i386 1.44 disks
Hello Debian bootstrappers.
I have been installing a system tonight using the 2.2.4-2000-01-03 i386
1.44 MB disks (yep, all 15 of them! ;) ) and I wanted to let you know of
my experiences. If it sounds like I am being a pain, I apologise, and wish
merely to toss some thoughts into the ring.
Firstly, I like the splash of colour in the initial boot screen. Very nice,
and kind of comforting that colour will work under this "linux thing"
(form the point of view of a new Debian user, which I am not having
been using it since the 0.9x days - when the install disks numbered 3!).
Getting to the inital Installation Main Menu is relatively straight forward
and not too scary. Partitioning drives looks like it is detailed enough for
a long time sys admin, but new users would easily be scared of it. Perhaps
a simple explanation that I need a linux partition (and why ext2?) and
what this whole swap drive is (what, swap it with another computer?). ;)
The actual mkfs screen could scare new users (inodes, etc? huh?), and perhaps
the option to show merely a 'percent done' screen would make this more
novice friendly.
Plus (and I'll admit to this) a note when /dev/hda1 is larger than 1 GB
about the whole lilo and large disks thing (since Lilo is the default). ;(
Anyway, the main problem I had was trying to get my ethernet card loaded.
Its a standard ISA ne2k. However, I am getting unresolved symbols with all
the ne* drivers. It would even be nice if the ne2k card were included as
part of the base disk (since ne2k/ne2k-pci are a sort of very common
garden-variety 'i think I need to get an ethernet card' kind of card).
BTW, if there is a move to include 2.2.14, _please_ have an
option for old_tulip, because on another system I had great troubles with
an SMC 85?? 10baseT/10base2 card (it needed old_tulip). Further more
I have had troubles with an adaptec aha152x.o modules in that the 'defaults'
need to be supplied for the modules/kernel to detect the adapter (the
defaults don't actually seem to be used unless you specify them, which isn't
exactly my definition of default, but anyway). Having ethernet access ASAP
(or plip, with notes on what it is and how it works) would be very cool.
BTW, plip also has unresolved symbols.
The blue screens with the dist name are nice -- can we get a debian
logo in there (the smoke ring, if thats what it is)? Is blue the best colour
to use? I know blue screens make me shudder since I also admin some
NT machines (take pity on me!).
Anyway, I hope these ravings help somehow! Good luck with the freeze. ;)
Many thanks,
--
James Bromberger, UWA Campus Wide Information Systems Officer (UWA Webmaster)
Work Ph: +61-8-9380-7306 Work Fax: +61-8-9380-1162
Remainder moved to http://www.ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au/~james/james/sig.html
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