My Debian Odyssey Begins...

[J.L.Francois]

See my comments below.

It seems like on Wed, Aug 16, 2000 at 03:09:51PM +0000, Nathan Saper scribbled:
Orig Msg> 1) The default install has some obvious things missing.  (I did the
Orig Msg> default install cus I was feeling lazy.)  For one, it's missing important
Orig Msg> devel libraries, such as the ncurses static libraries.  This seems like
Orig Msg> something that should be included in the base install.  That's just one
Orig Msg> example; there are others.

The base install is just that.
Everything else gets added as needed.
The odds of your Debian box getting 0wn3d are a lot less
than a default RedHat install because at least on the Debian box
you *know* what you installed.

Orig Msg> 
Orig Msg> 2) Doesn't configure X during install.  This doesn't bother me,
Orig Msg> but I can see where a new user would be pretty freaked just looking at a
Orig Msg> command prompt.

I like this feature.
Servers don't run X.
If I was building a server box I would not want a distro that installs
it by default.
I recomment Stormix to new users that want the power of Debian with 
a KDE/Gnome desktop.

Orig Msg> 3) Dselect is weird.  This is just a personal thing; I know some people
Orig Msg> love dselect, but I'm having issues with it.  For example, even if I tell
Orig Msg> it to just grab one package, it ends up wanting to grap 35mb worth of
Orig Msg> shit.  What I'm doing right now is just using dselect to find packages,
Orig Msg> then getting them with apt-get.
Orig Msg> 
Orig Msg> Just my first impression.  Debian certainly seems to be a cleaner system,
Msg> but Redhat's definitely easier to set up.

Use apt-get instead.

Examples:

apt-get install minicom
apt-cache search minicom
apt-cache show minicom

So after a base install if I want a gnome tool but don't know how 
to install it by name I can do:
apt-cache search gnome
apt-cache show gnome-dv
apt-get install gnome-dv

and I am done.

If a major change occurs I can do:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
and upgrade in place.

HTH. HAND.

JLF Sends...

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