A Better Installer for Debian?

F1re writes "Linux User mag in Germany has decided to include Debian on the mag and wants to make a more user friendly installer. They are looking for help from Debian developers. More info here Linux User"

beginner friendly

The Debian installer is already plenty user friendly, just not beginner friendly. Quite a difference if you ask me (and sometimes even opposites!)

Re:beginner friendly

Restoring from a backup is so much easier than trying to get your system to the point where u destroyed it.

Sure, unless it's so completely inconvenient to pull a proper backup that a reinstall is more manageable. For "modern" machines, this generally isn't an issue, as most have some easy removable mass-storage available (eg: CD-R/CD-RW, etc...) - but some older machines, particularly ones like my laptop, fall into a bit of a weird area.

Sure - I suppose I could transfer a couple gigabytes out over the network to do a proper backup -- but it's quicker and easier to just pull:

# dpkg --get-selections >selections.txt

...store that file, along with a custom kernel package (older laptops like mine need rather exotic hardware support that isn't in the default kernels) somewhere down /home (which is, of course, a seperate partition from the rest of the system ;P ).

Then, if/when I do something stupid, it's a quick reformat of all but /home, a trip through the Debian installer to install the base system, install my kernel, then:

# dpkg --set-selections <selections.txt
# apt-get -u dist-upgrade

...and I'm pretty much right back where I started. I can get the whole process done in about 1/2 hour - which is a bit shorter than backing up and restoring everyhing =)

Now, if I had a CD-R on the laptop, that would be a different story. Sure, I could get an external one - but that money (IMHO) would be better spent on a better laptop a few years down the road.

Re:beginner friendly

Very good point.

A quick correction, if I remember correctly (my Debian box is at home) I think it should be

# apt-get -u dselect-upgrade
^^^^^^^

rather than "dist-upgrade".

The poor geeks

First Windows removes its real-mode command line, now Debian loses its undecipherable installation syntax? What will all the esoteric-knowledge gurus do?

Jouster

DrakX?

Mandrake's installer is GPL. It shouldn't be too exceptionally difficult to port it to Debian...

There is one - PGI

Progeny Debian Linux was a GREAT distribution, when it existed. It had great hardware detection, a very simple installer and some other features. Some of the best parts of it are now available.

You can use Progeny Graphical Installer (PGI) to install a nice Woody release, or download the package and create your OWN customized installer with it. This thing is GREAT. Check it out - they are pushing hard towards the 1.0 release.

http://hackers.progeny.com/pgi/

It is very nice, and has a text-mode and X-based installer (you can even do the X install remotely on another machine). This thing is great, and I use it for all of my installs right now. Thanks, Branden Robinson and team for keeping this great part of Progeny Debian Linux alive...

YES!

Finally someone who doesn't want to re-invent the wheel! For all the inherent benefits to Open Source and code reuse, the amount of code-duplication (and therefore time and effort wasted) in the Open Source world amazes (and disappoints) me.

And no I am not talking about Gnome vs. KDE. I am talking about things like having 10 different ICQ clients, all with different implimentations of the protocol. Sure, a different GUI and different features is worth making a new program for. But why not borrow the code for the network stack from someone else who already has that part tackled? Same with filters for MS Office. What is the big deal about KOffice, Abiword, and OpenOffice coming together and making some nice libs that translate .DOC into an XML format they can all interchange?

Simmilar things can be said about other softwares as well. Let's work together people! No need to re-invent the wheel!

RE: Offtopic

I almost kick myself everytime I read one of these "re-inventing the wheel with open source" tidbits. I'm not sure what your experience is but it doesn't sound like you have a foot in the free software community.

Because it is a community and the community isn't hiring people from Universities with CS degrees, rather within the community people are learning to code. They are getting experience. Some of us are rather new to coding so you will see "Hello World" re-implemented thousands of times. You'll see hundreds of the most routine shell scripts. And you'll see dozens of IRC clients all from a different code base. Why?

Its part of the fun of computing. Honestly, it is less fun (IMO) to start from someone else's program than from starting from scratch--especially when someone else's program already has all the features you want. The beginning stages of a software project are probably the most exciting.

Of course there are other things. Like it is more difficult to grok a large code base than a smaller one. And sometimes more experienced coders pull tricks that newbies don't quite grok yet--so decide to use more simpler and apparent methods.

Free Software isn't going away and I think you're going to see a lot more of this. Programmers going through different stages of experience and writing software that demonstrates different levels of skill.

