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Debian 2.0




On Thu, 20 Aug 1998 javilk@polly.mall-net.com wrote:

> 
>    30 second post evaluation of Turbo Linux:

here's my own, of Debian 2.0.

>    Nice install system.  Bit touchy if you accidently pop the CD-ROM drive
> open part way though, as I did while trying to verify the serial number so

well, Debian booted nice and clean of my DVD drive, recognizing it fine as
an ATAPI cdrom (like RedHat, SuSE and Rhapsody before it), but the install
program does not have an autodetect for the drive afterwards for mounting
and installing. I chose /dev/hdd at least two times (or was it three?)
during the initial installation for different parts of the install (can't
the installation program remember it once and not ask it again for the
second mounting?). this will format the disk (no upgrade path) and install
the base system, then reboot to continue with dselect (only lilo offered,
no loadlin).

dselect was written by a SadoMasochistic putz. package selection is linear
and hard to get around, help screens pop up every 3-4 selection to notify
you of dependencies (OK! I understood the dependencies concept after the
first time, can we skip the help screen after the first two times?). I
prefer to know about dependencies AFTER I made all the selections...

>     Kernel is 2.0.33, not RH's 34, so it might be more stable.  That I
> don't know.

2.0.34 on Hamm

> 
>     X runs beautifully!  This on a machine that I could not get X up on no
> matter what we tried.  Beautiful! Makes metro look sick!

well, install unpacked ALL the Xservers into my harddisk without asking
which ones I really needed, and tried to run XF86Setup after each package
(which didn't work ofcourse, since some basic config files it needed
weren't installed yet). I went into dselect a second time to remove all
the unneeded Xservers and ran XF86Setup a second time and everything went
smooth (1152x854 resolution is finally an option!) but X still wouldn't
start. apperently /usr/X11R6/bin/X is a place holder or some wrapper,
which did not function well. for lack of time I simply removed it and
linked to the SVGA server and X came up on the screen.

then I decided "ok, NOW I can put xdm on", it was an option during
installation, but I didn't risk it since at the time X was not configured
yet. I naiively thought that it was just a matter of switching to runlevel
5 and proceded to look into /etc/inittab (using vi, pico/pine are not
bundled in debian!) and saw that not only xdm was not waiting at runlevel
5, the entire system was default-ly set to runlevel 2 at boot time, unlike
any other machine I have seen so far... runlevel 3 seemed to be an exact
replica of runlevel 2, so why the odd number? immittating SunOS's two
runlevels on a SysV system?!

Another annoyance: the basic config profile I chose has FTAPE in it
(pretty standard, eh?). I skipped it's config initially, since I don't
have the hardware, and made a mental note to go back and remove it later.
when I tried to remove it told me it's "unstable" and I should try
reinstalling before attempting a remove, a reinstall didn't work, a
reconfigure didn't come up when I asked for it (all in dselect for now)
and uninstall won't work either (see above). I will therefore try again,
during my second config pass, to make it disappear, when I take my newbie
cloak off and start reading the man pages (which I intentionally AVOIDED
reading so far, seeing how far into the installation I can go with only my
common sense)

finally, now that X starts and the various WMs automatically register the
installed apps in their menues (not ALL the apps, but the highest number
of them I've seen for a distro), but.. but.. but... why can't I choose to
switch to Afterstep? :-) I'll have edit my .xinitrc for that I guess...

that's all for now, when I'll have time to look at that machine again,
I'll rant some more... generally Debian has a really cool collection of
apps and packages with it and is probably pretty cool for a home machine,
but it's REALLY far from becoming a server platform on my corporate LAN,
it's setup is far too unique...