Understanding "The Way Things Go"

[Bob Ham <u9rah@dcs.shef.ac.uk>]

Hi there

I've been using GNU/Linux for a while now, and I've decided it's time to
give GNU/Hurd a go to see what's going on.  After reading this list for
only a couple of days, it seems the installation docs are somewhat
(severely) lacking in detail; there's CD images, tarballs, packages on
alpha.gnu.org and on debian ftp servers.

So, my question is: how do I go about getting it on my machine?  Ie, for
GNU/Linux, to answer that, I'd say:

Either a) Buy a CD, or
b) Download a CD image, or
c) Download packages and floppy images, or
d) Download floppy images and install over ftp

If you're wondering about c), I don't have a machine on the Net, but I
do have a big connection (university) and zip disks, so it's not a
problem to do wget -r ftp://ftp.debian.org/dists....

Also, I assumed that upgrading software would simply be a case of
apt-get upgrade'ing, but it unfortunately doesn't seem like it's going
to be that painless; what's the deal with the whole alpha.gnu.org vs
ftp.debian.org for packages?  And where does the hurd-D1.iso come into
all this; what exactly is on it?

One last thing: I know partitions need to be under "1Gb", but what is
"1Gb"?  1024Kb?, 1000Kb?, so-many whatevers?

Many thanks,

Bob Ham

--
Bob Ham:  node@users.sourceforge.net
IRC: 'node' on irc.openprojects.net: #slashdot  ICQ: 4396425 'node'

"The GNU philosophy is about freedom. To be free one must have
personal power. Personal power is an individual thing, difficult to
obtain and quick to perish." --Krisno Pryosusilo