Re: Choosing a Debian Variant
Debian unstable should be able to give you all of the end results you are
looking for. However, you also want to get these things easily -- ie, good
hardware detection, ReiserFS by default during the install, etc. This you
probably won't be able to do. I was recently in a similar situation to you
(wanting to migrate from RedHat). From my experience, installing debian will
be hard. You will spend long hours reading man pages and HOWTOs and banging
your head against the keyboard. You will do lots of posting to this mailing
list. But eventually, you will get everything to work right, and it will be
worth it. And installing debian the second time will be easy.
My recommendation is, if possible, to install debian on a separate
partition, and keep mandrake around. This way you can take your time figuring
debian out, and having a working computer in the mean time. Plus, you can
steal important things like XF86Config from Mandrake, rather than dealing
with the inferior configuration tools that debian provides.
Once you have everything working in debian the way you want it, you can
delete your mandrake install and reclaim those partitions for something else.
Or, you can format and start over, after backing up your config files.
The hardest part may be ReiserFS... AFAIK debian won't do this during the
install... you will probably have to roll a custom kernel and migrate
partitions after installation. But don't take my word on this... hopefully
someone more knowledgeable will post on this issue.
Or, you might find that Libranet or Stormix fit your needs.... I don't really
know anything about them.
Good luck,
Nathan
On Wednesday 22 August 2001 10:29 am, Avdi B. Grimm wrote:
> This is a message I /should/ have sent before I even tried
> to install Debian. Oh well, better late than never.
>
> Here's the deal: I want Debian on my machine. Mandrake is
> in many ways wonderful; it has the best install in the
> world (in my experience); it has loads of bundled software;
> and it does a great job of detecting and configuring
> existing hardware. However, it's a toy OS. Administration
> can be confusing and goofy; there's rarely a canonical
> Mandrake Way to do common tasks like there is a Debian Way;
> upgrading is a joke; and besides, it has no Policy. After
> doing a lot of reading, I've come to the conclusion that
> Debian is the most technically superior distro out there.
>
> So, I want Debian, and I'm determined to install it.
> However, there are some requirements I have. There are
> certain things I want on my new Debian system, and I don't
> want to dick around with configuring them after the
> install, or waiting hours or days for large packages to
> download over my measly 56k connection.
>
> Here's what I want out-of-box:
>
> ReiserFS: I've had great experiences with this on Mandrake.
> It's fast, and when the power goes out unexpectedly I
> needn't worry about disk integrity. I want to be able to
> format my boot/system partition with ReiserFS during the
> install.
>
> KDE 2.2(Preferred)/KDE 2.1(Acceptable): I use both KDE and
> GNOME apps, and I don't want to wait hours to upgrade to a
> recent KDE.
>
> GNOME 1.4(preferred)/GNOME 1.2(acceptable): See above.
>
> XFree86 4.*: Must include drivers for an NVIDIA RIVA TNT2
>
> Kernel 2.4.*
>
> Nice-To-Haves:
>
> GRUB as the default bootloader: I like GRUB. It's less
> finicky than LILO.
>
> The other things I want in a Debian variant:
>
> A good installer. Not necessarily a super-easy one; but
> one that people have found is solid and doesn't do anything
> nonsensical (like overwrite your MBR after asking a single,
> non-obvious question *cough*Progeny*cough*). Also one that
> either a) auto-detects hardware *WELL*, or b) prompts the
> user for hardware info. Not one that does a half-assed job
> of hardware detection, and leaves the system
> half-configured.
>
> I want it to be very Debian-Compatible. By which I mean, I
> want to be able to grab packages from standard Debian
> "testing" or "unstable", and have them install without
> conflicts. Basicly I don't want a lot of unnecessary
> proprietary tweaks.
>
> So, there are my requirements. What I'm trying to figure
> out is, which Debian Variant to install. I've already tried
> Progeny, and found it lacking in many respects. What I'm
> asking is, should I go with Libranet? Or should I chance
> using Stormix, even though they are out of business? Or is
> Progeny really my best bet, and I should stick with it? Or
> should I just tough it out and get an Official Debian CD,
> and suffer through hours of package downloads? Is there
> any Debian-based distro I'm missing? (I have no interest in
> Corel, that's why it's not listed)
>
> Thanks for your time,
>
> -Avdi Grimm
>
>
>
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