Re: Enough time wasted, moving on
p <pplaw@pcisys.net> writes:
[...]
> "...asleep at the switch" and "...homeboy packaging": man, woody
> really tore you up. (but it's just something that's in "testing"
> mode though, right?)
Hey, those aren't swear words you know.. :-)
"Sean 'Shaleh' Perry" <shalehperry@attbi.com> writes:
> If you could send a more detailed explanation to me I will forward
> it on to the other developers so when woody is released we have less
> issues like yours.
Thanks Sean, nice offer. But, I'll admit I'm about wore out on Debian
at this point. Plus its difficult to detail the problems when you
have no working mouse, no network, and only hand scribbling to record
things. I will list a few things I noticed in general, that may help
a little:
1) There doesn't seem to be any thorough probe of hardware. If there
is it is not working here. And as I mentioned, even the intel
version of solaris, which is notorious for being picky about
hardware, probed and found everthing. So without getting into
specific commands to do that or maybe even debian specific commands
it leaves a major area of fussing around that shouldn't even come
up.
2) There are several screens that are confusing. In particular the
Locales screen gave me pause. This is an area where even an
experienced linux user is not likely to be that comfortable, yet
there is no indication that it really doesn't need to be messed
with if you don't need foreign (ie not english) language support.
3) The real capper to my view was that after wading thru everthing
watching the packages go by. Inserting the various cds. At the
very end there is a message that says something like:
"There were problems with the install. The same errors may be
invoked again if you proceed. Those errors are not important, the
ones that matter are the ones above. Please fix those before
proceeding."
And the erro above says `There was a problem with the
install'" and thats all.
4) I used tasksel to avoid the lengthy pain of dselect, during one
attempt. I chose `Desktop Environment' Which is apparently the only
thing in tasksel that may include X. Yet I was never asked about
my Video or monitor and there was no choice of Xservers. No
probiing, and of course no X was available at the end of it all.
5) The business about the names of CDs asked for during install not
matching the labels on my CDs is probably a vendor issue, I guess.
6) The disk partitioning dialog is overly labor intensive. Once
you've partitioned you should be able to set mount points right
then and there, not have to sift through one by one asking to
`initialize' another one. At the third time thru I finally
understood what I needed to do, before that it isn't really clear
that you need to initialize them one by one.
My first install ended with the basic system installed in / only
even though I had made several partitions.
Understand now that when I was prompted to fix errors that are not
reported I did nothing, just proceeded. There was no list of errors
or anything one could say were details one could fix.
I hoped at the end of it all I would see some way to get things
running. But by that time I'd had enough. I no longer get lots of
fun out of endless tinkering with the OS. After 4-5 years of it, I
just want stuff to work, so I can get on with my tinkering with perl
or C++ or what ever it is I'm currently studying (tinkering with).
I make some attempt to use only fairly standard hardware, in order not
to need to fuss endlessly with setting things up.
"TIMOTHY R. Butler" <tbutler@uninetsolutions.com> writes:
> Harry,
> I'm curious what kind of problems you are having
> specifically. I did a netinst install of Woody two weeks ago, with
> absoutely no prior Debian experience, and I was able to get a
> working system in about two days (less if
Can we assume then that your network stuff was found and configured?
Not so here. Not only not found, but any attempt to install drives for
any of the nics was rejected. I suspect there really is no thorough
probing.
> I had known what I've found out now).
> This is a lot more work than Mandrake or SuSE, but honestly my system is
> running better too...
Better in what way? I don't know about SuSe or Mandrake but have
successfully installed Redhat many many times, slackware, Free and
Open bsd and Solaris(intel). None of them run any better than the
other. So what do you mean by better? Trouble free? faster? what.
> How did you setup X? Did you try running "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86"?
No, I never saw an opportunity to set up X. And wasn't familiar yet
with debian specific commands.
Bob Thibodeau <mrbob@channel1.com> writes:
> Are we to understand that you bought cds of a version that is still
> changeing constantly? Why? From whom? Why?
>From the links on Debian home pages followed in this order:
http://www.debian.org/CD/ <Buy Finished Debian CDs>
http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/ <United States>
United States
Vendor: Antonio Rodriguez
URL: http://www.the-sphere.org/
URL for Debian Page:
http://www.the-sphere.org/Linux/Debian.html
Allows Contribution to Debian: Yes
Country: United States
Ship International: To some areas
email: tony@the-sphere.org
CD Type: Official CD ; non-US ; Development Snapshot
Architectures: i386
Note the part that says `Official CD'
Why you ask? I didn't want potato, and foolishly thought that if CDS
were available they would not be totally useless. And I'm no stranger
to development tools.
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> writes:
> Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> writes:
[...]
> Harry, woody hasn't been released yet, so there are no official CDs
> yet. Since those CDs were pressed, a bunch of packages have been
> updated and fixed, and there's more fixes that will need to be done
> before release.
>
>> Maybe I got hoodwinked getting them from `The sphere'
>
> Probably, if they're passing woody off as done.
Technically they aren't passing them off as `done' but you and I are
both running lots of stuff that isn't `done' but can be used.
Keith Parkansky <keithp@execpc.com> writes:
> Harry Putnam wrote:
>>
>> I've burned up 2 full days, gotten no help whatever from the list.
>> Found the install routines to be unusable.
>
> Same here on the last two counts, except
> it's been two weeks with Potato r5.
Sounds like it may not have been all that big of an improvement to
get `potato'.
"Liam Black" <Liam_Black@PanCanadianEnergy.com> writes:
> Before you give up on Debian, I really would suggest that you try
> potato. Though the imagery conjured up by the name may not be
> pleasant, I've found it to be quite useable, and I'm a relative
> newbie to Linux (my experience lies in AIX).
I guess its a thought..
> While sometimes the list is unhelpful, I've been very impressed with the
> attitudes and intelligence of many of the people present on it, and even
> more impressed by those who don't have much time to parse it -- the people
> actually working on bringing Woody to a stable release.
I don't really doubt anyones intelligence at debian. I'm sure they
are all vastly more talented than me. Probably have a lot more energy
too... he he. But I did see what seemed like several glaring
shortcommings. May have squawked a little harder than necessary.
> But, really, give Potato a try -- it won't take more than another 2 hours
> to do a full-on installation of it, and if it works -- well, that's just
I'd have to get it first. And I did already spend $40 on this adventure.
Not a forture to be sure, but I'd rather not throw away more.
Reply to: