Considering switching to Debian...newbie needs help :(
 

Hey everyone,

how are you? I am currently using Suse 9.1 personal and have read a bit about Debian about how much better it is than Suse and well it sounds good and all and I'd like to give it a try. Is Debian user-friendly? I was also wondering, which boot flavor do I need to download or do I need to download all the boots? I found them here at http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=4 Vanilla sounds like what I need after I read the Debian article on which ones are for what but it didn't say whether I needed all or some or just one of the cds.

Thanks everyone:)

Ps- I plan on installing Debian on an intel pentium 4 centrino 400 mhz hp pavilion with 64 mb of ram and 5 gb of harddrive space, is this too small for Debian? I read Debian would do better on my machine than Mandrake or SuSE because it was optimized to run faster on older systems like this. Thank you all for your help:)

Debian may not be the most I-just-switched-from-Windows-friendly distro since it requires the user to actually learn a little about his/her hardware and do some configuring by hand. But it's a great learning experience and I switched from Mandrake to Debian after about 6 month of Linux experience.

I would recommend Debian Testing and to install it using the new installer, see http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/. You can also install it by downloading the first two or three CDs (more are not needed), additional apps can be downloaded later.

Check this forum on how to run Debian on a diet. Tip: don't go for KDE or Gnome, use a lightweight window manager. Check the sticky on top.

/TLV

Re: Considering switching to Debian...newbie needs help :(
 

Thid depends on the kernel you install afterwards. The default kernel is a safe choice for installation, but for a Pentium II you want the kernel-image-x.x.x-1-686 to have it optimized.

Good luck installing and configuring ;)

Want user-friendly debian? - Use Ubuntu :) . As far as my system is concerned, it is compatible with all debian packages from all repositories I use.

EDIT:
I use not only official ubuntu repositories, but few third-party (bootsplash, etc.) and one official debian repo.

I'd personally go with the Debian Sarge Netinstall, it's one CD, but you need a nice internet connection, you can find ithere . The only things is that you can only find i386, which would be good for your comp. Then once installed you can switch to the i686, though it is not necessary. From there on just read tutorials and such. Though you'll probably screw up on a few things and end up reinstalling it's worth it.

For all those used to the ease of SuSE and Fedora/Red Hat, here's a friendly warning. Debian needs more knowledge of your hardware etc. to configure it right. Also a lot of concepts in Fedora/SuSE need to be re-learnt because Debian's config files may be located in different places than Fedora/Red Hat/SuSE.

However, once you do configure it and get it running, it's too great! It has one of the best packaging systems (apt-get for command line or Synaptic if you prefer a GUI) and so easy to upgrade too.

I strongly recommended Debian :D

thanks everyone for your help:) I think I'll wait until I'm versed better with Linux and feel confident that I could manage Debian to it's fullest potiential. I'll just play around more with Suse,Mandrake and some other user-friendly distros to enhance my knowledge of commands,configurations,etc... Thank you all again:)

@silentwhispers:
You might want to consider preparing yourself a Debian-based LiveCD. It would give you a better understanding about how difficult Debian is in action, plus it's good to have a LiveCD around in case of emergency. Kanotix and SimplyMepis are both good choices -- and they both also make easy Debian installers, should you ever need one. ;)