One thing I've noticed is that software is becomming more and more complex. We may see what I call generational programming. Basically, instead of one programmer understanding a code base or even an entire community understanding a code base we may get to the point where several generations are needed to understand and contribute to a code base (or it may be a conveniant excuse for the TUNES project :).

No No No!

I think that the basic point is being missed.

From the article
Right now what we'd be most interested in is some feedback by Debian developers and users out there

The golden rule in HCI is "Developers are not target users". Sad as it may seem for some people Linux Developers are no longer the same people as Linux Users. This means that, by and large, interface designers should IGNORE THE DEVELOPERS!

Users are the ones that matter here. As a first time Linux installer I don't really care about most of the things a developer cares about.
I haven't installed Debian, but let me compare my last Linux install (Mandrake 8.something) to WinXP...

All WinXP asked me was, essentially, "What is your Country and TimeZone".
Mandrake wanted to know the intimate details of my network card, how much swap space I wanted, what make of scroll-mouse I had, what sound card I had, what video cards I had (and don't get me started on XFree's Multimon support!). All this does is serve to scare and confuse a Linux Virgin. And if you want Linux on the desktop you can either make the world smarter, or make your products smarter.

Debian should not be soliciting people in the know - they know far more than the average first time user and are, consequently, useless for developing interfaces for newbies.

Sorry for the rant/misspellling/smell.

T

Shouldn't be too hard...

I recently switched from Redhat to Debian linux. I used the network install (because i have a fast connection) and i found that the most obscure part of the install was finding which NIC model i had (because they went by manufacturer code instead of human-readable names) If a prepackaged installer simply had something that detected your NIC automatically, with some simple instructions to read along with each install stage (easy ones found at www.linuxnewbie.org), then it would be a much less painful install. As a seperate note, something must be added to automatically configure USB optical mice, because as it is they are not (a huge pain for a user with limited skills).

dselect is already a good tool for choosing packages to install and seeing what is out there to install. Its interface could be improved somewhat (always going past help screens becomes a pain, and collapsable trees should be in to reduce clutter(and if they are already, why aren't they obvious))

This should put user-friendliness in, while maintaining most of the customization available in the regular install (after all, you could always ignore the advice...)

Re:Shouldn't be too hard...

dselect is an HCI abomination, even for those who know how to use it.

#apt-get install aptitude
#aptitude

Aaahhh. *That's* better....

Re:Shouldn't be too hard...

There is neither a need to use dselect nor to use aptitude - EVER. All you need are the apt-tools. If you look for a program:

# apt-cache search <search term>

lists you all available packages that fit somehow the search term (search term can be the program name, parts of that name, a description ...)

If you want more info on a package:

# apt-cache show <package name>

after that, you only need to install the usual way:

# apt-get install <package name>

I have the aliases 'i' (for 'apt-get install'), 's' (for 'apt-cache search') and 'si' (for 'apt-cache show'), which make work much easier.

cool

This will give Debian quite a lot of publicity. Maybe enough for it to take off, at least in Germany ;-)

Personally I really wonder why people still use RPM based distributions, is it just because of the installer or the publicity? I mean, *everybody* who's heard of Linux must have heard of Redhat, but no beginner would have heard of Debian. Yeah like this "I'm using Linux 7.2, what are YOU using?"

Seriously I don't see anything potentially bad about making a user friendly installer, the one Debian uses now really could be improved. It's nice that they asked the Debian guys about it though. I wonder if it will get back to the main distribution of Debian if the installer is really as good as it sounds?

Misunderstanding

I'm sorry, but when did "I can click on it" equate user-friendlyness?

Debian's current default installer consists of a group of sub-menus with descriptive explainations of what task each menu item would perform.

If this is an arguement of asthetic or practicality, then it should be thrown out. The only way this arguement for a better Debian installer could possibly hold water is if we're talking about the detection of hardware, which is marginally frustrating (I had no problems the first time I installed debian).

Re:Misunderstanding

Who are you targeting?

I appreciate that complicated (yet perhaps intuitive) individual package selection interfaces may be really easy for you to use. But I promise you that they're not for Joe Sixpack. If you want Linux to pervade the desktop, you're going to have to compromise at least partially and go with what will be easy for the average user. Look at Mac OS X: the install process consists of clicking "OK" about eight times. If you want more fine-grained control, you got it (click "Customize"), but for the average user, he clicks OK six times or whatever and the entire install process is done for him. For 98% of users, this is exactly what's needed. For the remaining 2%, who are geeks and network admins, you can get the customization through the button; you can modify an existing OS X install and then burn an image to be copied onto a few thousand workstations of that; or you can use a utility such as Pacifist to select individual files of a package. I fail to see how an approach such as this would compromise your setup, yet clearly see how it would help the newbie.

And to those who say, "well, Joe Sixpack should learn more!" Recognize this: he's not going to. So you need to make the decision of whether you would rather he remain in ignorance on Windows or install Linux via a stupid, prettily colored interface. Your call.

Scalability should be #2

People always congratulate Mandrake on their beautiful installation, setup and configuration tools, but (and I speak from experience here) try to install it on anything with 32MB of RAM and you're in for a nasty surprise.

If this installer is to run on a CD distributed with the magazine, the second most important aim would be scalability. If this allows users to install Debian on a 486 with 16 MB RAM AND on a Athlon 1.2 GHz with 1 GB RAM providing the same options, I'd give it a thumbs up.

If you can use the same installer to install a minimum firewall/webserver or a heavyweight desktop with all the trimmings without requiring the user to upgrade the machine something spectacular, then this would be ideal.

When dealing with a magazine-subscriber audience, you need to expect hobbyists wanting to turn everything into Linux boxen...

Painless Debian

IMO this is a great debian installation guide Painless Debian [tinyplanet.ca]

Portability

* i386 only: Since most (virtually all) of our readers use Intel-compatible systems, there is no point in supplying packages for other architectures. However a modified installer might be ported to other platforms by anyone interested. The overall concept is a good one, but if they are going to do it, it would be nice to see it done properly with a portable installer that could detect a wide variety of hardware - not just PCs. I would think that a well designed installer with portabilty designed in at the start would stand a much better chance of becoming the default installer than one which required a lot of work later - presumably this is what they want. I've just installed Debian on a few machines, having been attracted to it by the both the ideology and package system (which is truly, truly excellent!) but I still couldn't recommend it to someone with new hardware who hadn't installed a *nix system before. Most of the stuff was very simple (just hit return) but getting X up and running is not always entirely straightforward.

Debian installer

The Debian installer used to be awful, and you really needed to know your way around dselect to get it installed properly (or you can just install nothing and apt-get it all once you've installed).

I recently installed unstable, using the testing installer, and I was surprised to see that it doesn't seem to use dselect anymore! There's a much more friendly (although still text-based) utility it uses to select packages. Honestly, the installer really is pretty easy now (on par with RedHat, anyway, only a bit less pretty). It could be better for non-computer-literate users, but only stuff like the partitioning utility.

This was on alpha, btw. Things may be different on the x86 side of things.

First Linux distro I have ever installed and had n

Debian is the first Linux distro I have ever installed and had no problem with it on ancient p200 with mainly ISA slots. (NOV 2000)
Except I had some grief with the SB AWE32 but thats another story :)

I still don't get it

I've installed Debian dozens of times on many PCs. What's wrong with the installer ? Ok, the only tricky part I'd say, is the package installer. That DSelect thing can be painful at times, but the rest of the installation process is pretty straightforward and I actually enjoy how they present all the actions on the menu so you can jump ahead/back anything you like.

dselect must go and friendly advice to the guys

dselect sucks. It's the hardest thing about getting a working debian install, akin to a purity or intelligence test. This is exclusionary, and the only way to fix it is to streamline the way a base debian gets installed. And to me, that means dselect must go. It's too hard and takes too long to get right. I've always found it much easier and faster to completely ignore dselect and add the packages I need later using apt, which is far more friendly (and actually works).

In HCI terms, you *must* understand your users. If your user base is educated professionals who have done hundreds of debian installs and can compile their own kernel without assistance, then the current installer is probably okay, but it's not where Debian needs to go. It has the developer Linux user sown up; Debian needs to add to the collection other types of users.

So we pick another user set - the Linux newbie and/or Windows refugee. These people don't want to know about installers, and you must make the interface hard for them to screw up. Remember in HCI terms, allowing the user to screw up might be powerful, but it's wrong. I'm not talking about GUIs here (even though I like 'em), I'm talking HCI and interface. You can have a very decent text installer.

Moving along... You describe to the potential newbie users why you need an installer in very basic non-prejudiced terms, so they understand the problem space but without suggesting to them potential solutions. Grab their suggestions and recommendations and experiences and write them all down. This is your specification to a certain extent. Users have a keen insight on what they like and they don't like. Ignore their advice at your own peril.

