Install Critique

[George Bonser <grep@oriole.sbay.org>]

I will be going through a fresh install tomarrow so I will have more to
report.  I will probably not report the kinds of troubles that other have
only because I tend to be somewhat "anal" when it comes to installing a
new OS whereas people from the DOS/WIN community usually try to figure it
on the fly, I tend to read all of the instructions that I can find before
I start.

I have also had a lot more experiance with unix and variants than I have
with DOS/Win and OS/2.

My first experiance with Unix on an intel box was NetBSD.  Since I was
pretty much a SysV person, with only limited exposure to BSD variants such
as SunOS at the time, I found it somewhat klunky. Its hardware limitations
at the time led me to Linux.

My first installation of Slackware succeeded though I had to often go back
and install individual components as I discovered that I needed them.  I
downloaded the entire distribution over a 9600 baud modem onto floppies.

I switched to Red Hat when they went ELF. I found it a breeze to install
but after a few weeks I started getting the impression that they wanted to
be Microsoft Linux.  I quickly learned that Red Hat pretty much sucks if
you do not have and do not want X.  The last straw occured with me when I
was upgrading via FTP and the upgrade died at some point in the middle of
the night and my system was left in a state that I can best describe as
destroyed.

The next day, I went to www.debian.org, followed the link to user
documentation and from there selected the installation link. I set the
system up with Debian 0.96 (I think) and that system had been
incrementally upgraded since. It has never been reinstalled in about two
years.

My frustration with Debian was with dselect.  After enough times in the
conflict screen, I learned how to avoid surprises with a few tricks like
selecting all packages "hold" status after I have it installed, not
selecting a bunch of things the first run through dselect, etc.

I have another system that ran Caldera Network Desktop for some time and
later Caldera OpenLinux.  I was much happier with OpenLinux. I found the
RedHat based Network Desktop to have serious problems.  GLINT has to be
the worst package selector.  I like Slackware's limited menu system
better.  Debian's is awkward and difficult to master but it DOES make me
aware of a potential problem BEFORE I waste the time downloading the
package.  This was the main feature that caused me to learn dselect's
eccentric ways and has saved me considerable time along the way. Nothing
frustrated me more than to waste time downloading a .rpm package only to
find out about problems when I tried to install it. Slackware is probably
worse in that it NEVER tells you that it is incompatable or needs
something else.

All in all, I find Debian to be the best system to administer that I have
seen. I prefer it over Solaris even.  HP-UX is pretty good, though.  The
people at Mindspring are porting dpkg to HP-UX and Solaris and I will be
using it at work as soon as this is done.

In short, I am probably not the best person to use as a tester because I
learned Unix before I learned DOS. Things that frustrate DOS/Win refugees
are second nature to me. As a system administrator, Slackware is a joke,
Red Hat is "toy linux", Caldera is pretty good, S.u.S.E. is pretty good,
and Debian is the best I have seen so far.



George Bonser 
If NT is the answer, you didn't understand the question. (NOTE: Stolen sig)
http://www.debian.org
Debian/GNU Linux ... the maintainable operating system.

===
SEUL-Leaders list, seul-leaders-request@seul.org
===