Hi,
In the past I have been using Mandriva, Suse 10.1, Suse 10.2 and Fedora. I would like to try Debian on my laprop buthave heard that it is hard to install. Is it more difficult than any of these other Linux installations?
I already have my hard drive partitioned to dual boot with Windows. Am I likely to have any problems with Debian picking up sound cards, video, ethernet etc.?
Is the setup all self explanatory during the installations screens or do you need a manual?

Thanks,
Tim

try.
you'll probably have vesa after the install. Ethernet should be fine. Just edit the interfaces file. You want to know what that is? Take the red pill then.
well, manuals can help, of course.
debian.org has tons of help files in dozends of languages.
If you don't read help files, take the blue pill and stick with Suse and the like.

baik

Hiya

Having installed Debian Etch a number of times now (and Sarge before that a few times), I can tell you - hand on heart - that Debian is really straight forward and very clear.

I should say that if you are put off by an ncurses interface then take a deep breath because that is sort of what you get, although unlike Slackware, Debian does provide a rudimentary GUI which masks it.

The best thing you can do is to download and then burn onto a CD a copy of the latest net install from the Debian website. Stick that into the CD-drive and you should be off to the races. The trick is that if you want KDE (or some of its apps, etc) and to obtain some of the extra goodies (e.g. win32 codecs and DVD play libraries) then you will need to get comfortable using the different package management tools. Regardless of what you use (I use apt and am happy with that, others prefer other systems), the most critical thing is to get your sources list right.
This is a copy of mine, although there are more than enough examples to copy from the sticky on this forum:

Basically one uses (i.e. uncomments) what one needs at the time, but that is a more involved issue.

In my experience, accepting the defaults where you are unsure is usually safe, but YMMV!

You might want to just run through the docs on the Debian website and then ... Take the plunge ... you'll be glad you did!!

I must agree with d00bid00b, I've found Etch to be extremely painless to install. At least it has been for me on my nforce2/400 system with basically no extra hardware. If you have a bunch of unsupported hardware, it might not be so painless however.

The daily and weekly builds(and the release candidate build) of Etch now include 2 alternate CD-1s, one that defaults to a KDE desktop, and one that defaults to Xfce. So if you'd prefer KDE or Xfce, you should get the ISO with a name like "debian-testing-i386-kde-CD-1.iso" (obviously with the appropriate architecture for you computer though).

If you must have a graphical installer, when the CD boots and shows you the prompt that says "Press F1 for help, or ENTER to boot", instead of just hitting ENTER, type installgui and hit ENTER. Also, with a netinstall you can enter tasks="standard, kde-desktop" to install KDE instead of Gnome (and I assume replacing kde with Xfce in that string will install Xfce). The ncurses installer is great IMNSHO though and I haven't had cause to use anything else thus far.

Anyway, imho, Debian's reputation of being difficult (to install AND to use) is lagging behind reality quite a bit. If you have some basic know-how with Linux, and a little with APT, Debian is not difficult to install or use.

Originally posted by lurko:
I should say so! Since Sarge, Debian is as easy to install as any other distro I've tried (I've tried quite a few). In my case, every single item of hardware on my system was correctly identified at install (the only distro to do so). For post install issues there is prolific help.

Go for it, but install Etch now as Sarge is about to be succeeded as the stable version.

In fact, I find using the graphical installer takes longer. Going from the mouse to the keyboard instead of just (for the most part) holding the enter button down.