You create a first cut at an installer, constantly second guessing the users: "will my mum be able to do this?" "Do I have to do this now?" "Is this a reasonable set of defaults that don't need to be adjusted?" You want the user to make as few decisions as possible, whilst postponing as many decisions as possible to allow experienced users to customize it if they wish.

Once the first cut of the installer is done, you must get a bunch of new users, and watch them use it without assistance. Learn from the mistakes or missteps they make, and learn if there's steps you can eliminate. And of course, eliminate any bugs the users find.

Repeat ad nauseam until it's hard to get a bodged unrecoverable install.

Developers are truly the worst people to ask to do this. They *know* the right answers, and will not even think that there might be other possibilities.

A good OS installer is like the old A/UX 3.0 installer - it literally was a one button install if you had a disk ready for it.

Other OS's with decent installers are NetBSD (with the possible exception of the very confusing disk partitioner) or WinXP (very few questions indeed).

Re:dselect must go and friendly advice to the guys

A good OS installer is like the old A/UX 3.0 installer - it literally was a one button install if you had a disk ready for it.

Sure, but that's because the Mac mouse only has 1 button :-)

Corel Linux installer?

Why hasn't Debian project adopted the Corel Linux (nowadays Xandros Linux) installer? It's absolutely best Linux installer there is; much better than Red Hat, Mandrake, or SuSE.

Is the installer non-free software or what is the reason?

IMHO, using the Corel installer would give Debian a big jump forward. Debian's installation, especially the awkward dselect, is definitely its weakest point.

Nothing wrong with Debians installer, but...

IMHO there's nothing wrong with Debians installer, but it requires some Linux knowledge and is therefore unsuited for newbies. A graphical installer which installs a complete ready-to-use system (KDE, Gnome, Apache, Office apps etc.) with some mouseclicks would certainly give Debian a nice boost. Btw, there exists a very nice Debian-based Live Linux Filesystem named Knoppix [knopper.net] (in German). Its hardware auto-detection is better than what I experienced with Mandrake, so maybe whoever wants to build a Debian installer might want to have a look at it.

In my (university) environment I noticed that most start with Mandrake, Red Hat or SuSE and sooner or later realize that RPM is a nightmare for keeping a system up-to-date. Then they try Debian and are blown away by its ease of use (me included).

Some thoughts

"With this article we'd like to ask all Debian developers and experienced users out there for feedback on an idea we've had."

I wonder why they haven't posted anything on the Debian mailing lists...

The Debian people are by the way already working on a better installer. Woody will be the last release that uses the current one. This new installer will use aptitude instead of dselect for example.

Also, Linux User only plans for i386 support. Check this page [debian.org]. Debian supports many architectures, and the installer should work on all of them. Also, remember that Debian is being ported to non-Linux kernels. The Hurd is coming along nicely, and will probably released in Woody+1, and people are starting on a port to NetBSD. Again, the installer should support these kernels.

Why only for Debian?

I would like to see a package manager for KDE (and those who do Gnome, probably want one for Gnome;)), and one package system for *BSD/Linux. Is there a single good reason to have a bunch of different ones? Especially knowing how good Red Hat is at doing anything (need I remind you of gcc 2.96.x for example...).

It's the same kernel, there are no need for special packages for different distributions. How come the linux distributions can't cooperate worth shit? If they want to add value to their distributions (such as is done with MacOS X and Windows XP, it's the same idea) that's great, but don't add different solutions to the same problem without _really_ adding anything. I am sure ever single linux user would love to be able to download the same package regardless of what distro you are on. And belive me, all those who try to support linux (iNTEL with their great compiler, nVidia with drivers, etc) will have a much easier time.

Then you can have your own package manager, like debian apt-get or a full blown bloated "want to be netscape and do everything by ourselves" super GUI app with IM, mail and a word processor.

documentation

Debian does not need a new installer. I, as a newbie, read the installation guide, sat in #debian on irc.openprojects.net and asked questions when i got stuck, and installed it and compiled a kernel in about 6 hours. (RedHat took me 1 hour, but I didn't understand a thing about the system.) What Debian needs a well indexed book of all the typical problems that people go to #debian with. It should have a list of common and not so common hardware and their chipsets and what kernel modules are needed. It should explain what packages what users might want, and why. It should explain Debian's init script setup. It should have a chapter each dedicated to apt/apt-get/dpkg/dselect, kpkg, networking, modems, cd burning, sound, printing, and XFree86. It should have some examples of files likely found in /etc. It should explain every option in the kernel configuration and suggest why you would or would not need it. It should be sure not to go over the head of newbies. If it is downright boring and unreadable to experts, fine, its not for them. I'd have gladly paid $50 for a book like that.

