[Glastonbury] opinion wanted on "virtual linux servers" - Debian installer etc.

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Jul 13, 2003 at 11:28:23AM +0000, Martin WHEELER wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Jul 2003, Kelvin McNulty wrote:
> 
> > The only thing that I dislke about Debian is that the install process involves
> > having to suss the hardware manually! As soon as Debian does that for me,
> > like SuSE does, I'll switch - or try it, at least once...
> 
> OK -- stick a Knoppix disk in your CD drive, and go!
> 
> If you want a copy on hard disk, just use the install script provided.
There are a lot of queries around on the Debian lists about "why can't 
we just use the Knoppix install for everything".

1.) Be aware that Knoppix is i386 only.  Debian needs to run on 11
architectures and not to gratuitously break on any.  The PCI detect
routine you need on an Intel/AMD architecture may break a Sun Ultra 5
for example.

2.) Be aware that Knoppix has forked a copy of Red Hat's kudzu and 
tailored it to fit.  The alternative (discover) used originally and
developed by Progeny is also in use within Debian.

3.) Actually asking about your hardware is a minimal amount of the
question total.  By the time you've used a network install CD / two
floppies to install Debian base, you've answered enough questions to
set up the network, give the machine a hostname, give it DNS, set the
timezone etc.  The X Windows install asks you basics about the hardware 
- but will allow you to repeat the process using previous responses, if
for example, you discover you've forgotten to include fonts support or
some such.

4) A new Debian installer is planned for the next release.  It's 
currently text based because a GUI hasn't been written but it is
modular and will use more "automatic" hardware detection.

The current installer may seem archaic and to ask hard questions.
In some sense, I distrust "smart scripts" and feel you need to
know your hardware - can you install your other distro without a
working X configuration and without relying on autoprobing?

Taking RH for an example.

I've been bitten several times by RH autoconfiguration loading
the wrong driver for video cards / SCSI / not having drivers for
e.g. the Intel 810 (at the time - now fixed).  

The default RH install is also geared to a small server/desktop role
and to expect you to be there during the install / reconfiguration.
Debian doesn't set such limits - if you want to rerun the configuration 
of a remote server over command line/SSH, you can. 

RH appears to want to use an X server wherever possible - try that with 
16k of memory on your server video card. Ditto Mandrake/SuSE.  SuSE 
tries to sort out the hardware and generally succeeds well - but the 
cost is YAST configuration :(

Just my ¤0.02 / 2¢ (just proving my locale works :) )

Andy