[PLUG] Debian installation

Bryan Murdock bmurdock at gmail.com
Wed Dec 22 20:17:55 UTC 2004


On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 23:58:44 -0800, Carla Schroder <carla at bratgrrl.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 21 December 2004 11:40 pm, Paul Mullen wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 21, 2004 at 10:50:04PM -0800, Robert Kopp wrote:
> > > Many people on this list use Debian, so maybe I should
> > > try it. There are 7 CD's for each architecture, so I
> > > suppose I should get all seven. With a fast
> > > connection, that isn't too much of a problem.
> >
> > If you have a fast connection, don't bother downloading a boatload of
> > ISOs. Just download one of the net-install ISOs and install everything
> > else via one of the package repositories. That's one of Debian's finer
> > points. There really is no need to think in terms discrete "releases"
> > when you're only an "apt-get upgrade" away from the latest packages.
> >
> > > "Woody" is said to include KDE 2.2. That must be a
> > > joke. If they're serious, I suppose there's some way
> > > to upgrade easily to 3.x?
> >
> > Last I looked "Sid" offered KDE 3.3. Don't bother with Woody (AKA
> > "stable") unless you're really paranoid about security and stability
> > (*really* paranoid). Stick to Sid (AKA "unstable", and anything but)
> > if it's a normal user machine (workstation, laptop, etc.).
> >
> > NB: In my experience, the Debian maintainers use "stable" and
> > "unstable" in a different way than one would normally expect in the
> > context of personal computers. They don't mean that Sid is unstable in
> > the sense that your computer will be crashing a lot. Rather, it means
> > that the package tree is in flux, and that individual packages can and
> > do change quite often (meaning you may want to upgrade every week or
> > so).
> >
> 
> I vote for what everyone else said. I run Sid (unstable) on a lot of machines
> and it works just fine. The trouble spots are with new releases, especially
> big complex packages like KDE and Gnome. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks
> to work out all the dependencies. The system is not unstable; the "unstable"
> bit is working out the dependency kinks.
> 
> Debian probably has the smoothest upgrade path of any Linux. Install once for
> life.

That sounds really nice, and I want it.  Recently when upgrading
(actually re-installing a newer version of) Mandrake or Fedora I've
noticed some big changes such as the 2.6 kernel, udev, SElinux, etc. 
Does a Debian apt-get upgrade handle those sorts of changes well? 
Does it preserve tweaks to stuff in /etc/whatever well?  I have a
Mandrake 10 machine at home that is set-up just perfectly, and I've
been afraid to upgrade it because I know I'll have to redo all the
little tweaks that I've made.  It'd be really cool to never have to
fear that again.  Probably worth a distro switch.

Bryan



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