A web site where people could post exactly what hardware they had and exactly what they did to set up their system would be great. Do a search for your hardware, read what other people did, get yours set up, and post your list.

Need a better pre-installer

What I'd really like to be able to do is to sit down at a fully installed Linux system and run a program that lets me specify out the hardware configuration of my system and the packages that I want to install on it. It should allow me to choose whether to install stable, testing or unstable. It should inquire whether I have a network connection I'm willing to install the system over. It should then compile a static kernel from my /usr/src/linux directory to my specification and build a bootable ISO image that I just need to boot on the target system to run the entire install. Ideally it would be robust enough that all I'd have to do is hand it to a user with the instructions, "Just boot this. It'll solve all your problems."

No they must be stopped!

For reasons unknown to any living man since the dawn of time the debian installer has been the gates to the distro of the geek. It has protected us from the suits, script kiddies and those evil "home users" who legends say may even have regular sex. If these people bridge the gap between us and society the results could be disasterous, what if the world sees inside the geek safe-haven that is debian! KEEP THE NON GEEKS OUT!

What's the target group?

I've read a number of good recomendations here from make it scalable to make it pointy-clicky to make it feature rich, etc. But it seems to me that anyone reading Linux User magazine would be a different set of users that those who might pick it up at best buy.

I think anyone reading the magazine probably has already tried Linux and have probably run it for awhile (perhaps not regularly, but at least as their desktop for a short amount of time). Do these people need the most user friendly installing?

I'm no expert at Linux either, but if I was a subscriber to the magazine, I would look for something different, not necessarily easy. I'm not afraid to try new and potentially difficult things, but I don't want the same crap over again.

I think Debian is a good choice, since it is different and very handy to use. If I'm joe-blow SuSE in Germany who never tried another distribution, I might be enticed by the CD that came with my magazine (1000 free hours of Linux!).

If I was currently a Potato user, I would probably be excited if my magazine came with a fresh copy of Woody when it's released. Then again, does the typical reader of a Linux mag really wait for a new copy of their OS to come with a magazine?

I dunno, I think y'all might be targetting the wrong user demographic.

What it isn't

Straightforwardness is not what the deb installer is. I had 7.1, it was awful, so awful I never finished the install and waited for my slack 8 CD. The M-68K version installs with pretty much the same installer as OBSD/68K which is a good installer. The only way to make a good text install is to have it be straightforward and simple to use, not to mention putting all options in one spot so the user can decide. Help and extended info should be avalible for all packages, and Slackware has failed in my opinion on one thing, SuSE lets you pick from all the packages at once, which is why I believe YaST is king. Debian should look at Slackware's and SuSE's setup tools for inspiration, as a blend between the two would be nearly as perfect as one can get.

Are all distros for beginners?

I use Debian, I absolutely love it. I don't think the installation process is that bad, but I should not fail to mention that I didn't get it right the first time I tried it.

Of course, it wasn't the first Linux distro that I installed. I started with Redhat 6.2. I got frusterated with that because I couldn't figure out how to compile a kernel in Redhat, and all of the docs I found that were Redhat specific said don't recompile your kernel unless you ABSOLUTELY know what you're doing.

Then I tried Mandrake, and after using that for awhile I managed to compile my first kernel, but I still wasn't completely happy because I found it hard to configure.

I tried Slackware, and oh did I like that. The config files in /etc were super easy to modify, but the package management system left a little to be desired.

This whole time I was learning, and becoming better at using a Linux OS. I was seeing the different types of packages out there, rpm, tgz, and the one I hadn't used yet, deb. So I had to give debian a try. Like I said, I didn't get it right the first time, although the installation is easier than Slackware. Once I did though, and I discovered apt-get, I was hooked. I now have three machines running woody and one running potato and I'll never switch to anything else.

It's not the distro for beginners. It doesn't have to be. It's a good distro, perhaps the best, and it's not for beginners. There is nothing wrong with that.

Debian needs an installer?

