Disagree with you Bartman. The original is not always the best. Bringing us back to the origins of this thread, the original is useless unless you can get it installed and configured.

The open nature of linux expects, nay, demands that people examine the code that was written and seek ways to improve or otherwise modify the the original. This is the driving force that brought linux to where it is today and will be the force that thrusts linux into the future. Adapting successful ideas, programs and utilities from one distro to the another is part of this process. Users will decide whether a particular program's enhancements added to or detracted from its utility.

Knoppix's hardware detection program is widely regarded as being the best and is routinely used in many live-CD implemenations of linux. I may be wrong, but wasn't Knopper's it intention to improve on Redhat's kudzu so it could identify more types of hardware and load the proper modules?

Correct me if I'm wrong BUT NOTHING has even come close to emulating the suite that is APT + debconf. And do NOT the criticism of Debian Installer smacks of FUD? Let it be known that the Installer has to cater to the needs of some 11-12 different machine architectures and that includes obscure ones like MIPS, Debian tries to be an as INCLUSIVE a distro as it is possible. Designing an interface thar can work with ALL machine architecture with different capabilities (graphics wise, etc) requires a mammoth effort. But nevertheless, Debian Sarge Installer Beta 2 was good and Beta 3 is even BETTER. If my Chinese-educated (and at that only up to 1st year high school) 49 year-old neighbor can manage a Debian Sarge installation, there is NO excuse.

Adapting ideas is one thing BUT to claim one's tools are superior to others (when in fact they were BLATANT copies of others in terms of spirit, functionalities, design) is but plagiarism that shows up one's DECEITFUL and CORRUPTED nature and an AFFRONT to BASIC HUMAN DECENCY and MORES. In a way, I kinda enjoyed the spat between Swaret creator and Slapt-get at freshmeat.

Hey I think I've got an excuse, how about the fact that Sarge is beta. You want your distro to be judged by the coolness of it's latest beta, but if we point out bugs in it you'll undoubtedly say "hey, it's a beta, come on!" Doesn't work that way. A distro is judged on it's latest stable version.

*sigh* I rest my case. Sarge is some way off being FROZEN > KDE 3.2 just entered 'Testing' i.e. "Sarge'. For those who can't wait...the Beta Installer is ONE option to get a reasonably updated distro up and running in a matter of hours (factoring in the apt-getting needed for X and Graphical Environments e.g. KDE, Gnome, Xfce, and apps). Debian has NEVER been in the business to satisfy everybody for their whims and fancies or accomodate their every tantrum and stupidity. If Microsoft helpdesk's reply can come in the form of either a "REBOOT the system" or "REFORMAT" and hangs up on you whatever the nature of the questions asked...what can you expect from a NOT-for Profit, VOLUNTEER-based project?

There is just NO way to help folks who REFUSES to HELP themselves to be HELPED. To be honest I once promised to do that Debian installation for him but I procrastinated and procrastinated...a week later, he came up to me and invited me to his house...I must admit I was SHOCKED (actually an UNDERSTATEMENT of how I felt then, believe me ) he got it up and running ALL by himself. Mind you he has been an odd-job manual laborer most of his life and yeah I did have doubts about his "sudden" interest in computers.

Before I departed from his house, he left me with some words that kinda translates like "Son, I know I may be too old and am a little slow at picking up new skills...BUT I also do know of this OLDEN Chinese saying of living till old, learning till old and since I have a pair of functional hands and a pair of able legs and a brain that has gotten me through almost 50 years of age...I believe I can get things DONE if I work at it. I welcome help from any source if they are available but I'm NO parasite who sponges on the GENEROSITY of others." His words did left me in SHAME BUT it did affirmed there is this thing called PERSERVERENCE PAYS!

Sigh! The principal purpose of a beta is not just to show off the 'coolness' - it is to be an input to developers from the users about what bugs there are in the system. If you found a bug (mind you, an OS bug, not something you did wrong and messed up), report it to the Debian bugs list and the developers will thank you for it. If you have an exact problem doing something, put it up on the board here with the error messages and the people here can suggest methods to fix it.

I absolutely agree with that part.

...Said a man who uses Mandrake. Don't get me wrong, I like Mandrake and have used it a lot in the past, but the fact is Debian Testing (and unstable for that matter) is less buggy and more stable than any mandrake realease.

Just my 10p worth.

