Re: installation and such
Mock Ko wrote:
>
> I'm pretty much now at the give-up point in trying to
> install debian.
No need to, IMHO.
> This is indeed a very hard thing for me to do, since I
> used to install 68k bsd systems manually (building
> scripts to mknod all the devices and such).
I used to install Linux using Slackware distribution; IMO Debian is a
lot easier.
> I have now downloaded the ENTIRE debian tree, hoping
> that would help, but all I've done is waste download
> time.
Indeed.
...
> This is now my 6th attempt at installing debian. I
> have so far not made it past the dselect phase even
> once.
I think using dselect could be a confusing phase for Debian beginners.
It is pretty useful because it has descriptions that give you some
picture about what you want to install. But I think, apt-get is much
more easier, especially if you already know the packages you'd like to
have.
I installed Debian on a SparcClassic several days ago; I was about lost
in space, but fortunately this mailing-list talks a lot about apt-get,
so I tried it. Besides, all I want to have is several Internet daemons
like sendmail, apache, fetchmail, etc.; so I think that directly using
apt-get would be easier than dselect. It's easier, indeed, all I have to
do is to lookup www.debian.org looking for available packages and then
type: "apt-get install sendmail" (for installing the mail server). The
cute thing about apt-get is that, if the connection get disconnected (I
did that via a modem), the next retry will start right where you left
it; a nice way of minimizing download time due to errors in comm. link.
My only concern is that Debian base-install doesn't include telnetd; I'm
not sure why. It seems that Debian wants to make sure that the
installers know what they are doing with telnetd; without including it
in the distribution, there's a little chance that telnetd would be
sitting there unconfigured. But I had expected that telnetd would have
been there (in the base-install), and when I figured it out that it
wasn't, I jumped into conclusion that Debian was a Windows NT
look-alike.
> All I want to do is install a base system with tcp-ip
> and ipx networking, dhcpcd, X, and a basic window
> manager, so that I can go and get the latest kde, run
> some kind of GUI package manager, and then install any
> other things as I need them.
Just take a look at www.debian.org and see all available packages, mark
what you need (type them down if you need to). Then, login to root on
your Debian machine and type:
apt-get install <your_package>
You don't need to type in the version numbers, just the name of the
package (no .deb either).
> Is there any way I can do this with Debian, or should
> I be seeking a different distribution?
Well, feel free to do so, but I think apt-get is pretty cool. It's worth
to mention also that it takes 11 floppies to get a bootable (from
harddisk) system (it may take 30+ floppies for other systems).
Oki
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