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Download Anaconda for Debian
Posted by
michael
on Mon Dec 08, 2003 07:22 AM
from the kick-the-tires dept.
from the kick-the-tires dept.
hsoom writes "Debian Planet is reporting that unofficial sarge-based ISOs using the Anaconda installer can be downloaded from here. The features developed so far include '...changed the code that installs software to use APT instead of RPM, removed Red Hat-specific configuration hooks, and written a new tool called picax that builds Anaconda-based installation CDs from a Debian repository'. However there are features that are not yet working and it is not recommended for use in a production environment."
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This is good news. (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday December 08 2006, @04:28PM)
Give it some time.
Knoppix is right now probably the easiest way to install Debian, via knx-hdinstall.
Foolproof installer? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it can be argued that the Debian installer asks many questions that may not be easy to answer for a Linux newbie.
But, as you say, there is hope: I remember someone saying, a few years ago, that a RedHat had formatted their drives without clearly mentioning that it would be destructive (oops!). Today, Mandrake can be installed after just a few minutes worth of clicking "OK". It generally makes the right choices for the user, clearly shows what partitions will be created, and warns if it's about to blank an existing windows partition. If it finds some unsupported hardware, it mentions what it knows about it, so that the user can simply ask their local guru for help.
I think it's no exaggeration to say that someone who already installed Windows can safely install e.g. a Mandrake.
Re:Foolproof installer? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://groogs.com/)
I think that the Mandrake and Redhat (8, 9) installs (to get up to a working system) are better than Windows at this point. As long as you have relatively common and supported hardware, it sets everything up for you. I used to think that it was dumb of all the distros to include so many other utilities and applications, but I've changed my views on that now.
Once you install Windows itself, you have to run windowsupdate somewhere between 3 and 8 times (rebooting each time) to get it to the point it won't get infected with a virus in the next few minutes (and always do this behind a firewall). Then you have to go download all the things that you need for day-to-day tasks: winzip, pdf reader.. install usually an office suite, mozilla/firebird/thunderbird (well, at least I do.. but I won't go into a rant about how lacking in features IE/OE are). It takes at least two hours to install a Windows system, and most of the time is spent waiting. (And not just hands-off waiting time, either... Windowsupdate .. wait to download.. click install.. wait to install.. click to reboot .. wait to reboot.. repeat)
Taking redhat as an example.. All the interaction is at the start, selecting paritions (formatted later), selecting what to install, etc. Then you wait for it to install, though you do have to change the CD's once or twice (unless you do a net-install, which is handy). Once it boots up, run up2date -u, probably reboot for the new kernel, and thats it. Everything is up to date and ready to go.
Re:This is good news. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not that hard to install, but one of the major hurdles I found when using Woody's boot CDs, was the completely obsolete kernels you have a choice of using. Neither of them was from this year. I tried 2.4.18-bf24 but it didn't recognize any of the ethernet nics in my machine... an intel gigabit ethernet PCI card and two onboard interfaces (nforce2 nvidia network interface and a 3com interface). It was an Asus A7N8X-Deluxe board I was trying to install it on. I eventually gave up and put a realtek NIC in to do the network install. Pretty embarassing with the other guys just did a Mandrake install and their NIC was picked up without a problem.
The other problem with the outdated kernel is the Nforce2 IDE chipset doesn't work in DMA mode at all. I needed to compile 2.4.21 with AMD Viper support before I could get anything better than 4-5MB/sec. Now it's great at 50MB/sec.
Another problem I had seemed to be related to the APIC on this board. I would get constant lockups under heavy I/O. Unfortunately one of the heavy I/O periods was during the initial apt-get over the network, thus it would lock up every single time I tried to install. I eventually got it to just install the base image off the CD, replaced the kernel with the 2.4.21 I built on another machine, and after that it was fine (I compiled the kernel without any APIC support).
Anyway, to make a long story short, it's outdated support like this that'll never get Debian to be accepted by my coworkers, and I can't say I blame them. I love the stability and easy of maintenance once it's installed, but putting it on a newer machine is sure a pain in the ass. I'll be stuck with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux) from now on I guess for our servers since Debian provided such a poor showing on a workstation setup.
Re:This is good news. (Score:4, Informative)
(http://fredsmith.us/ | Last Journal: Friday November 21 2003, @04:22PM)
apt-get install the kernel image for your arch and it will stay up to date with the rest of your system automatically. Unfortunately, it doesn't do this out of the box.
