Re: (no subject)
RavynNiteshade@aol.com wrote:
*chuckle* aol? :-) oh boy...
Not to start any flames or ask any specific questions,I would
just like to post an experience I had with debian (my first and only one).
I usually use a redhat based product,not redhat anymore,as they
seem to have money driven issues,so now mostly mandrake.But some
people I know said,hey try debian,its better,faster and it rocks.Well
this went on for a good long while,and one day while having some
issues with my mandrake and its lack of wanting to upgrade the distro
online,I said screw it and pointed the old browser at linux central
and picked up the latest debian release (woody).
debian is faster, and betterer, and it doth rock the llama's arse.
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 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.
are you kidding me? not newbie friendly? i thought the installer was
cake. i like the spartan approach. simple simple simple! is good! i
especially love the power of cfdisk. and it's cool how you can load what
modules you want and even bail to a shell to start playing right away if
you have to. and btw, what's wrong with this 'bsd' looking screen. don't
you like to know what your computer (kernel) has to say when it boots?
as far as dependencies go, i think dselect does a pretty nice job. it
'suggests' what it thinks you should install. not like that fun rpm
stuff where you get all sorts of whacky dependencies and you have to
--force stuff. :-)
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.
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...
*ahem* spruce up the boot process? uh? lol... you're worried about the
boot screen? *cough*windows*cough cough*xp*cough* :-)
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.
mandrake's cool. and it has some pretty nifty stuff. it seems to be
pretty good at finding hardware. it's more geared towards people who
don't want to mess with the guts. but, that's them. :-) and heck, at
least you tried.
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.
could be. although, i was a 100% full-on windows guy who could be
described as 'apt' (no pun intended) and i found debian to be exactly
what i was looking for. short on looks, heavy on power and speed. i
couldn't stand anything that even remotely reminded me of windows. i
don't even use desktops like kde and gnome because quite frankly, i
think they suck! that's just my opinion. not to take away from the (kde
and gnome) developers because they bust their chops making the stuff...
i just don't get why try and make a 'windows clone'. but that's a whole
other story... it's got something to do with 'choice' or something :-)
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.
All Im saying is that until its more idiot firendly,Ill have to
take a pass,because IMO the bad outwieghs the good.
*ahem* when, the polish is applied? :-) forgive me for saying.. i can
totally tell you come from using mandrake. me thinks you need to look a
bit deeper than looks. if you think debian is not quite up to par, go
and try installing freebsd or slackware. :-D looks are irrelevant.
does the dern thing work? does it get the job done? for sure.
i'll coin a phrase from the creators of south park... 'looks are to
debian what salad dressing is to sex...' if that gives you any idea of
where your argument is going. quite frankly my good man, i really don't
understand how you could outweigh the sheer power and flexibility of
this os because it doesn't look pretty when it boots up. i think if you
really take some time and play with it a little more, you'll love it!
and this mailing list goes far beyond the call of tech support. the
collective brain power is simply awesome. the coolest and smartest
people who are willing to help with every question i ask. that's nice to
know.
i'm not going to knock mandrake either. because, like a lot of users on
this list, that's where i came from. and it's a good distro. but when
the time came, i wanted something more. and i certainly have found it.
Thanks for your time,
C
hey, good luck bro and don't give up!
it's ALL ABOUT CHOICE!
isn't that nice? :-)
cheers!
-jeff
p.s. http://home.earthlink.net/~jmr71769/screenshot.jpg <-- fluxbox
on my box.. joy. :-)
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