Distributions - was Re: [plug] Red Hat 7

[Bret Busby]

Matt Kemner wrote:
> 
> 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

Okay, then, what we need to do now, is get the CD's. I should probably
have asked a bit more about it, and, got a set, at the installfest. How
can we get the CD's?

Is there any problem, installing Debian using NFS, using a CD drive in a
computer that is not running Debian?

Also, how much hard disk space is needed? When we put RH 6.2 on my
computer, from memory, it took about 800MB, apart from the swap
partition. That was setting it up to be used as a development
workstation.

-- 

Bret Busby

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