On Tue, Feb 10, 2004, Andrew Cowie wrote:
I'm interested in installing Linux on my home pc.
There are a considerable number of ways to bootstrap and install Linux
that don't require a CD-ROM ISO. Debian's installer pages go into this
in great detail; any other distro that is fundamentally
download-it-from-the-internet based will be similar.
But these have bandwidth requirements that are not dissimilar to that of
a CD-ROM ISO, perhaps at a minimum you download about 1/3 of the data,
possibly more. This is still prohibitive for dialup users who don't
want to be connected to the net for two or three continuous days of
downloading.
I also wouldn't recommend the Debian install process to people new to
Linux: even if you can get through the install with the standard
installer, you then have to either figure out Debian's upgrade process
(no it isn't hard once you know it exists and know how to use it, but
that's a big assumption) or deal with having old software that may not
work with some new hardware.
Have spent part of the last week helping a Linux old hand with a
Debian install. He ran Linux back in 95 or so for a while, stopped being
so interested in fixing everything by hand and moved on. Now he wants a
second machine with LaTeX and so on and decided to go with Linux for
that machine. So far so good. He's familiar with UNIX, disk paritioning
and basic computer stuff. But he did the default Debian install with a
2.2 kernel, and we couldn't for the life of us get his hardware working
even with a kernel upgrade. He had also made the classic Debian newbie
mistake of installing every package on the CD, and had patiently walked
through the configuration options for all of them. Damned if we could
undo these mistakes. (Yeah, probably we could have, given sufficient
patience, but even so, other installers have much saner defaults for
desktop machines than the woody installer.)
My advice to people considering Debian is to have someone who's done a
Debian install help you out, or fill you in in advance. I would not
recommend it to someone looking to dip their toe in the water unless
they get someone else to install it for them.
Therefore, I think the original correspondent's choice of Mandrake is a
better choice.
-Mary
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