Re: Introduction, impressions and some questions...
THE INSTALLER
It's honestly not /too/ bad. The main problem people run into is dselect --
yes, it's big, bad, and ugly. It also is no assistance that most people SKIP
the help screens that explain how dselect works when you're dumped into it.
It can't be too bad when my 12 year old brother can successfully manage an
installation with only 2 questions after running Windows forever, and similarly
a co-worker's wife made it through. (And when someone asks me for help with
installing Debian, usually the only piece of advice I give is "just quit out
of dselect, you can use apt-get later)
However, there is a new installer in the works, I believe, so Debian's already
on top of this. I'm not on the installer team, so I can't speak for much.
Supposedly it'll be much nicer, though.
Progeny Debian, in case you're not familiar with it, is currently very involved
in the make-Debian-simpler effort, and has released several versions (albeit
"beta") thus far. Slick graphic install, help available at every junction...
It's nice. Not without its flaws, but nice.
GRAPHIC SETUP
I've never found this to be a problem. Newbies, once you get them accustomed
to command-line tools, actually tend to like the ability to do it much faster
than through a series of moronic Windows-style clicks. At least, this is the
case I've found after hanging out on DALnet #Linux for 3 years. (vim's not
nearly so scary to a fresh user when they've got someone to ask for help.)
No, a graphic setup utility wouldn't hurt too much -- so long as it doesn't
turn out like Linuxconf, which often breaks a myriad of things on whatever
system it runs on.
Once again, though, Progeny's heavily involved in this, and as all the code
is being GPLed and available for use by Debian, it would be a duplication of
effort.
I've never tried Ximian, but if I were to fathom a guess about its problems
it's probably that they're focusing on Red Hat-style systems rather than
more standards-compliant systems like Debian boxen.
At any rate, welcome. Fresh blood is good... We all turn into vampires and
require feeding after a few weeks of breaking unstable.
--
Colin Mattson
colol@ionet.net
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