Re:This is good news. (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you can't wait for debian to ship a modern installer and don't want to fork over $$$ for Redhat Enterprise Linux 3 you can always try White Box Linux (http://www.beau.org/~jmorris/linux/whitebox/), a free version of rhel3. It's at rc2 now and production release is probably only a month or two away. I notice the Dag apt repository (http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/) has rhel3 rpms, so it should be possible to stay up to date with apt.
Re:This is good news. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://the-martins.org/~dmartin)
> and this will be a move in the right direction.
And of course, the "standard answer" to this is "you only install Debian one time on any one machine". People who have not used it have a hard time believing this, but it's true barring hard disk failure or some other catastrophe like that. Even major updates happen via "apt-get upgrade", and 99.9% of the time it Just Works(TM) if you're running stable. (Take that down to about 97% for unstable/testing.)
I have a machine that started out around Debian 1.1, as a 486 and has been hardware upgraded several times (to a Pentium Pro and now a 1GHz C3) and apt-get upgraded routinely since those days. I had to reboot due to the recent linux security issue, prior to that this machine had an uptime of 172 days. It's running Debian/stable plus I've done some backporting out of unstable for a few key bits.
Anyways, between Knoppix, anaconda, and the new debian-installer work going on within Debian, hopefully the "it's hard to install" issue is just about a moot point. Enough proselytizing for this morning
Re:This is good news. (Score:4, Informative)
Debian is working on a new installation process for their sarge release. This new debian-installer is greatly improved over the previous methods. I have been playing with it as a net-install and found it to work extremely well.
Installation time, not counting file downloads which don't require my intervention anyways, is on the order of 20 minutes or less
I don't know that Anaconda can bring much of anything to the installation process. When installing debian-installer I found I was asked fewer questions and have a faster set up then I did with SuSE 8.2.
One very important point to make abundantly clear about the debian-installer is that it is not responsible for the configuration of your X-Window environment. This is something that may confuse newbies who are not used to the concept of a non-GUI operating system. All the distro's offer it (non-GUI), but many are assuming a GUI interface is preferred.
Keeping this in mind, the debian-installer does what it is intended to do very well. And it's cross platform too!
Personally, I don't think it's a generally good thing to have more distribution models tied into to only one installation engine. There are advantages with this, but there are always disadvantages to a homogeneous environment.
Re:This is good news. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think installing Linux is Elitist
It depends on the distribution you select and the requirements you have as a user.
You must first recognize that there is a trade-off between the two concepts of Simple to Use and Highly Configurable. I believe that the two are to a large extent, mutually exclusive of each other.
If you want Simple to Use then you can grab something like Knoppix or Libranet and have a Linux installation up and running in a few minutes without no idea what you actually did. However, you will not be able to customize the installation to include a mail server that can do something like:
- SMTP + SASL_Authentication over TLS
- Amavisd+spamassassin+clamav
- LDAP+Kerberos/SSH user authentication
- IMAP+SSL and IMAP-SSL(localhost) support
as an example.If you want to do that, then you have a lot more work to do that a simple newbie and for that matter, most simple newbies don't know what the fuck I just said, unless the heard it in a trade magazine.
I can do all of this stuff using Debian with out much difficulty. Technically I can't even do what I posted in SuSE without going into custom builds on most everything. So even there, they (SuSE) has hit the barrier between Simple to Use and Highly Configurable
Arguably, Microsoft will probably come up with a configuration utility that does all of these things with the click of a button. But there will be at least two problems with their implimentation:
- It won't work quite the way you would like it to, so you'll have to compromise.
- Their security history has been less than stellar.
Other than that, Microsoft is probably the Leader of the Pack when it comes to Simple to Use. They do it very well and they have their millions of users out there with their installation of XP.IMHO I think that the Computer User community is divided into approximately three camps:
Casual User
Super User or Interested User
God Mode User
Assuming that my presentation of three types of users isn't completely out of line, then you have to recognize that GodMode Users and Casual Users will probably never be satisfied on the same system. At least not now.
It is entirely possible that these users can converge onto one distribution, but that remains to be seen. If I had to pick one today, I would say it's Debian. Because Knoppix, Libranet, and Lindows are all based on Debian, Debian is the best candidate we have today for meeting the needs of all three of these user-types.
And this is why Perens said we should all back Debian. Because right now, the foundation that is Debian is being used to satisfy the requirements of more types of users in the world than any other distribution out there, bar none. You can argue about exceptions, but the final score will be Debian.
Re:This is good news. (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday December 08 2006, @04:28PM)
If he can do this on a Macintosh, why shouldn't he be able to do this on a GNU/Linux system?
