Mr Mike wrote:
I am following this thread with interest. I am a newcomer to Linux Debian word, and I wish to give you my experience while it is still fresh in my memory. (that was early last December)On Monday 28 February 2005 01:57 pm, David Pastern wrote:On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 22:54 +1100, Michael Stone wrote:On Sun, Feb 27, 2005 at 04:13:30PM +0100, David Schmitt wrote:Yes and exactly that is the point why debian-installer rules, and the windows installer sucks.Yes and no. Take the new partitioner, for example. Yes, it lets you do more than the old partitioner, but if you think it's intuitive you're nuts. And not only is it not intuitive, it's different than anything anyone's used to partition things in debian before. So while it's more friendly for new users, it's like a martian to an experienced user who's comfortable with fdisk. Mike StoneSo new is bad? Different is bad? It's the same old rhetoric that the Catholic Church has been spreading for the past thousand years. If it conforms from the norm, it's bad. It's wrong. Baloney. As much as I liked the old installer, there needed to be improvements to be made, there were too many areas where it was weak. You can argue to the cows come home, but the fact that Debian senior developers decided that the installer was updated says a lot I think. And if you hear the number of people happy and impressed with the new sarge installer, then all is good. Why should 90% of the users be unhappy to satisfy the 10% that don't want to change?Absolutely Dave... if that small minority had it's way, linux would still be a programmers toy on and old PDP11 in the back room of some university IT department. There would be a million software development tools available but not a single usefull application using any of them... My hat is off to all those 'progressive' linux folks that worked so long and hard to bring linux to where it is today...Dave Proud Libranet GNU/Linux user Libranet The TOP Libranet distribution http://www.libranet.com/ Download your free trial of Libranet 2.8.1 today!
How I came to look for Linux: Lack of security from Microsoft productsDephi 2005 was not any longer allowing building cross platform applications, even there help was becoming Bill Gate's type: you don't have to know how or why, use it the way we have decided was best for you.
So I went to Linux home page, read a beat, and decided for Debian.I made some room on the hard drive, downloaded files so I thought I would boot from floppies (I did not have a CD burner at that time) and tried .. and tried and failed. After some more reading I discover that there was a bug somewhere, and you could not, using a DOS system, start install of a BF24 kernel, which I needed to install usb plug to connect to internet. So I learned how to make bin boot floppies. But this did not work better. I still could not connect to the net. Then I decided to make a FAT32 partition on my hard drive, put a complete debian disk 1 there and see... So I managed to get my first working debian machine... without internet... and no way to get it to work. Finally, after a few re-install, I must have selected something that made it connect to the web. And I got my second Debian machine... And I liked it. But I had to have it to work with a WIFI card, as I could not let those wires run thru the leaving room and the stair case much longer. My wife has supported my business on the computer (She hates Bill..) but those wires were too much.
So the solution was Ndiswrapper... which at that point you had to compile with the kernel, I think.. So I compiled a new kernel, it went well... except I lost even my usb connection to internet. Fair enough, I do not even know how I got it at first. Well as you may have understood, I am rather opiniatred, and a few days latter it was working, and Ndiswrapper as well. But not to a point I would get ride of XP. Now I have a CD burner, but to burn a CD.. was something else.
By now we are about mid January..Then I did a xp install for a friend of mine, showed him my Debian box and he asked me to put one on his machine. I said yes (must be a good friend...) and to my surprise, with the new debootstrapp, it went like a charm. So well that I decided to re-install my machine.
Of course, it was a bit like microsoft products, lots of staff you don't need, but it was doing so much more than my previous machine. So here we go again, new install of a 2.6.8 kernel. Then I compile a 2.6.10 kernel, got ride of the unnecessary staff, I found it easier than to look for staff you don't know about, and it was working so to what I wanted that a got rid of XP. Now I have a pure Debian box.
But I am not sure you can expect so much work from regular PC users... Even my friends which had a completely installed box ( I tried to convince more people..) asked me to remove it, as they were panicked when they had to enter a few lines on a console, even when I was telling them what to do over the phone.
So, even with the good job done about the install process, to have a Debian system, one still needs to have a system administrator...
May all this help your thinking for the future of Debian. Thierry