Well, to be fair, keep in mind that I started this thread in my attempt to try another distro. Don't make it sound like I'm coming in as a big evangelist for Mandrake. But if you want something to jab at, I'll say this- Mandrake is better than Debian because I can actually install Mandrake.

[blockquote]
Let it be known that the Installer has to cater to the needs of some 11-12 different machine architectures and that includes obscure ones like MIPS, Debian tries to be an as INCLUSIVE a distro as it is possible.
[/blockquote]

That's part of the problem. In their quest to be so inclusive they have forgotten KISS.
Really, they need to slow down on the have everything for everything and get a good solid core that consistantly properly installs on a few given platforms, and then go from there.

When it couldn't mount my install CD's, it wasn't smart enough to tell me it was having a problem - but instead, just kept asking for me to insert the disk. That's not acceptable. I got around it by switching to another console, poked around enough to see there was no /cdrom entry in the fstab, and fixed that. Your typical switcher from windows ain't gonna wanna do that.

My modem is on a PCI card. Bought it at wallmart, so it's not an uncommon piece of hardware. But mandrake doesn't ship with /dev/ttyS4 which is where it lives - since it's on a PCI card. It only had ttyS0 through ttyS3. I had to create the device node. Your typical user ain't gonna know how to do that - and won't be able to get online to ask. Fedora has a crapload of serial device nodes already created. Having too many doesn't hurt, having not enough does.

And then there are things like the deb-sigverify package (or whatever it's called) that if installed - requires that .deb's be signed to be installed. Great security feature. Only problem is - DEBIAN DOESN'T SIGN THE PACKAGES. Thus anything that gets installed after that fails, leaving the user completely clueless as to what the hell happened.

Debians a good distro - it has a lot of software available for it that integrates very well together, and it has an excellent world wide development community. But what they don't have is the focus to get it working well (the installer) for the typical desktop user who is not a unix guru and doesn't have the time or technical comprehension skills to figure out how to get through the messy install process.

So true... so true....

The problem is that MDK is like an oil tanker compared to a speed boat. My first real experience of Linux was with an old version of Corel Linux (Debian based which had a very nice installer) and then because I didn't know how to upgrade I installed Mandrake 9 which was so painfully slow I was tempted to go back to M$. Having seen what a Debian based distro was like I decided to have a go with Debian and have been with it for 18 months. There is so much to the distro that is so wonderful. Apart from apt I was using jigdo today and that is truely great. If you really want to learn go Debian. If you just want something that you can do routine work with and surf I suppose Mandrake is better than paying an arm and a leg for M$.

I will acknowledge that. I used jigdo to get my debian iso's - and it's wicked.

I'm not sure what you mean by Mandrake being slow though.

I've built several LFS systems with a minimal gnome environment - and Mandrake wasn't really any slower. Other than KDE which is a slower DE than gnome on any distro I've tried - but you can run gnome in Mandrake as well.

They both use the same source for the kernel and drivers - I don't really see how any distro would be inheritantly slower if you run the safe software on top of it.

Sure - some distro's compile with better optimizations - but I've seen gentoo optimized for athlon and it's really any faster than something compiled for 386. It just isn't.

I started with Mandrake nice one. Later I wanted to test some more an tested:
Redhead, newer Mandrake, Topologilinux, Icepack, Gentoo, Lindows, Lycoris, Xandros, Libranet, Knoppix and Debain.

Now I use a native Debian testing/sarge, with some packages from sid/unstable and KDE 3.2.1.

If you are new to linux you should not install debian, gentoo or slackware.

I think the publicitiy about gentoo is just about all that kids that would be so cool to be able to make up a source GNU/Linux. I installed it compiled all the stuff and tested it for a week after that emerge had to go for at least 2 years until my next test.

Newbies should install Xandros or Libranet, both istallers are much better than the Debain/woody installer. The Xandros installer looks much better, but the qualitiy is the same.
Everyone who can install a Win2k/XP and knows a bit about disks and partitions will be able to set up a running system in less than two hours.
Both support dpkg/apt (the debian package tools) and if you whant the newest stuff you can change to debian/testing at any time.

People who know a bit more should boot up the system once with Knoppix, write down all detected stuff and than use the newest debian netinst.

Thats pretty much the consensus when it comes to debian based distros. In essence.

I have to say this though, perhaps it is a good thing when newbies install debian/gentoo/slack because it forces them to LEARN more. Any Gentoo/debian/slack users on average are going to be more knowledegable by a large factor over those who use MDK, Xandros, Lindows (*ack curse word... it burnnnsssss*), Libranet.