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Re: bad press at www.linuxworld.com



Glenn McGrath wrote:
> This is a pretty nasty review of the installer
> 
> http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2000-09/lw-09-vcontrol_2.html
> 
> "I know. I can't be critical of Debian because it is an all-volunteer
> effort and all of the software used is pure, free, and unfettered. Sure,
> installing it may be a little harder than learning to speak fluent
> Manchurian in three weeks of summer school, but hey, it's no problem for
> a real geek, right? 
> 
> Wrong. The Debian install sucks. This distribution is supposed to be the
> poster child for free software; it should be on an FBI Most Wanted
> poster. It's horrible. It is the worst OS install I've ever seen. It may
> be great once it's installed, and APT may be the world's finest tool for
> adding and upgrading applications, patching the kernel, and keeping up
> with security issues. But I can't say -- I can't get that far."

If you ignore all of his nasty mudslinging, his gripes are the
following:

The boot-floppies:
- Identify themselves as the debian rescue floppy which is certianly
  confusing if you don't read documentation.
- Don't full autodetect cd drive during cd install.
- Device Driver config is confusing and undocumented.
- RTL8139 driver not present in slink (Yes, slink. No I don't know why
  someone would review slink in the year 2000. Fixed in potato, I think.)
- Asks about cdrom twice (I've never really understood this, unless it
  is to allow a bit more flexability.)

In generall installation:
- Task selection sucks in slink. Fixed in potato. :-P
- The thing about packages installs asking questions at random times
  that debconf aims to fix.
- Gpm's install prompt is confusing if you do not know what a command
  line, a switch, and a man page are. Point taken.

(If you read that, don't bother reading the article.)

> We may have a long way to go before please people at this level....

But do we even want to?

-- 
see shy jo


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