Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : Debian-based distros - recommendations?
3eyes
06-26-2003, 05:09 AM
Yep, it's another of those kind of threads. :D ;)
Seriously, for those who use a Debian-based distro, tell us which one and what you really like about it. I keep hearing that almost all Debian-based ones are good but Debian itself is nightmarishly difficult to install. And I do have room for another distro on the other computer (when I can peel my husband off of it).
ven0m
06-26-2003, 05:13 AM
Debian itself is nightmarishly difficult to install
It's not difficult to install if you know your hardware and read the instructions. So give debian a go, you'll learn alot.
shadowrider
06-26-2003, 01:00 PM
try pgi installer (http://hackers.progeny.com/pgi/) for newer debian installation method
Originally posted by ven0m
It's not difficult to install if you know your hardware and read the instructions. So give debian a go, you'll learn alot.
agreed
Debian is super easy to install IMHO but anyway... you can always go the knoppix route. Install Knoppix from the cd and then update to debian unstable.
Lots of ways to go really :)
Tulluin
06-26-2003, 01:26 PM
Originally posted by pr0c
[BInstall Knoppix from the cd and then update to debian unstable. [/B]
If you can't install regular Debian you definitely do not want to be running unstable. Too many bugs and issues.
I'd just get a Debian 3.0 net install CD. It's really easy to install.
Originally posted by Tulluin
If you can't install regular Debian you definitely do not want to be running unstable. Too many bugs and issues.
I'd just get a Debian 3.0 net install CD. It's really easy to install.
Thats not true. I've been using Debian unstable for a long time and I've not noticed any major bugs or any worth mentioning. As a matter of fact it adds in lots of usefull utilities that make it easier to use than woody such as hardware detection etc.
mrBen
06-26-2003, 01:54 PM
Hmm - tricky. Depends entirely what you want.
Lindows, while slated, will probably give you the most Windows-like experience.
Xandros is supposed to be very good, and very easy top install and maintain.
Libranet is well thought of even among uber-geeks
Debian itself is actually not as hard as people think to install.
Lemming
06-26-2003, 02:06 PM
I'd really like to know where this myth of Debian being difficult to install came from..
ven0m
06-26-2003, 02:25 PM
I'd really like to know where this myth of Debian being difficult to install came from..
From people that don't read the instructions and expect the installation to be like windows i.e. click next about ten times and then the congratulations you've installed MS Windows pops up.
I'm sick and tired of people complaining about how hard it is, then scare other users of their horror stories of how they can't start X, etc, etc. Both Debian and Gentoo get the same amount of flack in that area. But both have the easiest package management tools going. A couple of days installing is nothing compared to the life-time of hassle you get with some of the other distro's!
shadowrider
06-26-2003, 02:39 PM
well...i understand when people say it's hard to install debian.
when i first tried debian and had been using red hat about 2 days, it was awful for me.
when i tried the old way of installing potato, i was actually scared with all the questions. but after about 3-4 times repeating the installation ( and successfully got to pick all the packages, installed gnome 1.4), i was no longer afraid, and finally i did learn a lot.
Originally posted by ven0m
From people that don't read the instructions and expect the installation to be like windows i.e. click next about ten times and then the congratulations you've installed MS Windows pops up.
I'm sick and tired of people complaining about how hard it is, then scare other users of their horror stories of how they can't start X, etc, etc. Both Debian and Gentoo get the same amount of flack in that area. But both have the easiest package management tools going. A couple of days installing is nothing compared to the life-time of hassle you get with some of the other distro's!
exactly. slackware gets the same flack as well and it's not hard either.
Slackware's the easiest out of the three I think; partition using cfdisk (so easy I used it without any problems first time), pick your partitions, select the software and install. All that's after that is lilo and that's about it. X is easy to get going as well with xf86config.
For Debian-based distros, try Knoppix, but if you don't want to be bothered to remove all the bloat, try Morphix.
carrja99
06-26-2003, 03:58 PM
Originally posted by Lemming
I'd really like to know where this myth of Debian being difficult to install came from..
My first distro was Debian. And this was also back in 99 or 98, so it may have been alot different than it is now (at least I think so!). It dumped me ito the console (with no idea how to start X-Windows), nothing was working (I couldnt even access my floppy drive!) and after about ten days I gave up. Of course, I had no idea about how to use linux... I felt I had accomplished something when I learned "ls" instead of "dir"
Finally, I got back to linux again with Mandrake 7.* (wasnt on it long), moved to Mandrake 8.2, then to Red Hat 8. Felt comfortable for awhile, then heard all these good things about Debian and gave it a try again....
I had it completely installed and configured to my liking in about 2 hours (new recompiled kernel with only what I need too!).
shadowrider
06-26-2003, 04:11 PM
but yea ..back to the original topic, another debian-based distro that i think it's easy to install for beginners would be libranet.
it was almost as easy as installing mandrake.
raz0rblade
06-26-2003, 04:23 PM
Gentoo was ub3r easy for me to install, it's just time consuming. The debian install on my server took me 10mins flat, install base packages reboot install ssh and tada ! done.
3eyes
06-27-2003, 01:53 AM
Wow! Thanks for all the suggestions & info! Gives me a lot to think about!
I did a little research on installing Debian Woody. One site, http://www.aboutdebian.com/install3.htm, has almost a walkthrough and it doesn't sound that hard. Yeah, a bit more difficult than, say Mandrake or Red Hat, but not nearly as bad as I've heard so much. Guess that goes to show that you need to find out these things for yourself instead of just believing the "conventional wisdom".
Thanks again!
z0mbix
06-27-2003, 05:21 AM
Debian GNU/Linux is by far the best Debian based distro.
shadowrider
06-27-2003, 11:08 AM
Originally posted by 3eyes
Wow! Thanks for all the suggestions & info! Gives me a lot to think about!
I did a little research on installing Debian Woody. One site, http://www.aboutdebian.com/install3.htm, has almost a walkthrough and it doesn't sound that hard. Yeah, a bit more difficult than, say Mandrake or Red Hat, but not nearly as bad as I've heard so much. Guess that goes to show that you need to find out these things for yourself instead of just believing the "conventional wisdom".
Thanks again!
oh..there was another site that gives you debian walkthrough (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2016)
3eyes
06-27-2003, 05:29 PM
Well, Libranet Essentials seems to be gone. Now only the full version is available and it's past my reach (yeah I'm poor).
That means all of the Debian-based ones aren't free now except Debian itself, not counting the live-cd distros like Knoppix (which is really great, btw).
Funny, Xandros is often rumored to be the best one and now it's the cheapest - $30 some dollars for Standard without all the prop software to run Windows apps.
Oh well. I'm glad I found out that Debian wasn't so hard to set up after all!
And thanks for the link, Shadowrider!
Originally posted by 3eyes
Funny, Xandros is often rumored to be the best one and now it's the cheapest - $30 some dollars for Standard without all the prop software to run Windows apps.
Well i used xandros for about 2 weeks... i went back to debian.
WHY?
They rename all all the applications, i don't want to see XMMS called Multimedia Player and GAIM called INstant messenger etc. They are also very out of date, KDE 2.2 with not indication of upgrading. And finally, if you use debian to upgrade stuff for xandros you risk screwing it up and ending up with a debian box anyways..
sclebo05
06-27-2003, 08:31 PM
I was asking a similar question to yours a while back. I run Knoppix 3.2 from the hard drive, but i also liked Libranet Essentials 2.0 quite a bit. you can still find the iso if you check linuxiso.org (http://linuxiso.org) , a good find if you are as strapped for cash as i am. try both, you might like what you find.
3eyes
06-28-2003, 04:22 AM
Originally posted by sclebo05
I was asking a similar question to yours a while back. I run Knoppix 3.2 from the hard drive, but i also liked Libranet Essentials 2.0 quite a bit. you can still find the iso if you check linuxiso.org (http://linuxiso.org) , a good find if you are as strapped for cash as i am. try both, you might like what you find.
"An error occured while loading ftp://ftp.fsn.hu/pub/CDROM-Images/libranet/2.0/libranet-2.0-essential.iso:
The file or directory /pub/CDROM-Images/libranet/2.0/libranet-2.0-essential.iso does not exist."
Sigh......
It must be pretty recently that they did this - just in time for me to not be able to download it, that is. :rolleyes: Betcha a lot of other people are going to be disappointed too.
Some people just get weird errors while trying to install debian. I did. Then I just shrugged and tried another distro.
It didn't seem like it'da been too difficult to install. The damn thing just couldn't mount a swap partition during the install. I couldn't even manage it from the console. This was on a net install.
Probably fixable / avoidable, but I only tried for an hour or so before giving up.
chort
06-30-2003, 02:27 AM
Debian got a really bad name because they were still using that crappy package selector called dselect when all the other distros had something much more civilized. It took me hours of going through page after page in dselect to get Debian setup both times I used it.
The one instance where I stuck with Debian for a good while was when I used a Stormix disk to install. Stormix had an excellent GUI installer that was much, much more friendly than dselect. Unfortunately, Stormix is out of business.
Debian itself is very nice once you get it running, but dselect is an abomination compared to the installers used by Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc.
I suppose you could just install the bare minimum packages from the start and then apt-get everything else you wanted. It would still be more painful than the other major distros, though.