[sclug] My first Debian install

[Roland Turner]

Antony wrote:

> I am somewhat non-plussed by the Debian installer... my first three 
> attempts to get an operational desktop system were, er... intresting.  

It has been something of a Debian tradition to have a user-abusive installer. Fortunately this tradition is gradually abating; there is in fact substantial work being done on this at present in fact.

The good news is that, barring some very serious stuffups - or the desire to help at install-fests - you'll _never_ have to run a Debian installer again. This, I suspect, is why Debian has been so slow to make an elegant installer. For contrast, consider the plight of the distributors of an OS/distribution that requires a six-monthly re-installation; if they don't have a slick installer, users will flee en masse during the first upgrade cycle.

For what little it's worth, the current installer is far easier to use than one of its predecessors; I still recall helping some guys at an install fest who had decided that the fact that they'd never installed Debian before qualified them to answer when asked by the installer that they were in fact experts at installing Debian. The installer had asked this question without explaining that the consequences including being dropped into a fiendish tool called dselect. This is a tool so bad that, at the time, its own man page described its user interface as "alarming". This term has been scaled down to "confusing" with a rejoinder that "it even makes seasoned kernel developers cry". The tool's alleged purpose (to "help" you choose which packages to install) is eclipsed by its actual behaviour (to disorient and frustrate you while rendering your package database in need of a lobotomy).

But I digress. Despite dselect still being in Debian, you positively never need to use it. I've not used it this decade.

>I'm particularly not a fan of  suddenly but delibrately being dumped at 
>a command prompt.  <sarcasm>Silly me, all you've got to do is get root 

Hmm. That really shouldn't happen.

>then type...
>
>/sbin/shutdown -r now

Ctrl-Alt-Del suffices also.

<snip>

>Once I was happy I went straight into Knoppix and burnt myself a CD 
>image of my new Debian partition... so that if I screw things up I wont 
>have to go through that installer again!  Knoppix is a great little 

Good plan.

- Raz