Re: debian

[Bijan Soleymani <bijan@psq.com>]

On Fri, 2003-06-20 at 18:05, Chris Metzler wrote:
> On 20 Jun 2003 13:32:47 -0400
> Bijan Soleymani <bijan@psq.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Debian runs on many architectures (have you even looked
> >> athttp://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual recently?) 
> >
> > (This sounds like an insult, this is mean, and I don't think I deserve
> > this).
> >
> > I just said that there is no reason why Debian can't have autodetection.
> > Because Knoppix has it and Knoppix is based on Debian. That is to say,
> > that once it is installed the computer becomes a Debian Sid Box (apt-get
> > and all).
> 
> Well, I agree that the person who responded to you (you left out an
> attribution) seems to be short with you; but it appears that he took
> your original comment that there's no good reason why Debian doesn't
> do it in exactly the same way I did:  if there's no good reason, then
> logically it must be a bad reason.  And that, in turn, implies something
> negative about the Debian developers.
Oh ok. I didn't mean that. Sorry about that.


> The fact that installation doesn't come up that often (I've run the
> installer exactly once) is to me a perfectly good reason for someone to
> choose to put their efforts elsewhere.  I understand that your experience
> is different; that sounds like an excellent reason for you to get involved
> in the debian-installer project.  Seriously.  You needn't be a programmer
> to do so; they need testers and documentation help as well.  Without
> people like you testing out the new installer, it doesn't improve.
I'll go and see if there's anything I can help with. I will do my part
to help out.


> > I run Debian on several Architectures. Red Hat and SuSe run on them too.
> > I think the only architecture that Debian supports but almost no one
> > else does is the 68k.
> 
> If you run Debian on several architectures that Red Hat and SuSE also
> run on, then you must be running their Enterprise products, since both
> Red Hat and SuSE's small office/home user products only support x86.
> And your several architectures must be just ia64 and x86, since those
> are the only ones Red Hat supports (SuSE adds s/390 and PPC).  You said
> this elsewhere:
> 
> > Also Red Hat and Suse, run on stuff like sparc and s390
> 
> Do you have a source for this?  Their webpages disagree with you (about
> all but SuSE on S/390, anyway).
I think they have discontinued their sparc distros. Suse still has sparc
iso's on their ftp site. Maybe it's for an older version. I am also
pretty sure that Red Hat used to run on sparc as well. I know that
slackware did (I think it is still alive and is called splack). I've
read about redhat having 64 bit support on s390 somewhere which would
indicate that they have some kind of s390 distribution. In any case I
doubt home users are running s390 :)

> Not that the "so many architectures" issue is that important, because as
> you note,
> 
> > For one architecture that I use in particular (Sparc) we don't even need
> > hardware detection. There's about 2 sound cards, 2 network cards, a few
> > scsi cards, and almost all are either included in the kernel or easy
> > enough to figure out.
> 
> Yes -- as folks who work on the installer have made clear in this mailing
> list in the not so distant past, autodetection on other architectures is
> generally easier than it is on x86.
Agreed.

> >From the archives:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/debian-user-200305/msg02043.html
> 
> The key lesson is that people work on things that seem interesting and
> important to them.  For the most part, having a nice friendly installer
> hasn't seemed that big a deal to the developers; making upgrading painless
> has.
> 
> It's worth noting, however, that one big reason that Knoppix/Libranet/etc.
> can have smoother installation than Debian itself is *because* the army
> of Debian developers are taking care of most all the other issues involved
> in producing a well-functioning distribution.  This leaves Libranet, for
> example, to worry *only* about their installer, their "adminmenu" feature,
> and some good initial desktop configuration; they charge $50-$70 for that.
This is true.

Bijan