Debian Problems
The following was sent to partners@. It sounds a bit like a flame but
when I asked Jim for permission to forward it to a more appropriate
list, his response looked sane and he seemed genuinely interested in
giving some feedback. (e-mail address withhold for spam protection
but I'll responses to him)
----- Forwarded message from Jim <jss167@> -----
From: Jim <jss167@>
Subject: Debian Problems
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 14:33:58 -0700 (PDT)
To: partners@
I tried to install Debian Etch, but it was NOT very
user friendly. I do have many years of computer
experience and have used other Linux distros.
The installation for i386 went fine, but at the end, I
was at a command prompt. I thought that X and Gnome
were installed automatically, but that never happened.
It appears that part of X was there. I installed X
and Gnome, but was unable to start X(maybe a monitor
or video card issue), so I kept staring at a command
prompt. I received a variety of bizarre errors. To
further complicate this, I was unable to shut off the
power, as the power button on my computer wouldn?t
work, which is very weird. I thought that I was doing
something incorrectly, so I tried reinstalling the OS,
but the same problem persisted. It appears that I
damaged about 25% of my hard drive, due to these hard
shutdowns, caused by pulling the plug out of the
socket. I was not happy at any of this.
Isn?t Debian?s installer supposed to work well? That
is the critical part. I want all my hardware to be
autodetected and be looking at a graphical interface
when the install is complete. A few basic questions
are fine, but that?s it. You can make fun of it, but
when I tried Linspire, it worked flawlessly. Within
10 minutes, I was on the Internet, printing, etc.
Extremely easy to install and use. It got all of my
hardware correctly, unlike Debian. THAT IS WHAT YOU
WANT TO OFFER. If I cannot install Debian and use my
hardware, how can I use it? People have mentioned
this problem for years, so when will all of this be
fixed?
I am not sure if you can provide any insight into what
occurred in my case. I am thinking about buying a
preconfigured Debian system on a laptop. In the
meantime, I left Debian and am using another distro,
which I did NOT want to do. I want to use Debian.
In conclusion, you really need to work on the
installer and the hardware detection. An average
computer user will simply give up immediately, whereas
I put in about 10 hours and still couldn?t install
Debian, even with the knowledge I possess. Even if
the OS gets installed, people want to use their toys,
like wi-fi cards and other stuff. I do not understand
why other distros have excellent installers and
hardware detection? Please put more into these
issues. Thanks.
Jim
____________________________________________________
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----- End forwarded message -----
--
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/
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