[plug] Newbie Install of Debain "woody"

[Arie Hol]

After the attending the installfest as an observer, I got brave and decided to try and install 
Debian 'woody' and say goodbye to RH 7.3.

I installed Debian from the DVD that came with the June edition  of APC magazine.

The PC I installed on had no DVD drive, so I copied the whole shebang onto a 6 Gb partition on the 
HDD, over a 10 Mbit/s network (oooooooh sooooooooo sloooooooooooow !!!!!!!!!!!!!), but I succeeded.

I then made up a set of installation boot disks according to the instructions in the APC magazine.

Everything went well - and I now have a base installation of Debian 'woody' which multiboots with 
Win98 using lilo. 

The machine is stable, and runs quite well (so far)

Problem 1
--------------
For installing software I could not get dselect to accept any of the paths to the 
partition/directories where all the Package.gz and *.deb files are located.

In fstab I have :

/dev/hda12		/mnt/setup   	vfat    defaults		0	0

So the path required for dselect should be (I hope) :

	/mnt/setup/pool/main/l/less/less_374-4_i386.deb

But dselect spits the dummy - I moves on to tasksel (?????)

Problem 2
---------------

I could not figure out how to use tasksel - so I gave up and went straight to dpkg using :

	dpkg --install /mnt/setup/pool/main/l/less/less_374-4_i386.deb

And it worked - now all I have to do is figure which software to install out 8,250 .deb files 
stored on /setup.

I suppose I should start with the 'X Windows system' ----

Can somebody tell me what I should and should not install - and is there a correct sequence (  I 
suppose this raises many questions about what the system will be used for etc.etc....) just  basic 
system at the moment - will expand as my skill level grows and my dependancy on M$oft recedes.

Problem 3
--------------
Cannot get network card to work - the nic is an ethernet express (eepro.o is the required module 
and worked OK for RH 7.3 ) insmod will install the module (using autodetect=1) and I can ping 
127.0.0.1 no problems, but 'Network Unreachable' on all other IP's on my network.

The module will not install at system boot - dmesg shows :

eepro_init_module: Probe is very dangerous in ISA boards!  
eepro_init_module: Please add "autodetect=1" to force probe

Where do I add the '"autodetect=1" to have it work from boot up.

I have been trying the advice given to Jon Miller on the list over the last few days - but no luck.

I have been reading the Debian FAQ and relevant How-To's - but no luck.

Tire lots of things - but no luck.

Problem X  
---------------
I will probably start a flame war because of my choice of Debian over Gentoo, Suse, Mandrake etc, 
etc.....

I like them all - but the ones I have tried would not install/configure correctly on this 
particular PC -  AMD K6-2/450 - 128 Mb RAM - 20Gb HDD - Matrox G400 (but detected as a G200).

I like so much about Debian and its supporting philosophies - and since doing the base install I 
now have a better understanding/appreciation of how Linux addresses hardware - a factor which is 
hidden from most people when installing RH, Mandrake and Suse etc.... due to their really great 
installers

TIA.
All and any advice will greatly appreciated.

>--------------------------------------------------------------<
 For the concert of life, nobody has a program.
>--------------------------------------------------------------<