> This is the stumbling block that discourages many people from using > Debian. There's a lot of development going on in 'improving' Debian > but there doesn't seem to be any movement on improving the installation > process.
I think there is actually a lot of work going on there. But as has been discussed ad-nauseum woody needs to get out so that people can see it. There are huge, good differences between installing potato and installing woody. With each release you expect to see some improvement. Since there has been long gaps in releases there have been long gaps in improvements as well. The current woody install is still far from perfect. Don't think that I believe it to be. But having releases roll out so slowly I believe to be a limiter to the speed of making improvements in the installation process. > I had to reinstall 13 times before I got Debian X to work . This is a common problem with transitioning to Debian, or really any system that has fundamental differences from things you know. I have been a from scratch OS builder for years. So for me I never thought about reinstalling the entire OS as a method to fix X. For me the first thought was "grab sources from ftp.xfree86.org and recompile". Which has a share of pain involved. Probably many people think reinstallin the OS is easier. But it is all about doing what you know and feel comfortable with. It took me a while to learn things like 'update-alternatives --edit vi' to make sure that vi was vi and not a similar but different vim. (Yes, vim is better than vi but it is not vi and the differences annoy me endlessly.) Until that revelation I had been hand hacking the symlinks in frustration and cussing out debian the entire time. Now that I have learned that part of the system I think it is a pretty cool part of the system. Don't like the ancient 'mawk' as awk? Most don't. 'apt-get install gawk' and transparently the awk links all are updated to the modern flavor. (Gawk should be the standard in the install over mawk, IMNHO.) It took me a while to learn that the dpkg "functional group of stuff" was really a whole series of related programs dpkg-*. In bash or anything else with completion type in 'dpkg' then TAB-TAB and look at all of the possible programs in the suite. Read the man page for each a few times in turn and suddenly the methodology becomes more apparent. Until that revelation I was lost. There is copius documentation. But not in any coherent way and way too much of it. The installation documentation on the www.debian.org site is particularly confusing. I have read it all several times and cannot recommend it. I hope that once I get to the point that I think I understand Debian more thoroughly that I can help to contribute improvements to that documentation. But I don't feel like I have that expertise yet and neither do I even know where to begin to contribute to those pages. > There are places in the installation process is full of surprises where > you cannot backtrack to make a correction. If there were some clues as > to what steps and options are involved in the installation BEFORE > starting it, perhaps there'd be less difficulty with the installation. Hmm... I agree that it is not clear. But in the installations I see a list of steps. I can select any of those. Some of those steps are prior steps that have already been done. Just go back and select them. You will find yourself back at the previous step. Maybe that could be made more clear but I think you can go back although perhaps at particular steps perhaps not. > How come Debian based distributions like Libranet are so much easier > to install than plain Debian? Could it be sort of an initiation to > an exclusive club? I am certain it is not intentional. Since most experts have had systems running for a long time there is less pressure at needing a good installer by experts who are most able to improve it. It has often been said that change comes because of need. People write programs to scratch an itch. If there is no itch by those with the capability to scratch then less progress is made. For example, right now I could really use some documentation. By the time I get to the point that I could write that documentation myself I will no longer need it. Therefore without any compelling reason to write it then it probably won't get written. The cycle continues. > No wonder there's so much activity on this list. I'll bet that a large > part of the problems are because of errors made in the installation. There are a few very common installation problems that pull people in repeatedly. Probably an installation FAQ or README.1st would be appropriate as an interim to putting improvements in the installation process. Documents can be updated more quickly than installation images. The mouse problems with /dev/psaux versus gpm /dev/gpmdata is one example that tripped me up until other kind souls on the network pointed me to the solution. And once shown to me then things were obvious the itch had been scratched. Bob
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