[plug] debian pros & cons

[Tim Bowden]

Onno Benschop wrote:
> Trevor and Ariana, welcome to Linux, I hope you'll enjoy the fronteer
> and the community that goes with it.
> 
> On Tue, 2003-09-30 at 14:47, Tim Bowden wrote:
> 
>>If you're keen on debian you will need a good deal of patience and 
>>perseverance (possibly a trip to the workshop?) to get it going but 
>>knoppix gives you a good idea of what you can end up with.
> 
> 
> While I agree with your last comment Tim, the first needs some feedback
> in my opinion.

I took a short while to consider my statement just after I sent it and I 
would now have to disagree with my last statement.  Knoppix will give 
you a good idea where you can start from.  Where you can end up is soooo 
far from what knoppix gives you with only a little bit of trying...

> 
> Fundamentally I disagree with those that suggest that you need patience
> and perseverance with Debian. While I'll be the first to admit that the
> installer doesn't look sexy, nor does it auto-magically answer all your
> questions, a typical Debian install takes me ten minutes, mostly hitting
> Enter.
> 

Basic install agreed.  Takes more than ten minutes when debian 3.0 
doesn't support your hardware that works with knoppix- I ended up with 
no network card and no X.  The only redeeming feature of the debian 
installer IMHO is that it is text based.  Not every install is on a 
machine with great graphics capabilities.  If you don't want the 
istaller to 'autoconfigure' everything the way knoppix does, fine.  I 
like the idea of being able to take control /if/ you want to.  Debian 
seems to assume you want complete control over the install.  Some of the 
knoppix 'just go and configure it' magic would be nice to have.

> I have been getting familiar with Linux since 1999 because my
> dissatisfaction with Windows began to outweigh the ease-of-use -
> specifically installing and uninstalling applications and service
> patches - often leaving my machine totally unusable.
> 
> I got numerous magazines with front-cover Cd's - I was on a dial-up
> connection - and installed Red-Hat, Storm, SuSe, Mandrake (there were
> others - I forget) all from scratch. They all mostly worked. Then I
> tried to install and remove packages. They mostly broke.
> 

I stayed with RH for so long because it 'just worked'.  The thing that 
has tipped the balance for me is the focus on the 'corporate desktop/ 
server' that RH has.  The result is this bluecurve rubbish.  If I wanted 
a 'genericised' desktop I would stick with windows.  There is a reason 
KDE and Gnome are different.  Making them look the same may be a good 
idea for the average noideauser but I don't fit into that category. 
Remember the days when enlightenment was the default WM?  Nowdays RH 
wouldn't touch it with a barge pole and that's a pity.


> I was pretty much at a loss where to go next. I tried BeOS, looked
> really nice, installed simply, but there were no applications.
> 
> I'd been a Macintosh user since 1985, used Win.XXX for most of that time
> as well. I've run NetWare servers since 2.11 and in my quest for the
> next Workstation OS, even tried Solaris.
> 
> As you might gather, I'm not one to give up too soon.
> 
> A friend told me about Debian.
> 
> I got really confused about dselect, but once I got over that, I can't
> honestly even consider any other distribution. (Today I don't use
> dselect, others may give differing feedback on this.)
> 
> For new users, I'd recommend installing using the task selector and not
> using dselect - in-fact, today I select the task selector and select
> nothing. I generally bail out of the next apt-get as well, but you can
> ignore that last bit of advice until you've done this a few times.
> 
> The patience and perserverence for me were related to finding a
> distribution, not with Debian.
> 
> Of course your mileage may vary and you may well come to have your own
> opinion on this, but I for one will be using Debian for some time to
> come...

So will I.  Getting it all going  (network card, Xwindow) is just 
proving to be a bigger pain than it should be.

> 
> 
> 
> (I know, I've glossed over a lot of issues here, but this message was
> getting rather longer than I thought it should be... start a new thread
> and I'll play.)
> 
> 
> Onno Benschop 
> 
> Connected via Optus B3 at S15:51'18" - E128:45'05" (Crossing Falls, Kununurra, WA)

Tim Bowden

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