Please use sensible subject lines. Its only because I'm having a slow day that I read this. On 0, RavynNiteshade@aol.com wrote: [snip] > First off the text install was pretty retro,compared to what Im used > to,but I said hey,a no frills kind of deal,lets see how it turns out.Got it > installed,luckily Ive done a number of linux based installs,because its not > very newbie friendly.Rebooted,and first thing I noticed is that it went to > the old lilo text boot: prompt.Well that wont do,but seems easy enough to > fix,hit enter and watched the boot info scroll by.Thought to myself ,wow it > looks like some BSD just crapped across the screen...okay,fix that Your major complaint so far is that the boot doesn't look pretty. That's not what your average Debian user is looking for. Speed and pretty looks are quite often diametrically opposed, so speed wins. As for the text installer, it works on damn near any system, as well as most platforms you care to name (11 at last count, I think). Again, pretty has been sacrificed for something that works. I don't want to have to start an X server just to install on my firewall with 8meg ram. > later..started checking out the packages I installed and noticed that some of > the dependencies were connected by convienience,rather than true > dependencies,e.g. KDE in no way depends on koffice,how that got in,I have no > clue,built kde from source without it,installed kde from rpm without it,etc. Bad move. Trust apt; most of the dependencies are real dependencies. If you disagree, there is a good bug tracking system. > Oh,well,lets remove that problem...read much much much documentation > on dpkg and apt-get, okay remove packages not needed.Hey > look,linuxlogo...maybe that'll spruce up the boot process...wait a minute,I > now need to run apt-get -f because these packages I removed wont let me > progess with my new package installs.Damn. Hmm. According to packages.debian.org, linuxlogo depends on debconf and libc6. Which of those did you uninstall? Besides which, why does it suprise you that when you force apt to uninstall packages it swears to you are needed then things stop working? This is hardly rocket science to understand. > Link lilo boot.b to boot-menu.b,run lilo -v ,reboot.Now have updating logo > scrolling amongst the bsd-looking boot process,ewww. and so on and so on... > Long story short,I spent two days trying to get debian to boot and > look the way I wanted to,when I finally sat back and said to myself,I just > spent the time it takes for disks to get to my house to get debian to look > like something with a little polish,and over those two days succeeding very > little.So I ordered the new release of mandrake. So, essentially, your whinge is that the boot process doesn't look pretty. > My whole point may sound like the rambling of the insane,or some redhat based > enthusiast(of which Im not),but its often pointed out that the face you put > forth first is often the one people remember longest,and while this may be > trivial to the developers and programmers who use debian,the end-user such as > myself with little knowledge of how to easily correct these problems will > probably steer clear of this distro. Your 'problems' seem to be that you sit and stare at the boot sequence. Personally I go get a drink or something, but if that's what does it for you... > On the up side though,debian seem to run faster and cleaner than > anything Ive used so far,and perhaps when the polish is applied and it looks > a little snazzier out of the box,I'll come back,but until then I'll have to > just say no thanks.Maybe some people out there will take this as the > constructive criticism its meant as and point it in the right direction,and > more likely some people will take this as an attack that its not. My reaction is perhaps a bit hostile. But you seem to completely miss the point of what computers are for. They are a productivity tool, not something to look pretty on your desk (despite the efforts of Apple). Just because you can't make your boot sequence look like you want it is a ridiculous reason for ditching a distro. You point out Debian's big feature (it's fast, clean, stable) and then say that you'd like a penguin to appear when you boot up. Why do you think other distros are hard to administer, unstable and slow? Precisely because they have all the latest and greatest gadgets and install a bunch of pretty-looking crud that nobody actually *needs* by default. I personally hope your comments are ignored completely by the developers, because if they listen to you then Debian will end up just like all the other distros; slow, difficult, unstable and pretty. > All Im saying is that until its more idiot firendly,Ill have to take a > pass,because IMO the bad outwieghs the good. If you need the pretty stuff to survive then going back to Mandrake is a good choice. Debian is not designed for the Linux newbie. It is designed for people who want a fast, lean, stable, easy to maintain system. But you don't sound like an idiot; you sound like someone who understands linux fairly well but has their priorities mixed up. When you get sick of mandrake you will be welcomed back here. And if you have problems installing, ask! This list is full of the most knowledgeable people I know. Only Google knows more than this list! People really are happy to answer questions if they are well phrased. Judging by the wars that go on, relevance to the list topic is only optional. Tom -- Tom Cook Information Technology Services, The University of Adelaide When you go to the sysadmin's office in the afternoon, and all is deathly quiet, there are three possibilities: 1) Something has gone wrong, and they are all trying to fix it. 2) Something has gone badly wrong, and they have all left the country. 3) Something has gone very badly wrong, and you're missing happy hour. Get my GPG public key: https://pinky.its.adelaide.edu.au/~tkcook/tom.cook-at-adelaide.edu.au
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