Re: Preparation for Debian Installatin
On Sun, Jul 14, 2002 at 01:57:02PM -0400, alex wrote:
> All the furor about the difficulty in installing Debian makes me wonder.
Debian isn't that hard to install... when I first installed linux 7
months ago, it was debian that I tried (and stuck with), and the hardest
bit I encountered was finding enough good floppies (my 10 year old
floppies were the most reliable, the 2 - 5 year olds gave me the most
trouble). Not counting the network problems caused by borked hardware.
> What kind of preparation will improve your chances of doing a successful
> Debian installation?
0. Make sure you have plenty of harddrive space, those packages you can
install add up (hint: if you have win98 installed and you need an extra
400 meg without blasting all the files in the parition away, boot into
dos (press F8 while booting and select dos), type "deltree windows", and
answer y to the prompt)
> 1. Take a course or get some experience in some aspect of computer
> science.
Helps if you want to be able to play with the source and read it to look
at what is happening, but is generally not needed for installation.
> 2. Develope skill in clicking/shuffling Windows icons.
Icons, what are icons? (well, you might see some later, in X, if you
install it, depending on your window manager)
> 3. Get some experience in DOS.
At the very least, it does use the command line, although it doesn't do
much.
> 4. Programming with Commodore 64 Basic. Or, maybe C64 assembly.
Haven't seen basic on this machine, although if you want it, then
"apt-get install <name of basic here>" after the installation.
> 5. Study the documentation (TFM) that describes the installation and
> the options
> before doing the installation.
Yes, definitely do that. Multiple times even. Remember that there will
be a practical exam on that. Namely the actual installation.
> 6. No special experience or preparation is needed. Your intuition is
> all you need.
Intuition helps. Intuition with a list of all hardware and settings is
much better.
> 7. Ask on this list for a step by step procedure.
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then ask the list, with a
list of the problems encountered, settings, and hardware (and anything
else that is applicable).
> 8, Read the man pages.
Of course. Just remember to "apt-get install manpages man-db" after
installation.
> 9. Select the default installation.
Can't go too wrong with that. Can't do too much with that. apt-get will
be your friend.
> 10. No preparation needed---whatever you select will do the trick.
Depends upon the trick you want to perform. You want to perform the
trick of restoring a semester's work that ended up on the swap
partition, go ahead... but I would rather backup my files, and look up
my hardware specs.
--
Seneca
seneca-cunningham@rogers.com
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: