On Mon, 21 Jan 2013 14:32:06 -0500 Dennis Clarke <dcla...@blastwave.org> wrote:
> > > I don't have much to say. It sounds interesting for me, to test SID > > by doing a minimal "expert" install. > > Funny. It took me a full day and three attempts to install Wheezy > onto a Lenovo G575 laptop. Ultimately I resorted to creating a live > bootable USB image and then doing obscene things like : > > dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=8192 count=1048576 > > .. which baked the disks partition table and first 8G of disk tracks. > Perfect. > > Only then could I create a new partition table and get on with the > job. > > I should note that when I tried to use a sun disk lable or a BSD disk > label to get 8 partitions ( which is wrong, sun has 16 partitions but > Debian or fdisk/parted can't do it .. weird ) I ended up with a > unbootable system everytime. Set a partition bootable got me no > where. No, it wouldn't, Linux has never made use of this flag. > > Had to resort to DOS style partition table. If you have a need for a different partition system, that marks you as a fairly unusual user. Presumably you are multi-booting with something a bit exotic. I've never used anything but a DOS (actually IBM, 'why would anyone ever want more than four operating systems on their mainframe?') partition system, but I've never needed compatibility with anything but Windows, nor more than 16 partitions, and I've never moved on from fdisk. > > Then wireless setup on the pefectly supported ath9k driver was a > nightmare for a day. Wireless can be entertaining, though a lot less so than it used to be. Even the Network Manager seems to more or less work these days. > > Finally up and running yesterday on wheezy on this laptop and with > minimal packages. > > I would say that the process is still very very far out of reach of > the average user and Linux won't be getting into the mainstream any > time soon. This is what is a major blockage to getting linux into an > office. Users have no clue if it isn't windows and usualy, no clue > even if it is. > Well, to be honest, most Linux users don't care too much about that. Linux is where it is without ever having needed widespread desktop use, it's not likely to wither away now if it doesn't get there. Widespread use would result in better driver access, but it would also result in the same kind of malware nightmare that afflicts Windows. There are too many home and business users who are just too important to use unprivileged accounts, or to be bothered elevating privilege on just the few occasions when it is necessary. This is changing, but very slowly. I help out a bit on an MS technical forum, and some people need beating with sticks to persuade them that running as root is a bad idea. And as always, it's worth remembering that few people ever install Windows. I've only done it twice in the last five or six years. It's generally pretty difficult and unrewarding to install Windows on a PC that isn't very recent, and if it is recent, the latest Windows will be there already. It would be reasonable to expect hypothetical Linux business computers to be sold with Linux already installed, and tailored to the machine. The sticking point is that LibreOffice is never going to match the slickness of office software developed over more than twenty years, and there's still nothing Open Source that comes close to Access. OK, I've had plenty of Linux installation problems, mostly concerning sound, but life is a lot easier now. It's still never possible to predict what may cause trouble. If you're not familiar with it, Knoppix is a Debian-based live Linux which has always had amazing hardware detection and drivers, and it is often worth booting the latest Knoppix to see how it deals with a 'difficult' piece of hardware. Live CDs/USBs are mostly also installable, and this is a fairly painless way of installing something after you already know it drives your hardware. Knoppix is not a good candidate for this, as it isn't maintainable, but there's a live Debian if you're not too keen on Ubuntu, and plenty of other choices. I've done this a couple of times, and haven't needed any manual surgery on the target hard drive. Back to the unusual partition tables... -- Joe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130121212946.40117...@jretrading.com