Single Package / Dep manager (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.karan.org/)
Maybe a hybrid of Anaconda + dselect would be nice, if rolled into 1. Add 'kickstart' kind of capablity to that and it would be a kickass app to have around.
Specially since most people dont tend to install Linux from installable mode very often( i havent in the last 3 years)
Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 10 2004, @11:39PM)
I'm amazed that more people don't know this. I used dselect for about a day, then quickly discovered apt+tasksel, then aptitude. Dselect is awful.
Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://membled.com/)
(Now Knoppix itself is i386-specific I think, but that's mostly hardware detection. On other architectures detection might be a bit less complex, I don't know.)
Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:5, Insightful)
Knoppix is becoming Debians default installer on x86 hardware. Its not just more fun than the conventional approach, but it feels safer, since you can SEE it working on your computer before installing for real.
Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday December 08 2006, @04:28PM)
Knoppix is pretty simple to install onto the Hard Disk too:-
- Boot Knoppix
- Alt-F2 (maybe Ctrl+Alt-F2)
- Type knx-hdinstall
Knoppix for older Macintosh computers would seem like the next logical step - ones that can't run OS X, or run OS X poorly... good time for it, especially as Apple just had to pay out [rosenthalco.com] for misrepresenting OS X as functional on older hardware.Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:5, Informative)
(http://zack.cerza.org/log/)
4. Reinstall entire OS just to remove Knoppix-specific packages
Don't get me wrong, I love Knoppix, but for use as an installer it's far from perfect. The last Debian install I did, I used Mepis [mepis.org], which takes the hardware detection from Knoppix and makes it pure Debian, plus a couple of Mepis system admin tools (USB keyRe:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Friday December 08 2006, @04:28PM)
I'll give Mepis a go.
Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://sodalug.net/ | Last Journal: Monday September 13 2004, @10:03AM)
Finally some /.er recommended Mepis as a good Debian based distro, which I promtly installed and am quite happy with. The install went perfectly, and the default desktop may not be ideal to linux veterans out there, but its just fine for a linux newbie to start off on.
A few tips/things I've noticed:
-Right off the bat, where the heck is the volume control? Should be on the default desktop, not deep in the application menu as 'kmix'.
-With all due respect to Konqueror, Mozilla should be the default browser on the desktop.
-I don't know what's up with Kpackage, but I love apt-get.
-IM is pretty important to the masses, why not make a good multiprotocol client like Gaim the default?
-Mepis does a good job putting a GUI face on many of the system config stuff, but they are still spread over a number of menus. It would help if they were consolidated under one heading, similar to Windows control panel, although come to think of it everythings not under that either.
Overall though I'd say Anaconda is a big step forward for Linux on the average users desktop. With a few minor tweaks this could easily be recommended for the clueless windows user.
Re:Single Package / Dep manager (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I know, knx-hdinstall is deprecated with current Knoppix versions (starting June this year as far as I remember); the preferred method to perform a hard disk installation is now knoppix-installer [knoppix.net]. Gives you the choice to do a Knoppix installation or a Debian installation, too.
rightious karma whoring (Score:5, Informative)
(http://forums.boiledfrog.us/ | Last Journal: Friday February 21 2003, @01:08PM)
Finally a quick, easy way to remaster debian to hand out to friends.
Not to excited (Score:4, Informative)
Does Anaconda support text (Score:3, Interesting)
I still prefer text based installations, so it will be great if Anaconda will be optional, so Debian will have the best of both worlds.
Does anybody know anything about it?
Re:Does Anaconda support text (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Anaconda has been ported to Debian by Progeny, mainly because Progeny supports both Red Hat and Debian and they want to use the same installer for both distros.
Oh, and yes, Anaconda can be run in text mode, but it doesn't currently work [progeny.com] in the Progeny port.
Bittorrent link needed. (Score:3, Insightful)
Good thing (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you an IT specialist or a user? (Score:5, Funny)
But I cringe when I hear that from a fellow computer person. I mean honestly, just because it's not using framebuffer and a mouse on install?
True, deslect/apt can be intimidating, but much easier the trying to manually find rpms down the road...
Do you spend more time supporting systems or installing systems??? Me, it's supporting them, so I love apt...
And if I hear one more RH person say "Well, just select 'everything' on install, then Up2date doesn't have dependicy problems" I'm gonna kick them in the kneecap...
Re:Are you an IT specialist or a user? (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Friday December 08 2006, @04:28PM)
never heard that one before, but I did once know a guy who'd built up a few CD-Rs full of Windows DLL files he'd copy onto every Windows using friends PC.
