Distributions - was Re: [plug] Red Hat 7

[Matt Kemner]

On Tue, 26 Sep 2000, Bret Busby wrote:

> I neglected to mention, that when Christian showed me the package
> instal, his system did have a GUI desktop....

In fact, one of the features of Debian, is that it has a central "menu"
system which is used by most window managers, and any package can add
itself to /usr/lib/menu, and after running update-menus it will instantly
appear in the application menu of all compatible window managers

I don't know if RedHat does something similar now, but when I last used
RedHat, the menus contained a whole bunch of programs that weren't even
installed, as opposed to reflecting exactly what is currently installed.

> I think this also takes care of your suggestion, Matt.

Why not try installing it yourself?
That way you can judge for yourself it you need guru status in order to
install it, instead of just repeating what you've heard.

If you try it, and find it too difficult, you'll be able to say

"I tried to install Debian 2.2 and I found that when I got to XXX stage,
 it was difficult to understand what to do next so I gave up"

 rather than

"I've heard it is difficult to install"

Also if you try it, and do get stuck at some stage, this mailing list is
only a couple of keystrokes away.
 
> Does Debian install via NFS?

Yes, very easily
In fact most of the Debian systems I set up for WASP's customers I install
via NFS - mainly because I always install the same packages, and I have
those very packages sitting on my NFS server.

btw it is _very_ easy to get Debian to give you a list of packages that
are installed, and then go to a new machine, and tell Debian to install
those packages:

machine1# dpkg --get-selections > packagelist.txt
machine2# dpkg --set-selections < packagelist.txt

> Also, from what I understood at the installfest, Debian is a multi-disk
> instal, like Mandrake. Is that correct?

3 CDs
and once Debian's installed if you want to apt-get install something, it
will tell you what CD it's on.

 - Matt