Once the base system is up and installed (including /etc/apt/sources.list), the best "installer" is

apt-get install [name of software I need] (repeat as needed for all your preferred applications)

It will get all dependencies and the like for you. Setting up the base system is not too hard and only a few questions need to be asked (timezone, partitioning, ...). That and "apt" is really the best installer available for any Linux distribution at this time, IMHO. I'd never use anything but Debian again.

yes...

...but can I install it on my Dreamcast? ;)

The Installer Baffles Me

Well, this is great to hear.

I built a new computer on Saturday, and I'd hoped to finally make the switch to Debian. Starting in 1994, I was a Slackware kind of guy. Somewhere in there I made the Red Hat transition. Starting about 8 months ago, I switched to Mandrake. Saturday, I was going to switch to Debian.

At least, that was the idea. The installer was less than descriptive. It failed to recognize my IBM Deskstar 40GB on a Promise RAID IDE controller -- both parts that are reportedly fine. At least, I think that it failed -- the error message was brief and undescriptive, without further recourse or details available. No problem, I thought, I'll do a net install. No such luck: it wouldn't recognize my 3Com Fast Etherlink. Not exactly a crazy off-brand of NIC. Not having any way to dump the terse error messages to a file, I did my best to memorize/scrawl the messages and Google for them, but that yielded no useful results.

With another installer (well, not Slack :), I would have tried a different class of installation, been given a more helpful error message...something. I can appreciate the concept of Debian being less-than-user-friendly. I can see how some people would like the inaccessibilty, to keep out the riff-raff. Maybe, on the basis of the fact that I couldn't properly work the installer, I am the riff-raff.

But, hey, Mandrake sure does work nice on this shiny new system.

-Waldo Jaquith

People that can't read.

The only people that think Debian is hard to install are people that can't read. The hardest part of it is the fdisk (easy to me). Other than that it is just hitting the enter key and your done.

Friendly to which users?

Anyone who utters the phrase "user-friendly" ought to be required to define the word "user". Most of the stuff I've dealt with which was called "user-friendly" was actively hostile to the kind of user who's been herding computers for a quarter of a century and expects them to just do as they're told with no back-talk. I'm always asking vendors to make their software less user-friendly and more usable.

Let's hope that this doesn't lead Debian in the wrong direction.

Where is the Storm Installer?

We remember Storm Linux, right? While I do not use it today, I still find it the most user-friendly installer for Debian --- select usual preferences (keyboard, language, blah blah) and have the installed figure out the 'hardware stuff.'

With Storm long gone, would it not be legit to utilize the Storm installer for another product?

there is a new installer

If they had done there research, they would know that there is a new installer for debian all written, it will be included with the next release of debian, woody, which should happen real soon now(tm).

The INSTALLER?!?

I really don't understand what all of the hubbub is about the installer program. If it works, and gives you a workable system with a shell prompt, who cares how 'pretty' it is?

Granted, Debian's (current) installer isn't very user-friendly. However, it wasn't an issue for me, really. I've been through numerous RH installs (pre 6.2) and IIRC the installer wasn't much different from Debian's. RH6.2+ might have changed, but I've never used them, so I don't know.

But hell, I installed an OLD version of Debian - 2.0 - and apt'ed up to Sid without a hitch. The installer is only a very miniscule part of the picture. After the system is working, do you REALLY tell yourself, "Boy, that was a really froody installer," or do you amaze your friends and family with apt-get?

I love the current installer!

http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/woody/main/d isks-i386/3.0.21-2002-03-19/images-1.44/bf2.4/ [debian.org] -- 2 floppies, network install, 10 minutes (depending on your bandwidth).

If you ask me, it can't get much better than that.

Install

A story: Back way back when Debian was still using a 2.0.36 kernel (they did finally move to 2.2, right? ;) ), and I was a Linux virgin, my family decided they wanted to have all the networked computers in the house on the net at once. We were using an absolutely horrible piece of software called WinGate, may it die a thousand deaths, to do that and it just wasn't very satisfying. More to the point, I couldn't play Half-Life over it. Fortunately, we had a spare 486 lying around. My dad mentioned he heard of something called Linux that could do what WinGate was(n't) doing, so I downloaded some Debian install floppy disks. I was somewhat computer-savvy, so I wasn't terribly upset at having to manually specify what was in my computer during the install, or play with partitions - I mean, that stuff you've gotta do in Windows, so what's the big deal about doing it with a console interface? It installed and worked fine _the first time_. I didn't have X11 (that didn't really fit on the floppies), but I had been fine with DOS, so command lines were fine. I will grant you that I probably knew more about computers than the average joe at that point in time, but I really think that reasonably intelligent person who knows what's in their computer could install Debian with no problems back then. It's probably more true nowadays. And, yes, I did make it into a router with a simple kernel compile and some patches. :) My GPA went straight to hell after that, too much Counter-Strike... -Erwos

Use Libranet if debian is not for you!

Everyone is complaining about that Debians installer is to hard. But there has been several attempts on creating easy installers for Debian such as Stormix, Corel, and Progeny. Now there is Xendros (former Corel) and Libranet. Libranet is an uptodate debian with an easy installer.

If you want them to continue and improve there work, support them!

Journalling FS

While we're on the topic of improving Debian's installer, the only thing (and I do honestly mean the *only* reason) that kept me from installing it this weekend was the fact that there is no option for a journalled filesystem "out of the box." I don't care if it's ext3, JFS, XFS, ReiserFS, or whatever. And no, installing ext2 on one of two large partitions, placing the OS on the ext2 partition, recompiling the kernel, formatting the other partition with a journalled filesystem, moving all of the info from one partition to the other, editing GRUB's config, etc. does not count as "Debian supports journalling filesystems already."

If people are serious about making Debian userfriendly, we need to avoid things like this after a power outage (or bumped powercord):

Enter root password to run fsck:
%

Now what? I know, I'm sure many of you know, but what's a casual user to think of this? Add to this the fact that if they run fsck without the correct parameter, they'll be answering yes/no questions until they decide that it just isn't worth it and they install a different distribution or (quite likely) give up on Linux altogether and grab that Win2K CD.

I would love to help out here, but I have no real experience with Debian and its installer. I have some free time though and a programming background; If someone wants some help, reply to this post with some project info.

My $0.02

Progeny Installer

What ever happened to the very effective Progeny installer ? Like the post above says, it has very good hardware detection and a useful graphical user interface. The last I heard about that installer, it was said that it would be absorbed into the main debian distribution. Does anyone know what has happened to it ?

Conectiva's Modular Instaler

Why not using Conectiva Linux's Modular Instaler (MI) ? http://distro.conectiva.com.br

Conectiva has one of the best GPL instalers.
It is:
- modular, so you can easily create new modules,
- light (the ncurses version needs less than 8MB of RAM)
- apt centric, it should be really easy to adapt it to use deb instead of
rpm. and apt can be the hook here.

Why does every distro want newbies?

It seems that, in the push for "Linux on the desktop", everyone assumes that every distribution should be aimed at the "newbie" Linux user. From my perspective, this is the wrong approach.

The strength of the distribution approach is that each can be a tool that is used in different situations. I can use Mandrake or RedHat for my desktop and Slack or Debian for my servers. That puts the responsibility for user friendliness on people who WANT to specialize in it, while putting the responsibility for speed/performance/stability/etc on those who want to deal with those issues.

It's all a matter of what the developers decide is important to their retaining user base. After all, if there's one thing we should learn from Microsoft, it's that it's very difficult to be all things to all people, and a product that tries to do everything does very little well. That's no way to win popularity.

I'll use the age-old cliche of my toolbox. I know that to tighten a bolt, I use a wrench. I know that I need a hammer to handle a nail. In the same respect, I know that Mandrake and RedHat have put together very newbie-friendly distributions. On the other hand, I know that if I need a minimalist or tightly controlled install, I know that I can turn to Debian or Slackware.

I guess all I'm saying is that it's a very difficult thing to try to go from expert-oriented to newbie-oriented, and it's not necessarily a step that SHOULD be taken in all regards. Consider your user base and type of tool they consider your product to be, whether you'll lose the ability to use it for that purpose (and therefore lose that user base), and whether the risk and sacrifice is really a good idea overall. Consider that there is a lot of time and money ahead of you in the new market you'll be joining, and that you'll be sacrificing all of the time you've already spent getting to where you are in the market you're now leaving.

Maybe the secret to world domination is diversification. Windows' approach is unification, which gives them an AWEFUL large set of tasks to master in a single product. Things that you and I know should never really go together - like solitaire on a router. Pick a market and dominate it. If the distributions all pick different markets and dominate them, then the umbrella - Linux - will dominate all markets.