Re:Are you an IT specialist or a user? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.ladle.demon.co.uk/)
But I cringe when I hear that from a fellow computer person. I mean honestly, just because it's not using framebuffer and a mouse on install?
Well, dselect could be friendlier: it's not so much that it's text based, but that the interface itself is alien to most people. It's a good interface, like vi is a good interface: but it's not quick and easy to pick up, and if you skip past the instructions, you're in trouble.
But that's not the worst thing about the Debian install. It's been proved that auto-detecting hardware can be done in Linux, yet to install Woody I needed to manually specify an Ethernet driver and select an appropriate X server. That's really not good enough, and would scupper a lot of people, computer professionals or not.
This may be fixed in Sarge: someone reply and tell me.
Re:Are you an IT specialist or a user? (Score:4, Informative)
Well. Keep in mind that the Woody installer is several years old now.
The new installer should have good hardware detection. It's in beta right now.
Debian Installer [debian.org]Knoppix anyday... (Score:2, Interesting)
anaconda-debian, apt-redhat (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://danny.oz.au/index.html)
(Review of The Art of UNIX Programming [dannyreviews.com])
Danny.
Kickstart... (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://nekohako.xware.cx/)
Debian has been needing kickstart-like functionality for a while. (No, FAI is not the answer, it works in a somewhat different manner, and its a royal pain to set up to bootstrap unstable systems from a host running stable).
Glossary (Score:5, Informative)
On my wish list (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://ianwilson.org/)
There are times where I go and install software, and have to be in a different room or different area, that me physically being at the console for the entire installation is pratically impossible. It would be wonderful if there was an option to do a network install over https, or a network install over ssh, to get it up and working.
Just think how nice it would be to pop in a CD, sit back at your desk, go to an IP address, and volia, install your server without actually being there
Oh, well, just wishful thinking, unless anyone knows a good installer, wants to help write one, or knows of a free as in beer system to get something like that accomplished.
Ian
Ananconda For Debain (Score:1)
That would make Debian both one of the most solid distros and one of the most easiest distros at the same time.
Just curious.
I never would have gotten into Debian if not for the hard disk install of Knoppix
2 roads merging.... (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Saturday October 07 2006, @07:46PM)
So how long before the redhat-config-** are ported to debian is the next question.
The differences between these two may soon lie in just deb or rpm. Which is really better may be just a matter of preference, but it seems that there are more distros using rpm than deb, so will debian ever move deb to rpm or are they tied to deb?
Extra Fluff... Ugh (Score:1)
(http://adsl-64-142-28-216.sonic.net/)
On that note, is dselect really that bad? In the time it took me to learn the interface and to select (or deselect) all the packages that i wanted, the windows XP installer would have just about finished loading the SCSI, SATA, & RAID drivers, none of which I have the remote possibility of using.
Now here's where i get really scitzofrenic:
The good thing about this anaconda installer is that it will bring a wider user base to Debian (though many people will be wary because they heard from a friend of a friend that it's hard to install) and to Linux in general (I hope) which will in turn bring about better driver support and software releases to Linux (though maybe i'm just being idealistic)
It's about damn time!!! (Score:2)
(http://www.ganjablogger.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday January 05 2006, @05:36PM)
Debian has the best package management and repositories, where debian has stubbornly remained archaic in terms of the installer and hardware detection, redhat has done so in terms of package management. RPM and the Debian installer BOTH suck arse.
Now if we can get the other simple redhat configuration utilities ported over. Little things like netconfig may not be the biggest issue in the world, but certainly simplify setup for someone just started out. You should NOT have to know what a default gateway is just to plug the number in and get your system on the internet
FS: Debian Case Badges (Score:1)
Re:Debian Problems (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.myspace.com/sydbarrett74)
Re:Reinstall the OS? (Score:5, Funny)
It's too bad that they are making linux so easy to install. Soon I'm going to have to move on to Hurd or something.
Re:Anaconda??? Is it too much to ask... (Score:4, Interesting)
We have 30 machines in our research group; there are probably 20 different configurations. Sure, I can find out if I want to, but why should I open each machine up to take inventory before upgrading the OS?
Re:Anaconda??? Is it too much to ask... (Score:5, Informative)
Just a suggestion, but the next time you can't identify the hardware, flip to another console window (Alt+Ctrl+F2) and type "lspci -vv" and you will have all the information about hardware detection you could want.
And the best part is, you don't have to remove the cover!
