Re: Preparation for Debian Installation
Hi Harold,
You must live on another planet.
I have been using W'95 for 7 years now and am very comfortable with the
many packages on the machine.
But 3 years ago I decided I wanted to get away from the bullying and nasty
tactics of M$ and bought an augmented CD of ? the Slink distribution..
OK, There was quite a bit to do to make the machine dual-boot. But I did
that.
But after that? Easy ??
Not at all.
The instructions are of immense size and seem disordered.
That horrible black screen is very off-putting and there seems no way to
make it more user-friendly.
Even with a small installation, it is like a huge maze trying to figure out what
packages to install and where they are. There's no clear way to work out
priorities; essential packages, etc. It's like trying to find a needle in a
haystack.
It's as if NOBODY has ever put themselves in the shoes of a newbie who
wants, for whatever reason, to use Debian, and designed & constructed a
start & install system from the viewpoint of a new user. The sheer
obtuseness and unfriendliness of Linux installations are a huge handicap to
the expansion of Linux usage
Three years later of intermittent trying (and no success) and it looks as
though I'm going to buy another distribution, in order to get packages that
work with CDROM writers.
Brian
Date forwarded: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 16:14:34 +1200
Date sent: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 00:32:15 -0400
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Preparation for Debian Installatin
From: Harold Bibik <hwbj@twcny.rr.com>
Forwarded by: debian-user@lists.debian.org
> On Sun, Jul 14, 2002 at 08:45:10PM -0700, Dom Leon wrote something like this:
>
> >
> > There are only a few places one needs to look within
> > Win32 to get it working. There are tons of commands,
> > programs, utils and worse yet configuration files
> > within Linux to get it working. Im sure most of this
> > is because Microsoft tries to hide much of this, but
> > nonetheless simply knowing the IRQ settings for the
> > sound or NIC card will not get you close to a nice
> > Linuc installation.
>
>
> I disagree somewhat. In the last 18-20 months I've installed RedHat,
> Suse, Progeny and Debian (Potato and Woody) and my experience is that
> the hardware has been recognized and configured correctly on install.
>
> Depending on what tools you choose to use and how much of an effort
> you are willing to make linux can almost be as easy to setup as
> WinSomething. I've heard Mandrake is a breeze for even a complete
> computer novice.
>
> While I wouldn't place Debian in the "just pop the cd in and go"
> category I haven't found anything that should keep the average
> computer user from trying it.
>
> You're absolutely correct about having to think in "Debian mode" or
> "*nix mode" there is a difference between the way Win systems run
> and nix systems work...and yes learning to configure everything
> can take a while and getting it to run just as you like it to may take
> a while, but in Debian, debconf set up exim and my net stuff when it
> was installed and fetchmaiconf is easy to use and if you want
> something easier just use Mozilla mail. Debian had me up in going
> in a very short time...of course I'm still tweaking and learning, but
> that's the fun and the beauty if it.
>
> I'll admit I'm biased because I still have a small WinME
> partition that freezes up every time I try to shut it down (about 3
> times a year) because it can't deal with a Matrox G400 video card...
> and when I check the MS help site all it says about this particular
> error is "we have no solution for it"...go figure
>
> My advice for anyone wanting to give Debian a try is "DO IT". It's not as
> hard as some will lead you to believe
>
> YMMV
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.
> - Philip K. Dick
>
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> Harold Bibik hwbj@twcny.rr.com
>
>
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