On Wed, 2003-01-22 at 11:40, Hal Vaughan wrote: > I wonder -- are the people that start with Debian people who are new to Linux, > but used to Unix or sys admin/programming on other systems, or are they just > at the "user" (or just above) level?
I did my first ever install of a Linux distro 13 months ago (almost to the day as a matter of fact), which happened to be Debian Potato. Before that I'd used Windows, Windows, and more Windows. I started up the OS/2 installer once. That was about as far as I got with it though. :) The only real unix-type experience that I'd had before that was using Cygwin (before the days of X support) for about 5 months. That got me comfortable with ls, grep, less, and emacs. Other than that, I was an absolute newbie. I thought mounting was what you did with a horse and ext2 was the 2nd extended partition on my HD. :) And, worst of all, I didn't discover debian-user until AFTER I got the system fully installed. :) Now, 13 months later, I run Sid with some experimental packages on my desktop machine and laptop, a mailserver running Sid with relatively old packages that I know work right. (Testing is a bit TOO old for me. :) And a webserver/Sid mirror running, you guessed it, Sid. :) I also tried installing Mandrake about a month ago to see what it was like and found one of the best installers I've ever seen. I now carry the 1st Mandrake install CD around with my laptop anytime I need an emergency boot disk for someone. (Primarily because of the partitioning tool.) However, I can't stand the distro from the user standpoint. The default setup with no VTs is absolutely horrid, and having to use a wizard for just about everything is a nightmare. I'm going to give Gentoo a shot as soon as I get enough HD space freed up, but in the meantime, I'm a diehard Debian supporter. :) -Alex
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