Debian

[Faust]

Im thinking of getting the Debian linux distribution to replace Mandrake. Does anyone out there have any opinions / views re Debian? Anything important I should know?

[voidmain]

Debian is my second favorite distro right behind Red Hat. It's an *excellent* distro. Just keep in mind it's not going to have that fancy dancy installer you have with Mandrake.

[creedon]

I use Debian exclusivly, and void's right; it's an excellent distro, but it's rather a steep climb to install.  There are alternatives, though.  One of Debians main goals is a GUI installer for their next release, currently "testing" (Sarge).  Of course, ince Debian has no fixed schedule for releases, it could be a while.  My suggestion, if you're not real confident in your ability to install "pure" Debian would be LibraNet; it's the best Debian-based distro out there; I've used it, and it's almost indistinguishable from Debian; the main difference is LibraNets "adminmenu" app; it allows you to configure devices from the desktop that are usually fairly difficult for a newbie to do.  The installer is somewhat easier than the default Debian system, but it's still ncurses based; not impossible, but you have to READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!  If you purchase LibraNet, there's lifetime assistance available; they DO take good care of their customers.  I think the latest release is around $55.00 US, but it's a real nice intro to Debian, with a lot less pain>

[Master of Reality]

hmmmmmm... I might give debian a try some time soon. I happen to have some extra space on my machines.

[creedon]

quote:Originally posted by The Master of Reality / B0b:
hmmmmmm... I might give debian a try some time soon. I happen to have some extra space on my machines.

I'd suggest at least a gig of space; not that Debian is a space hog- you can install in as little as 20 Mb, but that's really barebones.

[Master of Reality]

do i really need to download all 9 discs to install debian? (by extra space i meant about 20Gb)

[Faust]

Thanks guys!  Does anyone have the URL for where I can buy libranet?

[KernelPanic]

www.libranet.com is their homepage

[creedon]

quote:Originally posted by The Master of Reality / B0b:
do i really need to download all 9 discs to install debian? (by extra space i meant about 20Gb)

As far as I know, the full Debian CD-ROM set is 7 discs; I have a set for Debian 3.0 "Woody" (stable), but you don't need ANY CDs to install; if you have a cable connection, you can do an FTP install directly from Debians website (check the ebsite for details).  If you don't have cable, I wouldn't try the FTP install; you'll be older than me before it's done.  The advantage of the full 7 CD-ROM set is this; to do a basic install, all you need is one CD, but the other 6 CD's have EVERY APPLICATION AVAILABLE; you can setup your Debian any way you want using apt-cdrom, then, when updates to apps you have installed become available, you just "apt-get dist-upgrade" with an open internet connection, and Debian checks your installed applications, sees if upgrades are available for any installed apps, downloads, configures, and installs any upgrades BAM- just like that.  I know it sounds fantastic, and you CAN get into trouble with "apt-get" if you're not careful, but 99% of thetime, it works just like I outlined.  And even better, when Debian has a new releae, just "apt-get dist-upgrade" and you're upgraded to the new release WITHOUT a new installation; I've heard that there are Debian users that haven't shut their boxes down for years, and have never re-installed; they just "apt-get".  Vey COOL!!!

[Master of Reality]

you'd have to restart for a kernel upgrade though... but i think that changes in 2.6.* (2.5.* dev)

[Interscope]

Debian is nice... Although i have 1 tiny problem. I mounted my windoze partitions on which I downloaded nvidia drivers. It doesn't allow me to write stuff on the windoze partitions, though, so i can't extract the files in which they reside. Should I add some extra parameters(or however you call those things... I'm a n00b when it comes to 3l337 hax0r jibberish, (-= ) when mounting? Because in Slackware and Mandrake it worked fine.

BTW, I must say that i'm truly impressed that all you need to install debian is 2 floppy disks. My CDROM-Drive is screwed and it doesnt load any cdroms anymore, so I couldn't boot cds. apt-get is lovable.

[Stryker]

quote:Originally posted by Interscope:
Debian is nice... Although i have 1 tiny problem. I mounted my windoze partitions on which I downloaded nvidia drivers. It doesn't allow me to write stuff on the windoze partitions, though, so i can't extract the files in which they reside. Should I add some extra parameters(or however you call those things... I'm a n00b when it comes to 3l337 hax0r jibberish, (-= ) when mounting? Because in Slackware and Mandrake it worked fine.

BTW, I must say that i'm truly impressed that all you need to install debian is 2 floppy disks. My CDROM-Drive is screwed and it doesnt load any cdroms anymore, so I couldn't boot cds. apt-get is lovable.

if it's ntfs you'll be a lot better off if you dotn try to write, if it's fat than try doing it as root, shouldn't have a problem there.

[Interscope]

fat

no succes...

btw the command i use is
mount -t vfat /dev/hda5 /windows/d

[voidmain]

Do you get an error message? If so, what is it? Can you post the output of an "# fdisk -l" command? Does the "/windows/d" directory exist before trying to mount something on it?

If you want all users to be able to write to it you need to add the "umask=000" parameter to the mount command and/or to your /etc/fstab.

To mount it on the command line with that option you would:

# mount -t vfat /dev/hda5 /windows/d -o umask=000

But I suggest adding this line to your /etc/fstab:

Code: [Select]

Then it will mount automatically that way when you boot. Or you can manually mount it by typing:

# mount /windows/d

And of course for any of this to work the /windows/d directory has to exist prior to mounting:

# mkdir -p /windows/d

[ December 22, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[preacher]

quote:Originally posted by X11:
I have tried Debain and arrr, Red-Hat is better, i just dislike Debian because of how difficult it can be to setup. So it is my favorite before urm... here is how i feel right now on distros in general.

Red-Hat
Slackware
SuSe
Debian
Mandrake

"Wishing and wishing away as we go"

I cant believe you dislike mandrake so much. Here is my order.

Slackware
Mandrake
Red Hat
Suse
FreeBSD

Someone once told me that if I liked Slackware, I would like FreeBSD, this was not the case. I had multiple problems with Red Hat when I first tried it that werent present when I tried Mandrake for the first time. The installer for slackware is nowhere near as hard as people made it out to be, and it runs a whole hell of a lot faster than Mandrake, Red Hat, or SuSe. Since I run generally slow computers, the speed issue was the factor that put slackware ahead of all others.