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Re: Debian 2.0



On Mon, 24 Aug 1998, Ira Abramov wrote:

> second mounting?). this will format the disk (no upgrade path) and install
                                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Of course there is an upgrade path! The Debian developers assume that if
you want to upgrade a working machine you won't be needing to boot from a
floppy!!! You don't even have to reboot the computer in order to upgrade
in most of the cases. Upgrading is done by a special script, that is on
the installation CD.


> 
> 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...

I think that after getting used to it dselect is bearable, and I like the
way it does dependencies! I think it is much better then the way RedHat
does it (When I'm getting into a problem I want to know it now, not after
finishing selecting all the packages...)
BTW: The Debian developers are aware of dselect not being that user
friendly, so in version 2.1 you'll have a much better package management
program.

> 
> > 
> >     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.
I think that Debian Handles X much better than RedHat.
First, it never installs things you don't ask it to. (It is obvious that
in spite of the fact that dselect pops up a lot of help screens, this guy
didn't bother to read them, or dselect's manual...).
Second, it seems that he didn't install the xbase package, so he didn't
get all the scripts and the wrappers.

Third: X runs beautifully for me. The Debian developers did an excellent
job! One good example (that  even he mentioned), X is not a lined version
of the server but a wrapper that handles all the things before calling the
Xserver. That way the X server doesn't even have to be suidroot.

> 
> 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?!

Had he read the documentation, he'd have found out that all he had to do
is change the line no-start-xdm in /etc/X11/config to start-xdm. That is
all the work that should be done.
I don't see any problem with the way Debian handles runlevels. In fact I
think it is done better then RedHat does it. This guy knows RedHat and is
not willing to learn new things.
Moreover, when booting single user - Debian's init asks for the root
password or lets you press CTRL-D to boot regularly. RedHat will just let
you screw the system.

When running su, the Debian version goes to the login files of the user
and changes the environment correctly (most important when `su`ing to
root, and RedHat doesn't even bother to change the path!!!)

> 
> 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...

Nope, there is an easier way. Just add the init. to AfterStep in the first
line of /etc/X11/window-managers. An easier way, would be to install
AfterStep and it asks you whether you want it to be the default wm.
BTW: If he's afraid of editing config. files, why did he choose Linux in
the first place?!?!?

> 
> 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...
> 
I think that Debian is a perfect choice for a server. I can write a lot
more why I think that Debian is better then RedHat and give many examples
(and examples where RedHat is better then Debian), but I'm tired now, 
so 
Good Night,
Liran.
---
http://www.math.tau.ac.il/~liranz/