Switching to Debian...
 

First of all, I am a :newbie: and I am studying to switch from Xandros to Debian [This is me studying: :study: ] <-- Did you see that? I am reading the tutorial at debian's website...

Now, is Debian going to be difficult to set up in order to get connected to the Internet? [I managed to do it with Xandros and I felt like a stud :D ] Is it easy to make synaptic work? Audio... Audio... Audio... I haven't been able to work the details with Xandros (I will try to fix that with Xandros distro before migrating...)

I take it that Debian has all the free software I need to be productive (OpenOffice.org, games all over the place, an editor like VI or GUN-emacs... well... no matter what software I have, I will always choose to goof around... :p )

I have gathered a bunch of ideas I missed from my first try to put Debian on my computer [After selecting "Desktop Configuration" press SPACE! or else you will end up with a nice shell... Oh brother! That little detail prevented me from installing correcty...] If I can get pass those issues I will very certainly install Debian on my box this weekend.

Has anybody gone through the whole thing and how was it?

If you have "/home" in a seperate partition from "/", then just do an expert install of debian sarge and format the root partition. Leave the home partition alone. If you have ethernet connection to the box for internet, debian should be able autoconfigure dhcp during setup. Just add all the modules during setup. Debian will say it can't find a whole big list of modules, but that is because the base system hasn't been installed yet. Add an apt source so you can download the majority of the installation, if you have fast internet. Otherwise use a DVD. Auto partition the root parttition. It's pretty easy. There is nothing mysterious about debian. Are you installing sarge? That is the one you should use. You aren't very clear on exactly what is giving you problems. Are you reformatting everything? There is a network autoconfiguration during setup. Didn't you see it?, or doesn't it work with your setup. Just try. You seem to know a lot about linux. Debian is all about reading the screen. I have seen it where booting with the 2.6 kernel fails. In that case you can boot with the 2.4 kernel. From the DVD there are boot options at the boot prompt. Just hit the function keys to see what they are. I always use the expert install, because you can boot with the 2.4 kernel, and install the 2.6 kernel. Debian installer is finicky. Sometimes it does weird things. Try to be compassionate. Debian is like a sensitive woman. She likes to be treated with care, and wants someone who can tolerate her whims. In the end she becomes a faithful companion, through thick and thin, ready to take care of you day and night. This the reward for a little patience. It is part of the fun of debian. Just keep trying until you get it right. Everything you need is there. You just have to look.

I've just installed Deb 3.1 Sarge on a Pentium 200 with 64 m RAM and a 2 M Vid card.
The installer is very similar to Ubuntu 5 apart from the video config
it goes but with a few problems - my fault for not RTFM
a huge improvement over 3.0 and 2.2 which I never successfully installed
if I can fix it I will probably switch from Mandrake to Debian
it looks promising

floppy

Hi,
I can't see why people say that installing Debian is difficult. In my experience (and I have installed
it at least 30 times) it has always worked without a single prob, provided your NIC is recognised
at install, if you do a netinstall, it is really easy.
Next, you have to do a little configuration, just like in Slackware, but nothing really frightening.
Just add the sources you need in your /etc/apt/sources.list and apt-get update, you will have all the
software you need. Now that Etch has switched to Xorg, Debian is relatively on par with most distros
and it is the stablest distro (along with Slack) that I have tried.
I stick with it and recommend it to any user.

cheers

Could you please give us more information about what architecture you use waht kind of
internet connection you have etc.
Debian isn't as difficult as its always said, the only thing is that you have to do more by your
own i.e. that you don't have so much GUIs like in other distributions. You will have to read and
search a lot if something doesn't work. You can also use gentoo, which, in my opinion has
an even better documentation.

i have tried sarge 3 or 4 times to install it and i end up with a command prompt and nothing i type in works so i gave up on it and stuck with ubuntu it seems easier to me to install

Oh believe me! I have read a lot and I have tried twice...

I will try this weekend at home and I will have all the materials, notes, ideas, entire threads, etc. available.

Of course... That RTFM deal... I just created my own...

Wish me luck!