Linux Format forums

[ggsinclair]

I managed to install Debian last night and I must confess to not being too impressed on first impressions.

Firstly - how are you meant to know your graphics card reference number? That is an odd question that I have never been asked during any of the other distro's I have installed.

Secondly -maybe I installed wrong, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to how things like the menu's in KDE are set up-things look like they have been thrown together in a hurry.

Also, how on earth do you access hardware configuration? I tried for a long time using the KDE menu but could not find any config tools!

Think I will be going back to SuSe soon!

Gordon
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[jjmac]

Did you try "dpkg-reconfigure --help" as root. That will take you through a curses (newt) styled configuration dialog, much the same as occures at install.

You will be expected to look through the "aptitude" or "dselect" front ends in order to check on the various packages that you may or may not have installed.

In terms of kde not doing it for you -=- well --- tell kde that. deb basically just packages sw and delivers it in a working collection. It doesn't interfere with what the upstream author(s) consider adequate for their package. Regardless of what colour they painted it. Thats really an issue with them. But they do tend to be moving more along the lines of -- easier tools.. Things like apt-xxx, dpkg, dselect, aptitude, synaptic are already available though.

The recent sarge release gave me no real problems on the install. Typically deb, i did have to tweak things later as on a custom install it did what i wanted ... which meant i left things out (grin). Requiring me to go back to reconfigure. And the hw detection was quite good i though. It certainly had the option of auto or select from a list. Though it does mean one actually has to squiz the hw or the feeble excuse for a manual that accompanies cards etc .. to see what kind of gizzmo it actually is.

Back on the kde thing --- kde menus are bloted enough as it is -=- do you expect deb to remove ! items !!!, to interfere with the way a sw package is put together -=- and who to satisfy there !. It's good they actually added some extra deb specific items, under its own sub-menu heading as well.

How you figure that the bloted kde menu is a deb issue is wierd. They don't rearange sw like that. Have a read over the comments in the cdrecord sources and see just how pissed off an upstream auther can get when a "distro" decides to rearrange their sw to suite themselves. Especially the credits (this being SUSE by the way )

There is a mailing list(s) you could try for specific proplems, accessable sometimes via sub-forums on various boards like linuxquestions, linuxforums etc..., but not sure if it would be on the kde menu. Just about every thing else is though


jm
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#313537

The FVWM wm -=- www.fvwm.org -=-

Somebody stole my air guitar, It happened just the other day,
But it's ok, 'cause i've got a spare ...

[Ed]

i started using openBSD as my first unix-like OS, but but i never got into it as a novice.

about 6 months later i started to Slackware and havent look back since, thats was about 4 years ago.

alot of the reasons why i use slack have already been made
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[duffmckagan]

SuSE 9.3 Professional is a good one.

I would personally prefer the Cent OS which is a Free Enterprise Class Operating system!

Got the power of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, for free. (So is surely without support.)
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[jjmac]

Just looking at Octobers disc ... yep -=- centos 4.1 -=- hmmmm , a recomondation is a recomondation ... == ...




jm
_________________
http://counter.li.org
#313537

The FVWM wm -=- www.fvwm.org -=-

Somebody stole my air guitar, It happened just the other day,
But it's ok, 'cause i've got a spare ...

[Zmiles]

I have tried K/Ubuntu and Suse, but have finally settled on Mepis.
I don't see this distro in the other replies, but it is well worth a try.
Based on Debian and Debian repositories.
Easy install.
Picks up all my hardware.
Their forum is excellent (mepis.org and Mepislovers.com)
Perhaps slightly outdated GUI because they believe in stability.
They won't adopt KDE 3.4 and Open Office 2 until they are officially released (not testing) in the Debian pool. To me, it depends on whether you have upgrade fever and want to be on the cutting edge or use a distro which is amazingly stable and constantly getting better.
It was the first distro to include an install function on the live CD.....everyone seems to have it now. Try the live CD and if you like it, go ahead and install.
Give it a try and tell me what you think.
The link to official site and mirrors is: http://www.mepis.org/node/1462