Re:Anaconda??? Is it too much to ask... (Score:2)
(http://timgray.blogspot.com/)
want the surround sound pee-myself uber soundcard? Great! buy one that is supported. same as video, and all other cards/parts.
it is not hard to buy something that is new and works unless as a shopper the person has zero self control and has to grab the closest shiny object.
people bitch about hardware compatability, yet it's their fault for being idiots when they go shopping.
Re:Why do we care... (Score:2, Funny)
By M, version 1.0
Gentoo Linux is an interesting new distribution with some great features. Unfortunately, it has attracted a large number of clueless wannabes and leprotards who absolutely MUST advocate Gentoo at every opportunity. Let's look at the language of these zealots, and find out what it really means...
"Gentoo makes me so much more productive."
"Although I can't use the box at the moment because it's compiling something, as it will be for the next five days, it gives me more time to check out the latest USE flags and potentially unstable optimisation settings."
"Gentoo is more in the spirit of open source!"
"Apart from Hello World in Pascal at school, I've never written a single program in my life or contributed to an open source project, yet staring at endless streams of GCC output whizzing by somehow helps me contribute to international freedom."
"I use Gentoo because it's more like the BSDs."
"Last month I tried to install FreeBSD on a well-supported machine, but the text-based installer scared me off. I've never used a BSD, but the guys on Slashdot say that it's l33t though, so surely I must be for using Gentoo."
"Heh, my system is soooo much faster after installing Gentoo." .debs can be rebuilt with a handful of commands (AND Red Hat
supplies i686 kernel and glibc packages), my box MUST be faster. It's nothing
to do with the fact that I've disabled all startup services and I'm running
BlackBox instead of GNOME or KDE."
"I've spent hours recompiling Fetchmail, X-Chat, gEdit and thousands of other programs which spend 99% of their time waiting for user input. Even though only the kernel and glibc make a significant difference with optimisations, and RPMs and
"...my Gentoo Linux workstation..."
"...my overclocked AMD eMachines box from PC World, and apart from the third-grade made-to-break components and dodgy fan..."
"You Red Hat guys must get sick of dependency hell..." .rpms together on the command line, and that problems
hardly ever occur if one uses proper Red Hat packages instead of mixing
SuSE, Mandrake and Joe's Linux packages together (which the system wasn't
designed for)."
"I'm too stupid to understand that circular dependencies can be resolved by specifying BOTH
"All the other distros are soooo out of date."
"Constantly upgrading to the latest bleeding-edge untested software makes me more productive. Never mind the extensive testing and patching that Debian and Red Hat perform on their packages; I've just emerged the latest GNOME beta snapshot and compiled with -O9 -fomit-instructions, and it only crashes once every few hours."
"Let's face it, Gentoo is the future."
"OK, so no serious business is going to even consider Gentoo in the near future, and even with proper support and QA in place, it'll still eat up far too much of a company's valuable time. But this guy I met on #animepr0n is now using it, so it must be growing!"
-
Re:Debian is dying (Score:1)
In my work i deal with different linux distros ranging from Redhat 7.2 Mandrake 8.2, 9 9.1 and 9.2, and have played with Redhat 7.3 8.0 9 and am currently looking into rolling out Suse Open Exchange server.
IMO you need to choose the right tool for the right job.For a desktop system you may want all the gui tools and wiz bang features. You may not mind upgrading your machine every six months to stay on that "cutting edge" In the server space though - where you have a three year rotation of servers, stability is most important The slow relase cycles suit the server space down to the ground - if you really need a new feature or package and its not in "Stable" you are able to install it from testing or if needs be unstable. Yes you may get bugs and you may be beta testing but what do you think you are doing for those distros that release every six months.
Personally on my laptop i Run Mandrake 9.2, which does have some nice features (there are urpmi problems - broken mirrors, changing keys etc etc ) on my desktop though - i run Mandrake 9.1 (got sick of urpmi probs)
From the installs i have done of debian i have found that the apt system works very well - applies all the latest security patches during the install ( The mdk install security patch feature is broken in 9.2) and leaves your system very stable and with a little configuration - which you should be doing on the other distros anyway eg firewall you have a stable an secure machine that is well suited to a server.
One last point, I trust Debian for my personal firewall/server needs because changes and improvements are more driven from a technical perspective than marketing.
My only advice - The right tool for the right job.
Seb
Fuck that 99.99999999% (Score:1)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:Why should I use this? (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
I don't critisize Microsoft for buggy software which is clearly a beta development version.
I critize their audacity to charge money for a buggy beta development version.