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Paul bdi-emc@ntlworld.com wrote:
Hi Brett
On Saturday 05 November 2005 12:45, Brett Parker wrote:
Hang on... Paul... this is a really silly question I know... but have you actually *used* d-i?!
To be honest - No.
Once I have installed Debian by what ever means available, I never need to look at running an installer again (for my own systems).
Ah ha! See, a "once only" operation! So why make it all graphical ;)
Personally, I *hate* the 'pretty' installers of SuSE, RedHat and Windows... they get the hell in the way of installing, display stupid advertising saying "we are the best, all hail us", and put additional load on the system that is completely unneccessary for an install.
To quote Scotty from one of the Star Trek films... "Ooo, a keyboard. How quaint"
To be fair to Red Hat & SuSE, they do offer an ncurses based installer if you really, really want to use a keyboard. Personally, I see nothing wrong with being able to have the option of a purty GUI install. Anything that simplifies installation and removes another barrier that would otherwise discourage a convert from the dark side is a good thing IMO, BYMMV..
... unforunate side effect tends to be that it's installed, and not keeping up to date with security holes, etc... this is one of the few things that Ubuntu have actually got right, IMO. How many people do you actually know that have installed a modern windows operating system rather than it coming preinstalled? Have you noticed that the CDs that tend to come with new hardware are "rescue" cds, and tend to just copy a bunch of files in to the right places rather than actually running through an install process? Windows + Drivers == major headaches.
I like my CLI and use Midnight Commander as my day to day pocket knife for just about everything. Avoiding the emacs-vi argument is easy - I see no point in mashing a keyboard so treat both with the same degree of disdain. But I still like my KDE desktop with all the konsole sessions plastered over three screens, twenty odd html files open in mumble,mumble konqueror windows on a second virtual desktop..
Feh - I'm only in X so that I can get 4 terminals on the screen at the same time, neatly... and firefox running on the other desktop (who decided that the web should have graphics, damned fools! lets go back to it being an information store, dammit!)... serious devel work tends to happen in a full height xterm these days, with vim still being my editor of choice (I really hate mice, I really hate having to mash a keyboard, a mode based editor fixes it nicely, one key press at a time, in a nice easy to remember order... Esc:wq isn't really that difficult, is it ;). I don't get on with Kate (the evil KDE editor of doom), or nedit... there are too many things that I like being able to do from vim without having to think or click...
Editor wars are fun, there should be more of them... ;)
Cheers,
- -- Brett Parker web: http://www.sommitrealweird.co.uk/ email: iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk