Re: [tlug] Onto Debian via MEPIS

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 01:46:57PM +0900, Charles Muller wrote:

>>From what you say below, I guess you mean that Woody installed without
>an issue, and then you upgraded?

Basically, yes.  I started with a Woody installer and what happens
when you give it the alternate apt sources is you change horses mid-stream
and go from installing Woody to installing Sarge or Sid (I've found
Sid to be perfectly stable, and it had good support for my Radeon 9000,
something I didn't find with Sarge at the time, maybe that's different
now) and it finishes up the install using packages from Sid and upgrades
the handful of Woody packages that were installed by the installer.


>I am aware of this, and was able to successfully install on both
>machines via Stable. But I have come to understand that if you install
>and then upgrade this way, if you are using the 2.2 Woody kernel, it
>won't automatically upgrade to 2.4 on a dist-upgrade--that you have to

You actually don't even complete the Stable install.  It finishes the
first part of the install and after you boot from the disk, it then
uses the Testing or Unstable apt-sources and you dist-upgrade on the
fly during the install.

However, it's probably worth noting that I was using a 2.4-based Woody
installer, based on the the 2.4.20bf2.4 kernel image.  I no longer recall
where I got it, but if you google, I think you can find one.  It 
understands ext3 and reiser, and maybe also xfs (don't recall), so if
you want to have a journaling file system from the start, it will take
care of you.

>But it also serves as an effective barrier to the widespread usage of
>Debian in general

Debian has had widespread adoption for years, I think it's number two
behind Red Hat for installed base size, and now that Red Hat has done
away with the free version and kicked off Fedora instead, Debian may
seize the number one spot anyway.

But of course, my goal is not ubiquitous adoption of Debian.  The more
people use a thing, the less clue there is to go around.  Once upon
a time, practically everyone (male, at least, and probably a number of
women, too) who had a car new at least a bit about working on them. 
As cars became more and more common, the knowledge level dropped and
dropped.  I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if one car owner in 
a hundred doesn't know what an oil change is or why it's important,
let alone how to do one (OK, maybe one in one thousand, but they
are out there.  I guarantee it) him/herself.

>properly set up and running, it is far easier to use and maintain than
>the RPM-style distros.

Quite true.  URPMI, the Mandrake concoction, eases a lot of that, but
it's still a hack on top of RPM and still more than a bit of a kludge,
and doesn't measure up very well against the seamlessness of apt.

>that I do (don't worry, it's a *small* college), and if it takes me a week
>to get a satisfactory Debian setup working, it is certainly going to

A 2.4-based installer will help a bit with that.  Still, that's exactly
the sort of desirable barrier to entry that I'm talking about.  If you
don't know what you're doing, you'll be scared off or give up in disgust.
That's a Good Thing. The only question is "Where do we set the level
of 'Know what you are doing' such that it keeps out the hopeless yet
admits those who can handle a challenge and learn?"  The present
installer seems to do a decent job of that :-)  Seriously, though,
I'd say that if somebody doesn't know what an IRQ is or what an IRQ
conflict is and probably doesn't ever want to know, they should be
gently steered toward the Macintosh aisle at your local computer
store.  They will thank you, a lot of Linux users will thank you, Apple
will thank you, and Microsoft won't.  It's a win all around :-)

>businesses, etc., and who are not the kind of ungrateful slobs that you
>have been meeting on the Yahoo list.

But those are the same exact sorts of ungrateful slobs who brought TLUG
itself to the brink of death, and it might have gone over the edge but
for a handful of people who "remembere when" and stopped and instead of
walking out said "Umm, no.  This is our LUG and this isn't going to happen.
If we didn't found it, we at least knew the people who did, and w're not
going to take this.  It's our way or the highway."  They chose the highway.
It was too late to get back a lot of the old guard, total collapse was at
least prevented.

>But in the end, I am also not completely happy with the MEPIS approach,

I did once install Knoppix to a disk (months ago) and it worked OK,
and was mostly OK with installing packages out of Debian Unstable.
I never tried a kernel and didn't keep it around long, it was just an
experiment.

>experiment with the various other Debian installers as they come out
>(http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/installers.html). If I find

That's a lot of installers!

My Woody install image may have been Bloch's or Danker's, but I utterly
do not recall and didn't write down the source on the CD I made.  Those
sound about right based on their descriptions at Linuxmafia, though.

Jonathan
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