I've been using debian for less than a year, and I came to it with good computer knowledge, but very little *nix knowledge. I must say, I wouldn't have the slightest clue where to begin to set up a modem, and I can't stand the cd's I burnt (the debian.org one's) but each time I have to reinstall I gain a world of understanding as to what's going on with the OS. I think I'm currently on my 4th or 5th install on this machine. I've also installed it on a gateway laptop, a sony vaio laptop, and a bunch of other desktops, all with no problems. I should point out though that all this was off the base floppies, then the net, and not cd's, I think that makes everything a lot easier. I've been just as frustrated as anyone working with debian, and my friends who are veterans of linux just told me to RTFM before I even knew what that meant. But only a few months later I have windowmaker-gnome running, I can listen to mp3's, use netscape, corel, aol-IM, icq, play movies, basically everything I did in windows save burning CD's (I have xcdroast and it starts burning then screws up, some scsi errors). Now I have a system that I reboot only when I want to. My point is that the pain in the ass of getting everything working really is good in the long run, if you have to muck around and ask people questions, you are forced to learn how everything works. Then when you need to fix/change something you at least already know where to look.
I put together a system for my girlfriend, and this will be her first computer. I regret not making her install everything and deal with the problems, because it will take her much longer to learn the OS than if she had done it herself. -Aaron Solochek [EMAIL PROTECTED] That being said... Can anyone point me to, or give me a detailed guide to using dselect and multi-cd? I've tried using both the first and second cd, and I use "scan" for all the questions it asks. Then when I update, it returns error status 1, complaining about Packages.cd.gz then "zcat: stdin: not in gzip format" as I mentioned earlier, this was off the debian site. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > To All-- Thanks for the feedback, and my sincere congratulations to those > of you who've mastered the intricacies of Debian. For years I've been > hoping to find an OS that would get me out of Windows, and I had high > hopes Linux might be it, but all I have to show for scores of hours is > the immense frustration I earlier expressed. > After running setserial and wvdial, disabling PnP, and many other > efforts, I finally, to overcome the system's refusal to detect my modem > (Diamond Supra 288i SP), attempted to re-install (grasping at straws), > but now it tells me "there was a problem" extracting the base system > files from the CD-rom, so re-installation has failed and I have nothing > for weeks of effort.-- Max > > ___________________________________________________________________ > Get the Internet just the way you want it. > Free software, free e-mail, and free Internet access for a month! > Try Juno Web: http://dl.www.juno.com/dynoget/tagj. > > -- > Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] < /dev/null
