Re: Why use Debian? Why not Red Hat?
On Wed, Sep 01, 1999 at 11:21:36AM +0100, Patrick Kirk was heard to state:
> I also graduated from Red Hat. Debian installation is a beast but it leaves
> you with a working system that is idiot proof. Red Hat is an easier
> installation but things fail and you're left trawling the net resolving
> dependencies.
I attempted an installation of Slink today, and it's been quite a while
since I have done a fresh install, but I've been using Debian for quite
a while now (since Bo, at least). I too, graduated from RedHat.
One thing that got me though. I didn't have a CD handy, but I have a
good net link at work, which regularly get's over 200k/s from
Australia's best mirror. I figured, I don't need the CD, just the
install disk.
Now before anyone tells me to RTFM, I had a feeling it wasn't going to
work, but I had a bit of time to kill... :)
Anyway, I couldn't be bothered doing all the disk images, so I just got
the rescue and drivers disks, booted up, repartitioned (the whole, and
only HD). I was hoping it might let me FTP the base...
Nope, no chance!
Then I remembered that some of the mirrors let you NFS mount them, but I
couldn't find anywhere a list of those that would, and their NFS-shared
paths. I searched the web, the debain site, and the mailing list arcive,
but couldn't even find any hints... Is this information available
anywhere?
Seeing Debian is such an internet-centric (ie., apt) distribution, it
would be nice if you could install the whole thing with one the one or
two boot disks (I'm sure you can with redhat). Even if the boot disk had
a little FTP client (like wget or curl), so you could switch to a VT and
put them on that newly made EXT2 partition.
Maybe there is a way to do that, but I certainly couldn't work it out.
You have an extremely minimal, but network connected, installation, but
no way to use that network. Now maybe the boot disks are already too
full, but I'm sure *something* could be queezed on. I think it would be
a very useful feature.
Now I haven't seen the Potato (are we out of Toy Story names yet!?) boot
disks, so I have no idea what is on them. It's just a little suggestion,
I guess.
Cheers,
damon
--
Damon Muller (dm-sig6@empire.net.au) / It's not a sense of humor.
* Criminologist / It's a sense of irony
* Webmeister / disguised as one.
* Linux Geek / - Bruce Sterling$
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