[PLUG] Rat off a Sinking Ship?
Jeme A Brelin
jeme at brelin.net
Thu Jan 23 16:09:01 UTC 2003
On Wed, 22 Jan 2003, alan wrote:
> On 22 Jan 2003, Brian Beattie wrote:
> > On Tue, 2003-01-21 at 14:00, guy1656 wrote:
> > > I am running Mandrake 8.1
> > >
> > > Now that they are filing for bankruptcy, what's the simplest way to migrate
> > > to something 'still viable?'
> > debian
>
> I don't think he could install Debian. He has a 56k modem line, if
> that. Most Debian distributions insist on downloading anything and
> everything.
It's pretty trivial to set your sources.list to point to a cdrom instead
of the network.
You can get complete snapshots of the Debian archive from Cheapbytes.
<URL: http://www.cheapbytes.com/ >
The 3.0 Binary x86 set is 8 discs and runs about $18. I think that's
pretty reasonable for someone who doesn't have a broadband connection.
Then you add just ONE network deb source to your sources.list:
security.debian.org. Then you only use the dial-up to get things that you
REALLY need to keep current.
> Not to mention that Debian is not the most user friendly version of
> Linux.
I guess I don't understand what that means.
Debian has MORE applications available for productivity, so that can't be
it.
Just about the same automatic and graphical configuration tools are
available, so that's not it, either.
Is it that the installation requires a person to understand a little bit
about how disk partitions correspond to devices which correspond to mount
points? That's a fairly small niggle. I mean, it's the only part of the
installation I had to explain to my friend who had never even installed
Windows before and now has a perfectly functional Debian system on her
desktop.
OK, so if "user friendly" means "encouraging ignorance by hiding every
possible functional element from the human being who is expected to use
and maintain the system", then yes. Debian is terribly lacking in "user
friendliness".
J.
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Jeme A Brelin
jeme at brelin.net
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