Re: Need Reasons for switching to Debian from Redhat
On 18 Jul 2002 16:27:11 -0000 grante@visi.com (Grant Edwards) wrote:
> * Tasksel UI is confusing. I watched as my neighbor was
> accidentally dumped from the program when he thought he was
> selecting a task.
More specifics here would be useful. How is the UI for Tasksel confusing?
The only item that struck me as mildly non-intuitive was that the section
headings were selectable and would select all items in their section.
Otherwise, tab and space operated as expected and the highlighted letters
are single key shortcuts.
Any idea what your neighbor actually selected that caused the exit?
> * The dselect UI is completely cryptic. I've been using
> dselect for almost 5 years, and I still find it utterly
> confusing and often get it into a state where I can't come
> up with a legal configuration.
Ah, after my first look, I never came back to dselect and have found it to
be more or less unnecessary. Almost forgot it was there. Yes, it is
cryptic and confusing.
> * Package configuration asks pointless questions. For
> example, my neighbor spent a fair amount on the Debian site
> trying to find out what lynx was and what should be used as
> a default URL. He finally asked me what to use for a
> default URL. Asking cryptic questions like that is a waste
> of the users time.
Sounds like your neighbor chose a detailed level of configuration
questions (ie low priority) for debconf. I normally go with "medium"
which is the default IIRC, and have never seen the lynx prompt mentioned
above.
I just reconfigured debconf to low priority, purged lynx and reinstalled
it. I received no such prompt. I then tried a dpkg-reconfigure of lynx
and still received no such prompt. Not sure how your neighbor got the
prompt.
> * Setup/configure for a package fails and installer has to be
> restarted. I counted NINE times through this cycle before
> we gave up because it was unable to install the remaining
> selected packages.
Specific packages would be useful here.
> * After the install was "complete" (cycling through the
> install wasn't getting any further) we had two permanently
> broken packages: ldap-something and biff: apt-get -f
> install was unable to fix the system. We had to purge both
> of those with dpkg before we could get any further.
Any idea on the package versions?
> * After installing using woody floppies, we don't have a
> woody system, we have a _potato_ system! Now we have to
> manually edit apt's source list and do an update/upgrade to
> get a woody system we wanted in the first place.
> Downloading, installing, and configuring all those potato
> packages just so they can be replaced with woody packages
> is a waste of the user's time and bandwidth.
Ahh, this is an item that's bitten a few people now. As I understand it,
because woody is pending it's release, all the installation routines are
configured to create "stable" entries in the sources.list file. This can
cause quite a few headaches. I normally don't see this as I use a local
mirror for all my installations and as such directly edit my sources.list
for each installation.
This has probably already been asked elsewhere, but is there a compelling
reason that the woody install uses "stable" vs "woody" in the
sources.list?
> * The SVGA X server was never installed, even though the
> video board was detected correctly during install and X was
> configured to use the SVGA server. That had to be installed
> manually via apt-get.
This sounds like XFree86 3.3.x. TMK, woody uses XFree86 4.1.0.1.
> * Only a partial set of Gnome packages was selected by
> tasksel, so about a dozen more had to be installed manually
> via apt-get.
Tasksel does provide complete information about what packages a given
option installs. TMK, the list provided is the list it installs.
> * LILO was supposedly installed in the MBR of /dev/hda, but
> the system won't boot from the hard drive. This happens on
> most of the Debian installs I've done -- I generally
> install GRUB from sources, since Debian's LILO rarely works
> for me.
Never experienced this. Only LILO problem I've found is that with both a
SCSI and IDE drive in the system I can't boot off the SCSI, I must use the
IDE.
> * We had to purge GPM in order to get the PS/2 mouse to work
> properly under X11.
I've found this not to be needed. Many suggest configuring GPM to be a
repeater and configure X to use the then provided GPM device. Personally,
I've found that simply configuring GPM not to repeat fixed things for me.
> I've installed Debian dozens of times, and every time, there
> have been a whole series of hurdles like those. The neighbor I
> was helping watched the whole process in amazement and asked
> how long it took to learn all the tricks required to install
> Debian. I had to admit it took several days working on it full
> time.
You've certainly found some quirks I've never experienced. I'd be happy
to document how I do an install to see where we differ.
> Debian is by far the most difficult. The sad thing is it
> really doesn't need to be this difficult -- I'm convinced
> Debian users prefer it this way since it makes them feel
> superior to people who use flashy, graphical installers.
I know I don't feel that way. But you do have to wonder, what in the
"flashy, graphical installers" is needed? Can't the same functionality be
found in a text based installer?
--
Jamin W. Collins
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: