Fair enough, although- my original statement "The Lordsuch cd uses ancient kernel 2.2." is not incorrect, either. It does use 2.2 kernel. By default, in fact.

But ok, sure, lordsuch can do 2.4 kernel if I explicitly tell it to. One more annoying install step that helps makes my case here.

It is indeed relatively a bit hard to install Debian.
But it is not that terribly hard.
Remember the first time you learned to ride a bicycle, the first time you learned to swim?
Was it easy?
However,once you know how to do it, it would become fairly easy.
Isn't it a good practice to challenge something supposed to be hard to do?
Anyway, that's just my opinion. I am not saying Debian is the best choice.
Linux is all about free options. One may choose whatever distro he/she likes

{Note: liquigel ==> johnMG}

Rotwang, sorry for any confusion: jigdo is just a program to help you get debian iso's quickly, reliably, piece-by-piece.

Anyhow, if you aren't interested in having to know specifically what hardware is in your box, then distros like debian or slackware probably aren't for you.

You'll likely be better served by Fedora.

As an aside, I got my debian cd set from abexia. Then, sat there in front of a clean machine (no OS'es installed yet) and installed debian a number of times 'till I got it right.

IIRC, the problems I had were:

- accidentally thinking I could learn to understand and use dselect.

- using tasksel, I installed the extra ppp package, which it turns out, is not even required at all if all you want to do is use dialup and run pon and poff to connect and disconnect, respectively.

- the system kept asking me to configure stuff that I didn't yet want installed (like exim). I think changing tasksel (to give more specific choices) would help fix this issuue.

- X automatically starting up at boot-time, but it was misconfigured and the system kept trying to reboot for some reason. Eventually, I installed rcconf and shut off xdm (uninstalling xdm would've worked too), but I think I had to do that booting via install CD #1.

- not knowing if my system clock was set to GMT (would've been nice to check/change it right there)

- other stuff I can't remember since it was a while ago.

Rotwang:
buddy, there is no free lunch. Either you install a no-brainer like Mandrake or Fedora/Suse and deal with the RPMs dependency hell later on, or spend the best part of the week compiling Gentoo, or fishing for drivers on Slackware, OR you bite the bullet, read the article i gave you which helped me install Debian as a newbie with no Linux knowledge the first time i tried, it taught me how to partition with cfdisk, install a lean distro, how to use apt, i didn't know the trick of writing 'bf24' at the boot prompt, ended up with a 2.2 kernel and woody, happy as a pig in mud, thinking i was a genius, installed Woody the first time around? i didn't know sarge or sid existed, now you do, you are ahead of the game. We all go out of our ways to explain things to you but all you do is bitch about writing 'bf24', tell me how hard is it? You have to love this shit otherwise, you'll be frustrated.

So have a cold one, follow the instructions in the article, after you are thru, ask us what you want, we WILL help you, no RTFM from us, we all went thru it, but please, stop belly-aching. Download CD1 or CD5, or buy for $15 the whole set.

Somebody already mentioned to you Libranet 2.7 from www.libranet.com, minimal install=25 minutes, go for it! It's Debian Woody, automatic hardware recognition, automatic partition if you want, you can install
everything and the kitchen sink or go minimal, upgrade to Sarge or Sid and it's FREE, one cd only.

macondo

Well thanks um, brewsky-meister buddy pal duuude. But I've already given up on debian, on the advice of some of the other people who posted. I like "debian is a cult" the best.

I'll take the "no-brainers", (aka "nearly every other major distro of linux") gleefully.

My "belly-achin'" has stopped. No wait, I might write a review of debian in the distro review section. That would be a funny review. I promise not to tell anything but the truth if I do.

Rotwang ; your comments are interesting - seems a lot of the more advanced tech people in the world don't agree. Debian is the fastest growing distro in the world at the moment and has more "commercial" distro's based on it than any other including Knoppix, Libranet, Lindows etc. They must be doing something right.
Anyways, horses for courses - you tried it, didn't like it so move on. Writing a review would only draw attention to your own lack of knowledge and the inability to interpret what's on the screen in front of you ( a common trait amongst the impatient).

If you want a computer that just "does the job", go on and install Suse, Fedora or whatever (these are good distributions I think, don't misunderstand me). Debian (and Gentoo) are, as I think, for people that want to do the effort to really learn linux and get more out of their box. I will never recommend these distributions (gentoo and debian) to fresh linux users, as then you will get comments like "stone age computing". Yes indeed: stone age computing... but then build your own system from the ground up. I have never learned so much about computer software as in the half year I use debian sid (and I used suse for 1 year before).

regards,
kingka

My 2 cents:

After trying almost everything else and still not finding the Holy Grail of Linux, I decided to give Debian a shot. And I just wanna say that Debian is by far the most solid distro I've used so far -- although it did take about 3 days for me to figure out how to get it running with X11. But after that, it's really a treat! Wanna know how I installed KDE3.2.1?

# apt-get install kde

20 minutes later, it was done.

With Fedora, I installed the OS in 45 minutes. But after several days of dependency hell, I gave up on KDE 3.2. Debian is really worth the initial investment IMO.

Are you using woody, sarge or sid? Have been waiting for some to give ideas of stabilty before upgrading from KDE 3.1.5

Original install was Woody. But of course I've gotten some stuff from the SID repositories in order to boldly step into the 21st century ;-)

I can't recommend KDE3.2 highly enough. I hated KDE and used gnome until this release. It's really *really* nice and fast and solid. Only thing that ruins it is that wacky KDE tendency to put 12 million icons on every toolbar, but you can clean it up with a quick trip to the Konqueror settings dialog.

Enjoy!

use sid ... I have never used woody or sarge but never had problems with debian sid, it is stable so don't worry

go with the beta installer - works like a dream and easy.

I did a hard drive install from knoppix, changed the sources list to only debian unstable (for SID), fix broken dependencies and that was it

lynrees wrote:
> go with the beta installer - works like a dream and easy.

More info? Howto?

Sorry to quote myself but....