[plug] ComputerBank meeting Tues 24th 7:45pm

[Peter Wright]

On Fri, Aug 20, 1999 at 12:40:27PM +0800, Gary Allpike wrote:
[ snip ]
> > low-memory 386s though... my laptop (a 486DX2-50/8meg RAM that I picked up
> > from RioTinto's chuckout pile for $100 :-) runs Slackware for several
> > reasons - mainly that I found Debian too much of a pain to install (I also
> > tried FreeBSD). Slackware installed fine from floppies - got the base
> > system working okay then installed the rest via PLIP.
> > 
> > In fact, that last qualification is an interesting one - I believe
> > Slackware is the only remaining distro that you can still install from
> > floppies - which is sometimes the only real option if you're dealing with
> > an old machine.
> 
> What painful about a Debian install ??
> People keep saying "debian is hard to install" - yet no one actually
> states in any detail WHAT is hard, and WHY it was hard !!

Sorry, should have qualified.

(a) (and this was the main problem with FreeBSD too) I couldn't get the
laptop, which had a slightly dicey floppy drive, to reliably read the
Debian/BSD bootdisks - both of which needed pretty much the entire 1.44MB
floppy.

Excerpt from the Debian x86 install doc:
> The biggest problem for people installing Debian for the first time seems
> to be floppy disk reliability. 
> 
> The Rescue Floppy is the floppy with the worst problems, because it is
> read by the hardware directly, before Linux boots. Often, the hardware
> doesn't read as reliably as the Linux floppy disk driver, and may just
> stop without printing an error message if it reads incorrect data. There
> can also be failures in the Drivers Floppy and the base floppies, most of
> which indicate themselves with a flood of messages about disk I/O errors. 

My system just couldn't handle it - I admit it. However, I didn't want to
give up - I tried installing from the much less demanding Slackware
boot/rootdisks and it worked perfectly first time.

(b) I couldn't install the whole system easily via floppies (note the word
"easily" here... :). I mentioned above that I installed part of the system
via PLIP, but I'm now remembering that the stuff I did with PLIP came much
later, after I'd pretty much completed the entire system and got PLIP to
work properly.

> Debian can be installed from floppies.

Having checked through the install manual to verify this (I remembered
differently), I must admit you are right... technically :).

The difference between the Slackware floppy install option and the Debian
is that with Slackware, it's quite easy to _install_ _the_ _whole_ _system_
via floppies - the newer Slackwares have changed a bit, but it used to be
well set up to install via floppies and can still be done. With Debian, you
can install the base system, but after that you'd have to use some other
method - unless you want to hunt down all the packages you want (the
trickiest bit), transfer to floppy (splitting into smaller pieces in most
cases), reassembling on the new target machine, etc....

Worrying about dependencies, etc. just makes everything more difficult.

[ snip ]
> I really strongly believe that to use Slackware at all would be damn
> foolish.

It's just a distribution... it's still a (GNU/ :)Linux operating system.

> I believe this to the extent that I dont want to get involved with a
> group that comes to the conclusion that slackware is the best option.

It depends a great deal on what exactly the aims of the group are, which I
don't think I entirely understand yet.

I agree that Debian or RH or whatever other of the more modern distros
should be preferable to Slackware in almost all cases, but I think we've at
least established that this group's requirements are a little unusual.

> RedHat I could live with, but I still believe that for the application at
> hand Debian is the optimum solution.

Probably.

> I have heard that ComputerBank in Victoria has standardised on Debian.

Ah, bugger "standards" *grin*. I reckon the ComputerBank should grab a whole
pile of old CDs, completely different distros, and get people to pick them
out of a bag.

"Okay Jimmy, looks like you've won the good'ol Yggdrasil Linux Fall '94
CD! Off you go to try installing it now - and good luck!"

:)

> <snippage>
> 
> regards
> 
> Gary Allpike
> 
>  
> PS. Debian works just FINE on low memory systems - I frequently install it
> on 8 meg 486's

The original poster was talking 4 meg systems, though I'm sure it would
work fine on those too (probably the install would be the only bit
requiring special treatment, ie. the low-mem bootdisk). 


Pete.
-- 
http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~pete/

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