really not a "first" distribution. When our LUG does install-fests we use Mandrake, which is nice and cuddly. Most of the members, however, run Debian.

I like the Debian banners that I've seen around the web:

"Debian: your *next* Linux distribution." ...I think that sums things up rather nicely.

--Lenny
Slackware->Red Hat->Mandrake->Debian

Re:Debian should come with warning stickers...

[IntlHarvester]

I kind of like the idea of seeing a nice shrinkwrapped box in CompUSA with a big warning label on the front:

Warning - Debian Linux is for advanced Linux users only. If "MS Windows"-like simplicity is what you want, we suggest you try one of the many other fine commercial Linux distributions. However, if you are looking for the best application packaging system and the finest level of control and quality assurance in a Linux distribution, Debian Linux is for you!

Debian is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to free software

If anything, such a warning would probably increase sales.

Re:Which architecture?

[Ray Dassen]

Will the 68k, PPC and other ports be available to buy in shops,

I doubt it; the product is aimed at commodity hardware.

or is Debian going to be concentrating on the x86 version of the distribution?

No. "Debian in a Box" is a product of SGI, O'Reilly and VA, not of the Debian project. While SGI &co may be focussing on a commercially supported Debian package for commodity hardware, the Debian project is actively working on several architecture ports, some of which have already been released.

Re:So, who's gonna buy this?

[Ray Dassen]

Debian users value free software. Are they gonna run right out and buy this?

"free" is about freedom, not free beer. Also, I believe there are plenty of people who just pick a distribution, and then get enrolled in its culture. Debian is often chosen by people who already have prior Linux experience. This deal can help increase our mindshare with new users.

It has been said that many people choose their distribution on the basis of advice from their friendly neighbourhood Linux guru. I for one am recommending people packages like this.

This to me is a case of a few greedy companies trying to cash in on the name (if not the profits) of the coolest Linux distribution.

Out here, where net.access costs real money, it has always been difficult to get people to install Debian; the net option is too expensive, and most bookstores here have Red Hat (and perhaps SuSE as well). Having a nice shiny prepacked Debian with book is definite progress.

Re:Myth???

[Ray Dassen]

It ships with demoware?? Isn't that totally going against what GNU stands for?

Not really. Note that the "GNU" in "Debian GNU/Linux" is part of "GNU/Linux", i.e. the operating environment based around the Linux kernel. Debian is not a part of the FSF, although we maintain strong ties to the FSF (see e.g. Debian GNU/Hurd).

The Debian project has always encouraged others to use Debian GNU/Linux as a basis for building distributions as Corel has been doing, and SGI, O'Reilly and VA are doing now.

Debian proper ("main") is and will continue to be 100% pure software, but the Debian Social Contract is pragmatic enough to acknowledge that our users may want to use non-free software.

Re:Which architecture?

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

Well, I don't know about the boxed set, but here at ALS the Debian Project was giving out free CDs of all the different architectures. Every single one was snatched up within the first few hours of the show, even 68k. I was going to grab a copy of 68k and get an old Mac to put it on, but wasn't sure, and figured they'd still be there when I came back later. Bad move on my part. I seem to have trouble with realizing supply/demand scenarios from the consumer standpoint... same thing happened with me and Dreamcast VMUs. :)

Regardless, the interest in the various Debian architectures is definitely there. Hopefully the folks putting out the Debian boxed set wil realize this.

BTW, at my local Microcenter they already have a quite sizeable "Other OS" shelf. It's mostly Linux, but there's plenty of FreeBSD and BeOS stuff there as well. Very cool. Also, their books section is full of lots of Linux stuff. I even picked up a copy of TeX Unleashed (or something like that, one of those TeX books) for $3... :)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Re:Which architecture?

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

I was referring to the previous comment, which was asking if the boxed set would support anything other than Intel. Yes, many people have gotten boxed Debian. That's what this article was about.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Re:So, who's gonna buy this?

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

Ah, my friend, you're forgetting several things: (and I'm going to sound like a broken-record Stallman pundit now, but hey...)

1. 'Free' does not mean 'for free,' but rather 'with freedom.' Think free speech, not free beer. You have to pay to attend ALS and listen to the speeches, but you're free to use the information you learn at it as you see fit. (Whereas afterwards, you get lots of free beer at the party they throw. After last night I've found out that 2 bottles of beer is more than enough for me. :)

2. Not just opensource zealots use Debian. Debian is a great distribution which stands on its own merits. Its configuration and administration is much more easy and powerful than any other distro I've used (disclaimer: I've never used SuSE, which I've heard is comparable, but Debian beats the pants off of RedHat and Slackware, especially if you have a large cluster of machines to configure identically). It's easy to install software, easy to keep it completely up-to-date, and easy to remove software. To upgrade your installation to the newest stable release, you must simply run, as root:

• apt-get update
• 
  apt-get upgrade

Also, Corel's working on a to-be-opensourced Qt-based package manager system which is far superior, interface-wise, to dselect (Debian's built-in package manager)... I saw it here at ALS and nearly hugged the Corel representatives. :) Not that dselect is bad, it's actually very powerful, but the interface is a bit yucky.

3. As far as newbies, the box comes with a manual, which is the point to paying $x0 for a boxed distribution rather than $3 for a generic CD or $bandwidth for downloading it yourself.

Also, I don't know what you're talking about with Debian's install process being anti-newbie. It's certainly easier than, say, RedHat's. It's no WinLinux, granted, and it could really use a nice X configuration tool, but you never have to see dselect, and it's got a relatively nice fdisk frontend. The only real shortcoming in 2.1 is that LILO configuration is non-intuitive; IIRC, it doesn't give you any means of automagically setting up inferior^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hother operating systems to boot from; you have to actually know how to add an entry to lilo.conf. However, the boxed set's manual may include this, and IMO it's rather nice to force the newbie into learning how to use Linux well enough to get back into Windows. :)

All that Debian's lacking is a nice pre-configured desktop environment, and that's where Corel's distribution comes in. Also, once Qt2 comes out and KDE's been ported to it, we'll finally have an available desktop other than Gnome. (Note: I don't use either Gnome or KDE. When it comes down to it, I prefer KDE, but I prefer to just run a highly-customized fvwm2 setup. I've invested lots of time in my fvwm2 setup. :)

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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

A Retail Debian?

[ed_the_unready]

Glad to see Debian getting some recognition and wider distribution, but I'm wondering how this will be handled. It seems that Debian users typically use the "unstable" branch and update in near real-time (daily, whatever) to stay current, as opposed to the "stable" release which goes for quite a while between formal updates. Will the requirements of retail distribution push Debian into an accellerated release schedule?

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Re:So, who's gonna buy this?

[trog]

I would buy it just to support SPI. I don't need it (apt-get has kept me current), but I want to show my support for the Debian project.

If this sells well, companies will take notice. They may market Debian heavily.

More people would use a superior distro.

Time to vote with my checkbook.

Re:uno

[Delphis]

*LOL* .. Thanks, that made my day...

nothing more funny to see than someone making a 'first post' lame comment a full 18 minutes after the real first post..

Hehehehh..

Which architecture?

[Stephen Williams]

Will the 68k, PPC and other ports be available to buy in shops, or is Debian going to be concentrating on the x86 version of the distribution? I could understand a decision to only produce an x86 version, as this will certainly be the most popular, but it would be good to see the 68k/PPC/other versions as well for those who favour non-x86 architectures.

-Stephen

"I don't want freedom," says AC

[extrasolar]

Why would you shoot yourself in the foot like that? Do you have a problem with people giving you source code and a liscense that makes the software freely distributable?

"No! No! Please. I only want binaries and a propietary license! No source code, GPL is evil!"

What a world we live in, eh?

--

I gnoticed

[DonkPunch]

Kudos to C gN gN gnews for that. I wonder if RMS thinks its gnice.

Re:Debian is not that difficult ...

[Pedersen]

How strange. I find Debian very easy. Unlike the other distro's alot is automated for you. 'update-menus' leaps to mind.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. Using Debian is much easier than other distros. Maintenance can even be automated to a better degree, if you choose (cron, anybody?). However, the very initial installation of Debian is much more difficult than others, I think. It's getting over that hill of "Let's get it installed and working" that is so hard. Once past that, though, it's very easy to get along with.

Software in the Public Interest, INC

[Fjord]

For those of you who don't know, SPI does promotion and education of free software systems. They are a good organization and have been affiliated with Debian for a while. Their web page is at http://www.spi-inc.org/.

Great Move For Debian

[db_cooper]

I think it's a great move for Debian, and the open source community. Debian just has to advertise it somewhat. People will recognize Redhat, but few people are going to recognize Debian in a retail outlet unless they are part of the "enlightened" linux community. BSD's have been doing this stuff for years, but only to benefit their own works. Still benefits the open source community, but not everyone. This group is helping out a lot more than just themselves, which hopefully will benefit everyone. :)