Re:Too anal for user-friendliness

No. This debian user thinks that if someone isn't prepared to investigate a simple installer (what? read things? that'd never do) then they'll *NEVER* *bother* reading dpkg(8) and apt(8) - ie their on-going use will be crap too so no harm in "dissuading" the ignorant *and* lazy arses at install-time.
But ultimately "dissuading" is the wrong way of looking at it anyway. It works, it *is* simple - dead simple, just cursor-keys tab and enter - and there's no need to go around sticking pretty buttons on it that make people think "what does this circle with a triangle underneath it mean?".

GUI installers: Pfui.

Re:Are you good enough to use debian?

I'm actually wondering how they plan on making it more user friendly. I hope they stay away from graphical installers- or if they do use one, offer the text mode as well.(I have slow machines)

small changes could be made as well, I'll give them that. I tried debian after dinking around with redhat, slackware, and mandrake... couldn't deal with the installer, so I went back to redhat... then I tried sorcerer...
After a week of irritation, I tried debian again and it slid right in. after experiencing the joy and wonder of apt, I quickly changes all of my boxen over from redhat, but I still had that faint memory of it being a difficult installer- even though I don't remember why.

I also like that they offer a CD in their mag- pretty soon linux distro's will be as plentiful as those stupid AOL disks.

Re:Too anal for user-friendliness

# Storm tried and failed.
# Progeny tried and failed.
# Corel tried and failed.


So many companies try because there is clearly a market for an easy debian installer. The benefits and power of debian are wanted by many, but inaccessible to a large crowd who just can't grasp the current installation system. These companies are systematically failing because the existing debian community really doesn't want a proprietary solution, and doesn't want to commit to a solution not controlled by the community.

This will continue until a [Ff]ree installer that assumes less system knowledge is integrated into mainstream debian.

Re:Too anal for user-friendliness

You know, I used Debian for several years. I was drawn to it for ideological reasons.
...
The problem with Debian is in the maintenance and upgrading.

I've also used Debian for many years. I was drawn to it initially in the pre apt days for its stronger security reputation, but I stuck with it due to its strength at the very thing you quote as its weakness. Debian is extremely easy to maintain and upgrade for lengthy periods of time. A Debian system can be kept up-to-date for many years without having to reinstall, or even having to dig out the installation cd.

Most experienced Linux admins can secure any reasonable Linux distribution. Given that, the primary thing a distribution needs to do to be of worth is allow one to easily add new packages with complex dependencies (apt) and to upgrade packages for the entire the system and easily obtain security updates (apt).

Re:They need to use RH's install

Actually, to the contrary there are lots of reasons why dpkg is still superior to rpm:

1. dpkg has configuration options that, when needed, will prompt the user and ask how he/she would like the package to behave. With RPM, you don't have that option.
2. dpkg and apt on Debian work very nicely together to provide more official packages than any other distrobution (3,900+ on Potato). Sure, you can type 'up2date --nox packageName' and get RH to install a package with dependencies taken care of, but only the relatively few packages that RH officially includes in their distro. And if you download RPMs from contrib.redhat.com you're really taking your chances since those are packages uploaded by Joe Shmoe and not officially support or tested by RH.
3. With up2date, you're also stuck using the RHN. If you want to use it for more than one machine you either have to pay RH or go to their website each time and switch to another machine. With Debian, you can apt-get update|install|upgrade on however many machines you want, using whatever mirror you want from an endless list. Now there's nothing wrong with RH charging for this. They are a company and they have to make money. Plenty of other companies would save a lot of money if they bought a RH CD install kit, wiped Windows off their servers and purchased RHN licenses for all the boxes. It's just that with Debian, they wouldn't have to go through that hassle.
4. If you want to upgrade your whole entire system to the next Debian release, all you do is edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file to grab the new distro (i.e.: change instances of 'potato' to 'woody'), then type 'apt-get update;apt-get upgrade'. After it downloads, installs and configures your new packages... you have the latest version. And you dont' even have to reboot unless you separately upgrade the kernel (and want to use it).

Re:Are you good enough to use debian?

> Edit bytes at offset 508 and 509. Use "dd" to write it to a floppy.

Or you could use the rdev command, which does exactly that, but a whole lot easier.

man rdev

Re:Too anal for user-friendliness

Storm, Corel, and Progeny also don't constitute Debian proper, although Progeny came closest. There was no guarantee that straight-up Debian packages would work cleanly with those distros, so they really couldn't satisfy someone who wanted just Debian with a nice installer.