On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 08:32:15AM +0100, Mgr. Peter Tuharsky wrote:
I, being a man, am also scarried when interacting with Debian webpage or
mailing list. I'm not too confident about my skills, and I feel
something like "we know the way, please don't tell us Your opinion"
around Debian. Maybe I feel wrong, but if this is what does scare You
too, than maybe some positive change of mind would help.
If I'm reading you correctly - there are probably a fair few of us
on the list who are terrified by interacting with a Monsignor :)
<snipped some stuff>
The Debian mailing lists / discussion channels on IRC can be abrasive
and the intolerance level of newcomers can be quite high. It is a
good thing to sit back and read the lists for a while if you can to get
a feel for the appropriate level to pitch the question at. [A simple
theological analogy if appropriate: some people will come back patiently
as if you are a child learning your catechism, others will instantly
assume and demand that you know all the writings of the Church Fathers
by heart and in great detail - and there is no easy way to tell who is
who :) ]
Maybe the versioning system is THAT what causes the lack of interaction.
The system is very rigid and done much more in "cathedral" than "bazaar"
style. All I can do is wait 2 years for the next stable release. I
cannost use testing because there's "no support" for it, and the 3 times
I downloaded actual sarge release (last time it was in september), I was
not able even get it working.
Church people should be able to cope with a cathedral :)
Seriously, the secret is to take a de minimis approach at first. Even
if it takes two or three iterations through dselect or whatever you use
to select your packages. Sorting out 150 packages is easier than sorting
out 2500 at once.
1.) Start _very_ simply. Install just the base from woody [80 - 100MB]
and get that working. Then add, for example, the X Windows system in
as simple a way as you can. Then add applications.
2.) If you plan to upgrade to "testing" or later- _only_ install the
base system. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change the appropriate lines
to testing / unstable. Then do "apt-get update" then "apt-get
dist-upgrade" on a _minimal_ system. Then build slowly, as above.
[There is support for testing - its just more informal, on the grounds
that its usually quicker to just fix the problem. We also know that
testing is ephemeral whereas "stable" can be expected to last for years
with minimal updates once released.]
I also tryed to "upgrade" woody to testing, but it ends up with totally
dependency-broken system. In most cases I cannot even test single packages
from testing, because I cannot install the requested new libc6 etc. because
it brakes my woody's dependencies. The woody packages strictly demand the woody's version of
the libraries, and don't accept newer ones. Thus it's difficult
(impossible for me) to have USEFUL system for work, and DO THE TESTING
in the same time.
Testing, once installed, rarely breaks for me - but my needs are
certainly going to be different from yours. The major pain is if a
large meta-package gets upgraded e.g. all of XFree86 or all of KDE. Some
things break for a day or so till the rest catches up, then you are fine
once again.
Yes, I'm lame, I use GNU/Linux for one year only, on few servers only,
and It's my fault I'm not enough geek to make sarge running. It's not
necessarry for anybody to tell it to me.
Can you find a Linux user group or a Slovak / Bohemian / Czech developer
who can help? Alternatively, keep writing to me/others and we may be able to
help you resolve problems one by one. At one time, I might have
recommended joining the debian-user mailing list - but the volume is
high and there is a lot of noise. It is still worth scanning the list
archives quickly to see if anyone else has similar problems.
Despite all of this, I love Debian, I use it, I live with the Woody's
bugs and I await next stable that I could use with more pleasure
(hopefully).
It may not be too long to wait :)
All the very best,
Andy