Dependency Hell (Was: Re:)

[Mark T. Valites]

On Tue, 13 May 2003, David Dudek wrote:

> I've been curious about Debian.  Is it still a pain to install?  Is the
> installation customizeable via something like Red Hat's kickstart?  How
> easy is it to use and upgrade once it is installed?

Whether or not the install is a pain could turn into a near religous
arguement.  Personally, I really like the install, but I think the answer
to your question is yes, it can still be a pain.  You may want to download
the Knoppix images [1] - it's a graphical installer for Debian that's
gotten good reviews.  I've also heard good things about Kondara [2].
Kondara takes a Debian base & tacks on CrossOver, but there is a small fee
to get it legaly.

[1] http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2002/1104.barr.html
[2] http://www.kondara.org

Debian does have an automated install called FAI (Fully Automated
Install).  I have yet to play with it much, but it is far from Kickstart.

As for use, I can't imagine *not* having Debian.  Debian straictly adhears
to the FHS (Filesystem Hierachy Standard) [3], so you always know where
files from packages will be located.  Debian's really "smart" about
things.  If you install a package, there *will* be startup & shutdown
scripts, the config files *will* live in /etc/, etc...

[3] http://www.pathname.com/fhs/

You can't beat a Debian upgrade.  Period.

apt-get update
apt-get -u distupgrade

And every single package on your system is up to date.

Well hopefully I've convinced at least a couple people to try Debian.  I
do suggest that instead of downloading the 6 isos, you get a small
(20-30Mb) iso [4] and install the base system from that & the rest over
the network.

http://people.debian.org/~ieure/netinst/

If anyone has Debian questions, let me know.

-Mark

-- 
Mark T. Valites
Unix Systems Analyst
CIT - SUNY Geneseo
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