On 05-Nov-05 Paul wrote:
On Saturday 05 November 2005 11:58, Brett Parker wrote:
<>>> Installing Debian is like being greased, and wrestling with an eel.
Installing Debian imho does not have to be difficult, the new installer under Sarge should drag you through it quickly and easily.
That does *NOT* apply to Woody - it's about as easy to understand as a difficult to understand thing.
Indeed it doesn't apply to woody, woody was pre debian installer... woody is *ollllllld*, very old, infact... we all rejoiced when we got a new debian release, the world was good again!
Yay indeed. Sarge going stable, despite a few nasty buggy packages, was indeed a day to rejoice. It is still let down by an arcane and newbie-unfriendly installer. Thanks to the likes of M$, RH, SuSE, etc, large numbers of potential users have come to expect (should I say "demand") a simple click'n'drool installer. From the screenshots I've seen of d-i, Debian fails badly on this front.
Going back some time, now, I recall the first time I installed Slackware (1.0, in 1994, after good experiences with SLS and the interesting MCC Interim).
You had to install this off floppies, and the packages were presented in alphabetical order rather than by dependency, and you chose item by item whether or not to install.
So if you installed something that depended on something you had not installed, you had to write down what it depended on, and then go back later to fill in the gap.
However, that was the only complication, and since the "base" install was the first thing to do and did not involve much in the way of choice, by then you had a proper working system and the subsequent runs were not a problem.
A good clean way to install off a drawer-full of floppies.
I enjoyed Slackware, but it stagnated after a few years so I moved on (Red Hat, Debian, SuSE, ... ); but I'm now seriously thinking of giving it another try since its revival a few years ago. I liked it's barebones no-nonsense approach and lack of "gotchas".
A propos another little issue: might one say that GUI addicts haven't got a CLUI?
Cheers, Ted.
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