Re: Need Reasons for switching to Debian from Redhat
>> > 2.4 system installed and running. Installing Redhat on the
>> > same system takes about 15 minutes.
>>
>> As I found the install to be unnecessary lengthy, I've 'installed' the
>> last few Debian boxes by just cloning the disk and changing the few
>> things that needed changing. As the dpkg means purged pkgs leave almost
>> no cruft behind, I've never run into problems with that.
>
> Well, actually I currently once again installed woody on two machines
> (Pentium 166 with 48 meg RAM, PII-350 with 196 meg RAM), and, overally, I just
> can't say that the installation, on those machines, is way slower than, let's
> say, an installation of a current SuSE distro.
I've never installed Suse. Installing RH typically involves
answering a few questions, coming back twice to change CDs and
answering a few more questions. Installing Debian requires
constant attention and loads of manual adjustments, tweaks, and
fixes afterwards. Here are the problems seen yesterday:
* Tasksel UI is confusing. I watched as my neighbor was
accidentally dumped from the program when he thought he was
selecting a task.
* The dselect UI is completely cryptic. I've been using
dselect for almost 5 years, and I still find it utterly
confusing and often get it into a state where I can't come
up with a legal configuration.
* Package configuration asks pointless questions. For
example, my neighbor spent a fair amount on the Debian site
trying to find out what lynx was and what should be used as
a default URL. He finally asked me what to use for a
default URL. Asking cryptic questions like that is a waste
of the users time.
* Setup/configure for a package fails and installer has to be
restarted. I counted NINE times through this cycle before
we gave up because it was unable to install the remaining
selected packages.
* After the install was "complete" (cycling through the
install wasn't getting any further) we had two permanently
broken packages: ldap-something and biff: apt-get -f
install was unable to fix the system. We had to purge both
of those with dpkg before we could get any further.
* After installing using woody floppies, we don't have a
woody system, we have a _potato_ system! Now we have to
manually edit apt's source list and do an update/upgrade to
get a woody system we wanted in the first place.
Downloading, installing, and configuring all those potato
packages just so they can be replaced with woody packages
is a waste of the user's time and bandwidth.
* The SVGA X server was never installed, even though the
video board was detected correctly during install and X was
configured to use the SVGA server. That had to be installed
manually via apt-get.
* Only a partial set of Gnome packages was selected by
tasksel, so about a dozen more had to be installed manually
via apt-get.
* LILO was supposedly installed in the MBR of /dev/hda, but
the system won't boot from the hard drive. This happens on
most of the Debian installs I've done -- I generally
install GRUB from sources, since Debian's LILO rarely works
for me.
* With LILO broken, it's particularly annoying that the boot
floppy created during the install takes 15 minutes to load
the kernel from the floppy (I've seen this on multiple
different systems). A boot floppy created manually using
rdev and dd takes about 20 seconds to load.
* We had to purge GPM in order to get the PS/2 mouse to work
properly under X11.
I've installed Debian dozens of times, and every time, there
have been a whole series of hurdles like those. The neighbor I
was helping watched the whole process in amazement and asked
how long it took to learn all the tricks required to install
Debian. I had to admit it took several days working on it full
time.
I've installed quite a few other OSes:
SunOS/Solaris (from both tape and CD).
Coherent 286/386
Win3.1/95/98/NT/2K
Linux: Yggdrasil, Slackware, Redhat, Mandrake
Novell
Debian is by far the most difficult. The sad thing is it
really doesn't need to be this difficult -- I'm convinced
Debian users prefer it this way since it makes them feel
superior to people who use flashy, graphical installers.
> For what I found, the most annoying thing about installing
> GNU/Linux distros, lately (no matter whether this is Debian or
> SuSE) on standalone machines is frequently having to change the
> cds to have all the packages copied. Doing an installation
> through a fast network or from DVD, Debian at least here is by
> no means slower than the other systems I've installed, so
> far...
Then you've had far, far better luck with Debian than I have.
--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! I'm in a twist
at contest!! I'm in a
visi.com bathtub! It's on Mars!! I'm
in tip-top condition!
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: