Slink attempted clean install
The question was asked recently if Slink was ready for release. My
opinion as a tester is: definitely not.
This email, as you can see, is rather lengthy. I would like to make some
disclaimers before I get started. :)
Let me start by saying I am not a hacker, just an experienced user. I've
been using Debian for about 2 years, thanks to a friend who introduced me
to it. While some may dismiss my opinions since I have no programming
abilities, my knowledge level means that I can't 'fix' anything, I can
only use what already exists. Also, being fairly experienced, if I can't
figure it out, there's no way a newbie could. Of course, whether or not
Debian should be accessible to newbies has been the source of much
discussion, and that's not my point here. :)
I also will be making some comparisons to RedHat. I do this for 2
reasons: 1.) They are arguably the most popular distribution, both in
total installs and in press coverage 2.) It's the only other distribution
I have installed.
I'm going to be quite frank in my opinions. I hope no one is insulted by
anything I say. I definitely say these things in the hopes it will help
improve Debian. I still prefer it, although after today's experience,
that preference is diminished.
Here is my system configuration:
ASUS P/I-P55T2P4 mainboard
Intel Overdrive CPU @ 208/83 Mhz
64mb EDO Ram
3.6gb IBM Deskstar, /dev/hda1=Win95, /dev/hda2=Debian 2.0
1.6gb WD Caviar, /dev/hdb1=slink, /dev/hdb2=Mandrake 5.2, /dev/hdb3=swap
SB32 PnP Sound
Matrox Mystique 4mb
Intel EEPro 100B
3com 3C905
Adaptec 1505
Toshiba 8x Cdrom
To start with, I installed from 8 floppies. This has probably been asked
before, but why does Debian require 8 floppies and RedHat only 2? The
initial install went without error, except that the install of the EEPro
module failed. That's ok for me since I have my DSL router hooked to
that card, and my other computers to the Intel using IP
forwarding/masquerading. If that were my only card, however, I wouldn't
have been able to retrieve any files. I personally prefer cfdisk over
fdisk and 'Disk Druid', but a newbie would stumble here.
After creation of the boot-floppy and a reboot, the initial config went
fine, then dselect started. I chose Standard, ~89M. I didn't yet choose
any other packages. The default sites for apt to retrieve packages
from failed, so I entered ftp://llug.sep.bnl.gov/debian. RedHat
doesn't even provide a default site, however.
After download of the packages, I immediately got an error about the
failure of removing pcmcia, and that I should run 'update-modules force'.
I cancelled dselect, re-logged in as root, ran update-modules force and
restarted dselect. During the install of the rest of the packages, I got
an error after something about 'redirecting /usr/bin/addr to
/usr/bin/addr.bind'. I hit enter a couple of times, and the install
continued.
Everything downloaded and unpacked, and the configs started. A concern I
have here is that there are so many questions asked requiring attention.
An unattended install would be impossible. RedHat seems to ask all the
questions in advance and then the install can continue until the end. gpm
came up and I do like the current configure script for this, although
again, RedHat never did any of this, my mouse just worked. (I hope I
don't start sounding like a broken record here :) All necessary options
for my mouse were detected properly. The only odd thing is the apparent
default for 'other options': "a-zA-Z0-9_.:~/\300-\326\330-\366\370-\377"
I'm not sure what this means, but I've learned to just type in a dash so
that gpm works properly. The current level of install then completed
properly.
In the past, when installing Debian, it was here that I went back and
selected xbase to get X working. I was surprised to notice that xbase was
already installed, yet I never was offered a chance to configure it. I
figured that if I installed some X-based packages, the necessary packages
would get installed by default. I chose xv, xanim, xmcd, gimp, xproc and
xsysinfo. While choosing these, I notice that xf86config is a separate
package. I hadn't thought to choose xserver-SVGA yet (and didn't until
later), but does xf86config get recommended if that is chosen?
All the packages installed, but I still wasn't offered the chance to
configure X, so I ran XF86Config. It said that twm wasn't installed, so I
re-started dselect and installed twm and asclassic. I re-ran XF86Config
and when I chose Mystique, it said the server for the card chosen
(xserver-SVGA) wasn't available, so I aborted, installed it, and it ran
XF86Config on it's own, complaining that all the README's weren't
available, but that everything should work OK.
After this completed, I got an error saying 'expr: syntax error'. I'm not
sure what this means, but after a few more enters, dselect finished with
no further errors. I realized I wasn't given the option to have xdm start
at boot time, and I wondered if it, too, is now a separate package, which
of course it is. I installed it without error. I still wasn't asked if I
wanted it to start at boot time, but that's a good thing IMO, especially
given my earlier comment about questions during the config process. Who
would install xdm if they didn't want it to start at boot time?
I then edited .xsession with the line: exec afterstep. twm still started
when I logged in at xdm. I searched for afterstep and it wasn't there,
but found that asclassic was. I changed the line to: exec asclassic, and
it still didn't work. This is where I ran out of energy and decided to
send this email. :)
All in all, I found this to be a very tedious, frustrating install
process, especially compared to my previous clean installs of Debian, and
more recently, RedHat (actually Linux Mandrake). It seems the process is
getting more complicated, not less. If Debian is a distribution intended
only for the power user (I don't really qualify :), this is fine, I
suppose, but 'mainstream' users will never be willing to use it.
I apologize for the length of this post, but I didn't want to leave
anything out. I hope my comments are taken in good faith. And if anyone
can tell me how to get asclassic to start when I log in at xdm, I would
very much appreciate it. :)
Cheers,
Matthew
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