[PLUG] Is Debian that hard to work with, or am I that dumb?

Russell Senior seniorr at aracnet.com
Wed Mar 24 20:59:02 UTC 2004


>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Johnson <baloo at ursine.ca> writes:

Russell> One of the things I didn't like was that it wasn't clear how
Russell> far the installer was going to go when I pressed the next
Russell> button.  In particular, the repartitioning operation was a
Russell> little opaque at several of my decision points.

Paul> That's a good thing.  There's not exactly a sane default for
Paul> things like partitions, everybody has their own use, and Debian
Paul> isn't one to pigeonhole you into some cookie-cutter install.

You misunderstand.  I mean that it was not clear what the installer
was going to go ahead and do for me.  I knew exactly what I wanted to
do (convert the former swap partition into a ext2 to use as the debian
root).  I didn't want the installer to stomp on the other two
partitions holding fedora and gentoo, respectively.  The installer did
not fill me with confidence about what it was and wasn't about to do.

In fact, in another situation, it got wedged when it couldn't open the
ftp.us.debian.org repository.  It timed out after a few minutes and I
got control back, but I couldn't Control-C out of it.  That happened
twice before I switched repositories to the one at oregonstate.edu.
Basically, I found it lacked sufficient brakes.  I found the "expert"
mode by looking at help and the boot prompt.  That seemed a little
better.  It would be nicer if you could toggle into expert mode part
of the way through.

Otherwise, I liked it.

-- 
Russell Senior         ``I have nine fingers; you have ten.''
seniorr at aracnet.com




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