Hi there, I tried the new debian installer out for the first time using a SID build from a couple days ago.
I have a DSL connection. Much to my amazement there is no option for PPPOE (pretty much every DSL ISP out there and some cablecos use it). Fumbling about, I deduced that to make a FTP/HTTP install work one has to wait till the install reboots then switch to an alternative term ALT-F2 which a noob like me may not know about at all, go to /usr/sbin or wherever it was hidden, and activate pppoe, and then pppoeconf. pppoe first because for some reason pppoeconf first tells me it cannot access the device but running pppoe first and letting the garble characters time out, it then works with pppoeconf and works fine after that. The next thing that I found a little odd, was how the partioner seems to calculate sizes slightly different from say, MS DOS fdisk. Partitions set up by DOS FDISK (unformatted) are revealled as having unused partition space at the end of the table by the debian partioner. Also, experimenting around, setting a swap partition first, and then a primary / partition, numbers the partitions differently than if one sets the / first. The type and size of partitions are the same in both examples, except that the partition #s are different, which doesn't seem right to me but I am not an expert on this, so my main concern is why does it seem to calculate partition sizes slightly differently than other fdisk programs.. disk geometry should be pretty standard and well understood by now.. or am I missing something here? That said, I was able to install Debian on my XP1700, and from a user aesthetics perspective, the user interface of the installer is pretty bad. I understand it's text mode and not GUI, but 20 years ago I used programs on my Apple //c that had some pretty fancy interfaces using 'stacked folders' where you drill down on (Appleworks), or later MS DOS 'ascii pulldown menus' a'la 'edit' and friends as another example. But again, I realize it's just simply a case of making do with what resources one has akin to keeping a car running instead of waxing it if funds are short. Great work has been done here by everyone and Joey Hess's hairline at staying intact, I can only imagine how much better it'll be a year from now. Regards, P.
