[Wylug-help] Networking Linux PCs

[John Hodrien]

On Wed, 27 Nov 2002, Frank Shute wrote:

> This has always been the perceived wisdom but I often wonder how true
> it is. I can't comment on Debian but having installed FreeBSD which I
> was assured was terrifying and strictly for wizards, I found it to be
> the easiest OS I had ever installed. It was really just a case of
> being able to read the instructions with the partitioning being the
> hardest bit (isn't it always when you dual boot?) although the
> installer offers a sensible default.

Ah but there's different groups of people.  I started with slackware, and
coped but that certainly doesn't mean it was good.  Some people would start
there and throw it in the bin and never bother looking again.

> I believe the FreeBSD installer is a bit minimalist much like Debian
> but doesn't minimalist mean there's less to foul up? :)

The RedHat installer is hardly complex if you pick the newbie install, and I'd
suspect less complex than the BSD installer.  Installing from a firewire
CDROM onto a laptop with new graphics and sound yet installing fine with no
intervention is where I suspect debian + BSD would suffer.

> It doesn't have things like linuxconf but all my hardware was detected
> and I found it easy to configure/setup. I guess a newbie might not
> find it easy to setup but I don't know if they'd find things like
> linuxconf/yast much easier - certainly not in the long run IMO.

But is your hardware that exotic?

> Are there people on this list who have piled into Linux not knowing
> any unix with a distro like Debian and if so how have they got on?

Got on far better once I switched to RedHat then to Mandrake.

> Doesn't Debian have a pretty good manual/handbook if I remember
> rightly? I think there's also an O'Reilly book on Debian but I don't
> know if it's pitched towards the newbie.

I've only ever really sunk me teeth into HOWTOs.

> I suppose newbies might be put off by Debian as stable (or release?
> Can't remember) is always someway behind the latest kernel and
> utilities.

Until recently, somewhat was putting it mildly.

> But the stability of the release is what matters IMHO, otherwise you can
> spend hours figuring out all sorts of horrid problems, which you really
> don't want - especially if you're a newbie.

I'm a RedHat 8.0 user at the moment, and I haven't found any bugs that would
seriously hamper a newbie.

jh

--
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the
question of whether a submarine can swim."
                                                      -- Edsgar Wybe Dijkstra