Re: Slink Status
On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, Adam Di Carlo wrote:
>On Thu, 7 Jan 1999 00:25:45 +0000 (GMT), stevem@chiark.greenend.org.uk
>(Steve McIntyre) said:
>> Agreed. Just helped a moderately clueful friend through an install
>> tonight - it needs more user docs...
>
>Any points in particular?
Mainly dselect - see below.
>Have you checked out my new version of the Installation Manual at
><URL:http://www.debian.org/~aph/boot-floppies/i386/> (.txt and .html,
>other arches also available)?
Just looked now. Quite impressive, I have to say. A couple of minor
things:
2.4 Peripherals and Other Hardware
=========
Linux supports a large variety of hardware devices such as mice, printers,
scanners, modems, network cards, PCMCIA devices, etc. However, none of
these devices are required while installing the system. Again, see the
Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO to determine whether your specific
hardware is supported by Linux.
[ indentation mine here ]
Some network interface cards (NICs) are
not supported, such as CONFIG_ELPLUS, CONFIG_EL16, CONFIG_TLAN,
CONFIG_EEXPRESS_PRO, CONFIG_FMV18X, CONFIG_ETH16I, CONFIG_NI52,
CONFIG_NI65, CONFIG_SEEQ8005, CONFIG_SK_G16, CONFIG_NET_MCA,
CONFIG_AC3200, CONFIG_ZNET. ISDN not supported is CONFIG_HISAX_1TR6,
CONFIG_HISAX_ELSA_PCMCIA, CONFIG_ISDN_DRV_SC. Sound devices,
notably, are not also not supported.
=========
This list makes it look like Linux doesn't support these things, whereas
it's the Debian boot floppies that don't. That could be clearer. And it
might be better to list the devices than list their kernel config
strings.
4.2...
=========
ALL-TODO -- should swap be on the inside or the outside of the disk?
Matters?
=========
Most current wisdom would suggest that it really doesn't matter much...
7.6...
It might be worth mentioning that "fdisk" is also available for more
experienced users, or for those occasions when cfdisk doesn't quite do the
job as desired. This does happen...
7.12...
Installing the base system - some users can get confused by the
installation program here when it asks for the selection of media then
location of files. For the file location, it might be worth suggesting a
couple of likely things to input (default is /debian, suggest / as well
maybe?). One of the installers I've helped was confused and thought the
program needed a full path to the base files here...
dselect tutorial:
For those people using CDs, a quick description of the multi-cd method
would be very useful. Experienced Debian users have had problems with
this, especially when they see "no such file or directory" errors during
the install process. An explanation of how the thing works and the
limitations would be good. (If you need help here, I'll write one, but I'm
very busy at the moment and somebody else may be able to do a better job.)
One last thing: it looks like the boot-floppies expect the archive on CD
to be under /debian on the disk (i.e. /debian/dists/slink), whereas my
scripts at the moment put dists directly on the root. I guess I'll have to
change my setup to suit.
--
Steve McIntyre, Allstor Software smcintyr@allstor-sw.co.uk
Oh My God! They Killed init! You Bastards!
"Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky,
"Tongue-tied & twisted, Just an earth-bound misfit, I..."
Reply to: