just out of pure curiosity, what is the word on debian's installer? i hear lots of junk about how hard it is: what is the installer like?

also, if it is so hard to install, why do people use it? does it have any advantages or is it any more powerful than slack,redhat, or mandrake?

http://www.debian.org/intro/about
I think that slackware is the most serious distro..i.e hard to install and Its thought to be the best. Personally, I like redhat..its purely a matter of taste. I mean, Redhat can do what Mandrake, Slackware, debian can do and vice-versa...right?

I was with my friend once, and he was installing Debian Woody. I have also installed Slackware and it didn't seem much harder. Everything went smoothly except that he had to configure X a little bit.

Debian is definately much more bare-bones than RedHat and Mandrake.

Some people may call this flame-bait, but I honestly think that Debian's jigdo option of getting the ISOs is really good. Especially for people with slow internet.

The biggest "selling-point" of Debian is probably the amount of packages it comes with (if you get all the CDs)... it was around 8000 last I heard.

hmm, interesting

if debian isn't much harder than slack to install, then i don't see why people might complain (slack's fairly easy to install once u get used to the fact that it doesn't look pretty); i'll check out the site, but wow, that many packages...

thx for the input

Question for all of you: Whats so special about slackware and debian. I can do everything with redhat that they can do...and you definately have to do a lot more configuring with those two distro's

well, in slack, u have complete control over your operating system and rarely can u depend upon built in tools... in redhat, often i find myself using the redhat made tools... but in slack, i am forced to edit config and boot files myself and thus i learn linux in that way

of course u can do the same in redhat, but for 3 cd's just to get some more user tools for many may not be worth the time and effort: slackware requires that u understand what you're doing at all times and it doesn't change around normal linux configuration and thus is less likely to have problems when installing software

other distros like redhat and mandrake change things around to benefit the mandrake operating system and some software doesn't like that (often had problems with aliases in /lib and /lib/i686 under redhat and mandrake, but none under slack)

slack is there to benefit not slackware, but linux and that is why i think most people use it and is definitely why i use it

like the quote goes:
use redhat and you learn redhat
use slackware and you learn linux

I found the Debian installer to be a nightmare. Slack was easy to install. Running Slack is the trick. I still have no idea why my Debian works at all.

Not trying to offend here, but you asked. I can't really say for Debian - I already see these damn SysV init directories and don't like that. RH sticks stuff in funny places and does stuff in funny ways and their business model borrows a lot from Microsoft and a lot of distros are commercial and non-standard and have goofy tools and place too much emphasis on GUIs - even Debian boots into a graphical login screen which sets the wrong tone right off the bat. Slack has great and basic tools, screws with the system to be 'Slackish' as little as possible, has the better BSD-style init scripts and is the *only* major distro I can think of that boots into a command line prompt the way god intended. *g* And I've found Slack to be lighter and faster than any system, too, though this assumes a base - you can tweak anything indefinitely of course. I can't put my finger on it. Slack *is* a huge headache and makes me want to chuck it all sometimes but I've uninstalled stuff like Mandrake in less than 24 hours. I have yet to 'feel right' in any distro but Slack.

All 'love for the distro' aside, speed. Unless your source/SRPM everything, you are looking at a severe speed increase from using Slack. It's more 'streamlined' meaning less bloat that is just in the way. Slack also uses BSD style init scripts. Some people believe these to be much more user friendly to tamper with should you want to.

Debian, nearly the same thing. Nothing you don't want, no need for half the bloat that is "standard-but-not-used" on Redhat/Mandrake/SuSE. The nice thing about Deb is the .deb/apt setup. Deb I believe though uses a form of SysV so you still have those who don't like it just because of that.

The one not being mentioned is Gentoo. It's all source, extremely fast, easy as apt to configure, and just like slack/deb doesn't install JACK you don't want.

You technically "could" do a Slack-like deb-like Gentoo-like system with Redhat, but it's more work than just starting with the right distro in the first place (plug)

Cool

Oh - excellent point. I *hate* rpms. Installing from source on Slack is a breeze because the system's built right and the .tgz packages are great too. I've had a higher batting average dealing with installing aps with Slack than with any other system by far.

Checkinstall+source=heaven.

-- rather than posting a third time I'll say the packages stuff was inspired by TheOneAndOnlySM and this is by MasterC:

I have yet to try Gentoo but I've long felt there's something about those three - Slack, Debian, Gentoo - that are kind of connected in some weird way and those are the only three I'm really interested in. I do have a Gentoo disk - just need to get around to trying it out.

well, rpm's are quite convenient, and i liked them when i installed my first linux distro redhat9....

but with the install of mandrake, i found rpm's to be a pain as they are often not made right and sources are *always* correct and will be designed to run on your system: rpm's are too specific, but even under my mandrake distro, sources were sometimes horribly nightmarish cuz mandrake doesn't install a lot of things needed for source compiling and such (and redhat just doesn't like sources for some odd reason not to mention that even with upgraded kernels does it support my sound card which is supported by just 2.4.20)

then i install slack and it is heaven, no longer am i tempted by rpm's, sources are the way to go, never a hassle and definitely heavenly to install from sources


*and to go back to the subject of this thread: well, i see now that one of these days maybe i should try debian and gentoo as well but only when i do a full harddrive wipe to finally get rid of windoze and do a full linux distros machine (that way i can delete those without any regrets if they are too much of a hassle to deal with)

Whats wrong with using redhat made tools? I still know where my configuration files are.
[QUOTE] MasterC
Unless your source/SRPM everything, you are looking at a severe speed increase from using Slack[QUOTE]
Well, if you run it on machine like mine (which most people have these days)- P4 2.4GHz, 512MB RAM...can u really feel the difference in speeds of redhat and slack?

Definitely.

Cool

Hmm..let me download and try slackware then...

You may want to look at ArchLinux (archlinux.org).

Its very much like Slackware, but its got Pacman, an APT and Ports like package manager.

I use to use Slackware, and im never going back.

The great points about Debian are:

- It only installs what you tell it to... RedHat installs a slew of services without so much as telling you... big security risk IMO.
- Apt-get install (alternatively aptitude or dselect): install any package you want from the internet instantly and have all the dependencies worked out and downloaded for you.
- Apt-get dist-upgrade. Move from one version to another automatically while safely keeping all your configuration.
- Their kernel packaging works much like their other packaging. Recompiling a new kernel and distributing it is extremely easy.