[Plug] Debian Install Problems

[Walt Mankowski <waltman@netaxs.com>]

OK, so I took the plunge this weekend and tried to install Debian on
my home machine.  After my second attempt it's semi-functional, but I
ran into a lot more problems than I anticipated.

I think some of the problems may have been due to the Cheap Bytes
"Essential Debian" CD I was using.  The documentation made it seem
like I would get to choose groups of applications in profiles such as
"Developer" or "Webmaster".  I never saw this screen.  Instead I was
thrown straight into dselect with 100's of individual packages to
choose from and nothing preinstalled.  

Dselect is certainly a powerful program, but as a first-time user I
found it confusing and intimidating.  If you don't realize that Enter
*doesn't* mean "select this package" and Escape doesn't do anything at
all, then all of a sudden you're bouncing all around and know where
the hell you are or how to get back (Escape might be a good alias for
X).

Other problems I had with the CD install:

- I got an error if I tried to install too many packages.  Sorry, I
  didn't write it down, but it was something about a driver not liking
  the -e parameter.  Maybe it's doing a "system" call and its command
  line gets too long.

- The packages on the CD weren't exactly where Debian was expecting
  them.

- I'd get an error if the CD was already mounted when it tried to
  install packages.  It seemed like what it wanted to do was just
  mount the CD long enough to install whatever I had selected.  But if
  I was in another vterm trying to hunt down where everything was, then
  it wouldn't get umounted and I'd get an error.

It gets pretty annoying when you wade through screen after screen of
packages, finally select what you want, then have the program tell you
it can't mount the CD or that it got some cryptic driver error.

I finally got ppp working, then figured out how to get dselect to pull
packages down off the internet.  That was slower but much more stable.
Of course, now I have 1000's of packages to choose from now, without
a real clear idea of what I've already installed.

So anyway, here are some more comments and questions:

- Is there any way to get the bottom window of dselect to disappear,
  or at least make it smaller?  It's nice to get the info, but it's
  also taking up half the window.  It's tough to navigate through 1000's
  of packages when you can only see 15 lines at a time.

- Is there any tool to help get printing to work?  Red Hat has a
  tool that configures magicfilter to use whatever printer you have.

- How about sound?  Red Hat has a rather nice sndconfig program.  As
  far as I can tell, Debian didn't install any sound modules.  They
  didn't even put any sound devices in /dev.

- What's the rationale for not making /tmp world-writeable?  Debian
  sets up man to put its temp files in /tmp, but then doesn't let
  regular users write to /tmp!

- What's debian's equivalent of .Xdefaults?  I hate the defaults they
  have for xterms.

- How tough is it to upgrade to a 2.2.* kernel?

- Where can I find more up-to-date packages?  The version of Window
  Maker in Debian 2.1 is ancient, for instance.

- All the files on the CD are from March.  But when I run apt-get
  upgrade, it tells me everything is up-to-date.

All in all I have to say I'm a little disappointed with Debian,
especially after all the great recommendations Wednesday night.
Dselect is kind of cool, once you get the hang of it, but the install
process could be a lot more user-friendly and I wish they had tools to
configure things like sound and printing (or at least made it easier
to find them).  Hopefully I'm through the worst part, though I have to
admit that Red Hat 6.0 CD (also ordered from Cheap Bytes) is starting
to look awfully tempting.

Walt


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