[Sussex] Salutations!

[Steve Dobson]

Hi Alan

On Sun, Apr 20, 2003 at 10:09:15PM +0100, Alan Fitton wrote:
> Zoe Ball.... /me wonder's what he's got himself into <big grin>

Don't ask - but come along to the SLUGmoot and, by meeting Nik a lot
will be answered :-)

> As for Debian, I've considered using it a few times. I might try it some 
> time when time permits. More unlikely now because the one feature i really 
> wanted from Debian that Slackware didnt posess was the package management, 
> but now I've found Swaret which is great for upgrading.

<soapbox rant="Debian">
If what you're looking for is good package management then you will love 
Debian.  It's package management is part of the reason I stick to it.
Okay so it is never going to be the most up-to-date distro[1] around (there's
Gentoo for that) but if you want something that has been well tested that
it works _before_ it is released then Debian does that.  There are almost
not package configs that haven't worked out of the box for me.

But to me the greatest thing about Debian is that the directory structure
on Debian is correct - everything is in the correct place.  All the config
files will be found under /etc, the binaries under [/usr]/[s]bin, all library
files under [/usri]/lib.  /usr/local is never touched - that's where you
place the stuff you install yourself.

A word from the wise.  The biggest problem with Debian is the number of 
packages it has, over 8700 at the last count.  Some of those are in 
conflict with each other.  First time installers often try and install
everything thinking (I suppose) that they'll remove what they don't
want later.  _This_ _doesn't_ _work_.

As you have a network connect (and you must have as you have posted
e-mail) then following the network install instruction[3].  If you
have any questions then post - I'll be happy to answer.  But I'm on
holiday this week so I'll only be picking up e-mail in the evenings.
The advantage is that I will be doing it on my Debian box so I'll be
able to check out my configs if I need to.
</soapbox>

Steve

[1]: It you do want to get close to the cutting edge then there is the 
testing version of Debian called sid[2].  This is were the developers
upload the latest versions.  But be warned its untested - sid is were
the testing is done.

[2]: All Debian releases have code names.  Once you get into Debian 
you'll get to know the names of the releases more than the version 
numbers.

  woody: Current stable release
  sarge: Current developers release (testing)
  sid:   Development release

If you haven't spotted it yet all names are taken from Toy Story.

[3]
http://www.uk.debian.org/distrib/netinst