Re: Enough time wasted, moving on
Hi Harry,
> 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.
IIRC, Debian doesn't probe anything beyond the network card. Now, it does
have X setup, but that needs some work on your part. Still, you can get the
rest of the stuff setup afterwards. If X isn't setup, run this:
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86
As far as other hardware, whatcha got? :-) Sound with ALSA and printing
with CUPS can be setup with hardware probes, but you must run the probe tool
yourself. Let me know if you want the comamdns for that.
> 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:
The easiest way to install is by FTP rather than CD's, I'm pretty sure.
>
> 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.
See above. BTW, as someone else mentioned Libranet or (soon) Xandros may be
a good thing to look into if you want Debian with auto-probing. Debian isn't
necessarily good at this stuff.
> 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.
Yeah. That would definately be something to take up with the vendor. It
would also be worth asking them why they are claiming they are "official" CDs.
> 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.
There definately isn't any thorough probing. What kind of NIC do you have?
It found mine, but it's a rather generic 3Com EtherFast 905c.
> 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.
Faster, mostly. I also had a few lockup problems in MDK which were rather
annoying. Also, there is the crown jewel of apt-get: apt-get upgrade. You
never have to reinstall (thankfully <g>). I hear people moved from a.out to
elf binaries, from libc5 to glibc6, and so forth without ever reinstalling
thanks to apt-get.
> > 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.
That one will do the trick.
> 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.
Do you have a broadband connection? If you don't mind downloading a few
hundred megs of stuff, the best way really is to use the FTP-based install.
-Tim
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