On Sun, 6 Jul 1997, Brandon Mitchell wrote:
> > I installed using ftp. When deb-ftp gets packets it doesn't indicate where > > in the process it is. No estimated time is given - no "remaining packets" > > is given. > It would be a nice feature, but the debian programmers are currently busy > overhauling the dselect program, this just has to be left as a low > priority at the present time. You can always look at the file size change > as it comes in. Good. I hope some of the functionality of dselect is put in a library so that there can be several interfaces different from dselect (graphical, web, curses). I prefer dselect over the redhat-stuff only because the redhat-stuff's features are non-existent. > > Is there any help on getting X installed at all? I'm not sure that it > > appeared as part of the installation process. I searched around in dselect > > and by chance found the xbase package. > Did you look at the section headings, there are entire sections devoted to > X, split up by recommented, optional, and extra divisions. (See above > note on dselect overhauling.) Yes, but it's confusing. > > while undocumented, both dpkg and dpkg-ftp depends on gcc > > (dpkg-ftp uses dpkg --print-architecture which uses gcc) > > while undocumented, dpkg depends on perl > > ( dselect disk installation requires perl) > I'll have to double check this (didn't have the phone number of my isp > handly while testing the install disk), but I think the base install has > enough to start ppp using the pon and poff scripts and use the ftp method > of dselect to finish the installation. I'm guessing perl was included > with the base disk. > > > I'm not going to try to get you to use debian over red hat, just like I > don't try to get my mom to use linux over win 95. The fact that you are > using linux and that she is using a computer is good enough. Of course, > whenever she has a problem, I just smile, blame windoze, and walk away. > Hey don't get me wrong - I wasn't talking about debian as a whole, just that IMO - the installation isn't as good as redhat's and that it should be possible to do something about it. I think ftp installation should be a priority since this often is the only choice except for cd-installations when you're behind a firewall. CD-installations, nfs-installations and mounted installations are trivial anyway so the brains should be used to get the ftp-installation smooth. What about using the freebsd guys DNS-trick - ftp.no.debian.org would point to ftp.nvg.ntnu.no, ftp.uk.debian.org would point to somewhere in the uk etc. That way the novice would only have to know the 3166 code of his country. I think debian has something to learn from the freebsd guys - their installation includes some very nice stuff. Now, talking about debian as a whole, the other point I want to make is that debian is a bit too integrated - that is - the required base of packages is large making a "minimum" install of debian too large for some uses. Maybe better use of dependencies will fix this. I don't think the package-system should require anything but libc and libdb. If you want an interface, require curses, svgalib or xbase, but separate these interfaces from the dpkg* command-line programs. Perl et.al. shouldn't be required IMO, and dependencies on gcc is definitively not good. I don't even think dpkg should require libg++, but I'll accept it :). Is it a goal for debian not to require perl? I don't think so - and that is one of the things I don't like with debian. It seems that debian is infested with perlism. There are "smart" perl-scripts doing all sorts of things. I don't want powerful interpreters on my system and definitively not compilers - I regard them as a security risk since I want to set up my systems so that they do not accept the introduction of new executables (mounting noexec, nodev, read-only etc). It doesn't seem to be possible to do that with debian yet. Not that it's possible with redhat either, but the debian policy _should_ be to allow other types of distributions to be made based on the debian-packages. It isn't interesting to use debian-packages without using the package-system for example - so when the package-system is bloated, it just isn't feasible to make a specialized "distribution" based on debian. I had hoped that debian would stick to the GNU policy of using one implementation language - C, and only use perl as an "intermediate" step. astor -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
