On Mon, May 13, 2002 at 04:56:36PM -0500, Darren wrote: | I'm looking for comments/suggestions regarding Debian on the desktop.
| Since, I will be using it almost exclusively as a desktop, I'm most
| concerned about access to current builds of my favorite packages like KDE3,
| OpenOffice 1.0 & Mozilla 1.0RC2. Of course, OO and Mozilla have pretty good
| installers that come with them. I'm happy with those and could use their
| install programs. So, I guess I'm mostly concerned about KDE3.
Once you have your system installed you can check the available
versions of a package using the 'apt-cache' command. Eg :
$ apt-cache show mozilla-browser
mozilla-browser:
Installed: 2:0.9.9-6
Candidate: 2:0.9.9-6
Version Table:
2:1+rc2-1 0
95 http://http.us.debian.org sid/main Packages
*** 2:0.9.9-6 0
990 http://http.us.debian.org testing/main Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
This output says that I have version 0.9.9 installed, and that's what
is in the "testing" release. Version 1+rc2 is available in "unstable"
(aka sid). The numbers next to the paths/URIs are the "preference"
weighting my /etc/apt/preferences file assigns to the releases.
I don't think OO is packaged yet, and I've heard it's quite a beast.
Using apt-cache again (this time with 'search' instead of 'show') it
looks like the core of kde3 is available. I don't use kde, though (I
use gnome).
| Another
| concern is how difficult Debian might be to install as a dual boot.
No problems there.
| Does
| Debian use the traditional partition naming scheme?
What is "the traditional" partition scheme? You can choose whatever
partition scheme you want.
Hmm, if you're refering to 'hda1', 'hda2', 'hdb', 'hdc', etc, then
yes. That's part of the kernel and debian hasn't hacked it's own
kernel together.
| Frankly, even though I've had a considerable amount of experience
| switching Linux distros
Yeah, some distros put some files in weird places (eg RH).
| and setting them up to dual boot, setting up FreeBSD to dual boot
| would make me sweat.
I don't think dual-boot is a real problem. I've never used FreeBSD
myself, but I had no difficulty putting RH and Debian on the same
machine (during my transition phase).
| One of the drawbacks that I've heard that about Debian's (even from
| a Debian advocate) is that their packages are rather out of date.
| Is that true, even if I choose to install Woody?
The "stable" release is almost always sorely out-of-date. That's the
price for being "stable" (Would you call RH stable? I wouldn't.) The
"unstable" release has really new packages and sometimes royally hoses
your system (about a year ago a simple typo was made in the PAM
packages that prevented any login from working; fortunately corrected
packages were uploaded almost immediately and a process for rescuing a
system existed). "testing" tends to have
fairly-recent-and-fairly-stable packages, though it sometimes lags
behind (eg galeon or gnucash). You can mix-n-match releases, though,
(to varying extents; as time marches on stable tends to mix less and
less, but testing and unstable are close enough that you can do as you
wish on a per-package basis).
| Just to get a feel for the packages, I browsed through the packages
| looking for KDE3. I found a long list of KDE3 files. Would I have
| to install all of those KDE3 apps individually? Or, is it as simple
| as something like apt-get KDE3?
apt-get install <package name list>
If a package you name depends on another package, it will
automatically grab and install that one too. I don't know if there is
a kde 3 "task" that will give you "everything", but it isn't as
inconvenient as rpm-based systems have been in my experiences!
| Any comments would be appreciated.
Welcome to Debian. You'll love the quality, consistency, and
availability of the packages. You are even welcome to participate in
the development of them if they aren't quite where you want them to
be!
-D
--
In the way of righteousness there is life;
along that path is immortality.
Proverbs 12:28
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