[PLUG] QUick Reccomendation

Rogan Creswick creswick at gmail.com
Wed Dec 1 22:24:56 UTC 2004


On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 14:03:56 -0800, Rich Burroughs <rich at paranoid.org> wrote:
> Bryan Murdock wrote:
> > I was just interested in some clarification on the current state of
> > installing Debian, I didn't mean to come off sounding like a troll.  I
> > apologize.
> I don't think you did, Bryan. And I don't think that someone can tell
> you what you can post in the thread and what you can't, just because
> they started it :)
> 
> I've had similar feelings about Debian, but it's been a while since I've
> tried the installer so perhaps things have gotten smoother.

The debian installer has certainly improved in the last 2-3 years, but
I must say my comments reflect the sarge installed, not the installer
packaged on the woody install ISOs.  Technically, this installer is
stil beta, however many people I know (my self included) have had good
luck with it.  It also provides 2.4 install kernels (use the bf24
kernel on the install medium--when you boot up there are
instructions.)

I've done at least one install where I did nothing but hit enter, and
had a useable system at the end--I wouldn't recommend this route, but
it can be done.  The installer is not graphical, however, which I
think scares a lot of people off.  Redhat, Mandrake, SuSe, and I'm
assuming Fedora Core have much fancier looking installers.

An additional dissadvantage to debian is that it will not
install/configure most recent video cards to do hardware acceleration
on it's own.  This comes back to the Free (as in speech) nature of the
distribution.  Recent ATI cards (9200 and newer?) and all GeForce
cards have proprietary drivers that are required for hardware
acceleration--thes can be installed, and the processes to do so are
well documented, but it is something you will have to do.  Mandrake
and others may be able to do this more automatically, but I don't have
experience with them.

In general, it is easier to get a "slick looking" linux install with a
distro like Mandrake etc.  but in my experience (most recently this
was RedHat 9 and Mandrake 10--so it's a bit dated) I was able to build
a more easily maintanable system with Debian, but I have dedicated
much more time to learning to use the debian tools and I am more
aquainted with the system, so I can't make an objective comparison.

-Rogan

> Paul mentioned Gentoo, I used that for a while and really like it. One
> thing that's great is the way they deal with dependencies - they have
> what they call slots, where multiple versions of a package (like a
> library) can be installed at the same time. If you've run into
> dependency problems before with other distros, I'm sure you'll
> understand what a cool idea this is.
> 
> 
> Rich
> 
> 
> 
> 
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