All roads lead to Debian
If most of the Linux distributions derive from either Slackware or Debian, why not just go to the source? Slackware looks way too hard to figure out, but Debian, which just released version 4.0, offers a net-install ISO -- and I've always wanted to install a distro over the Internet -- so I burned the CD this morning and am currently installing a Debian system over the Internet.
And it's going very, very well, thank you. I didn't know what to expect, but the installer is very much like that of Ubuntu's alternate-install discs (not that I've gotten any of those to work, because I haven't -- my successful Xubuntu install came from the 6.10 live CD, upgraded to 7.04 over the Internet).
Debian, billed as "the universal operating system," is currently installing 656 packages over the Internet, and after that I'll see what the mother of many, if not most, Linux distributions is all about.
Update (12:27 p.m.): The install went without a hitch, and I'm now booting into Debian's GNOME desktop.
Update (12:42 p.m.): I'm posting this update from Debian with the GNOME Web Browser 2.14.3 (also known as Epiphany). All seems to be working fine -- I've got full functionality in Movable Type. There's no Flash, of course, and it isn't as easy to implement as in Xubuntu. But for now, I'll leave Flash on the side of the road. I'm not that big of a YouTube fan.
My immediate first impression: This looks so nice and works so nice -- it's got GIMP, Open Office and the Iceweasel (aka Firefox) browser, GAIM and more. And what isn't available as a Debian package?
Incidentally, during the install, I was given the option of making my /home file in a separate partition. I chose that option, since it might give me a way to reinstall this or another operating system in the main partition without disturbing the data in the /home partition. It might not work, but it's worth a try.
Again, this install was just as easy as Ubuntu's alternate install, and while having the advantage of actually working for me, I also appreciate that as an Internet-based install, I didn't have to download a giant ISO file (the Debian net install ISO is 162, 716 KB) and as a bonus got the latest in all packages.
I was able to choose a "desktop" install, but nowhere was I asked about which window manager I wanted. GNOME is the default in this kind of network install. And I must say, it's looking good and working well on this 1 GHz Maxspeed Maxterm thin client with 256 MB of RAM and a 14.4 GB IDE disk drive and 32x TDK CD-RW drive connected to the single IDE header on the mini-ITX motherboard.
This bears repeating, with emphasis: Installing Debian is no harder than Ubuntu. All my drives were automatically detected, just like Ubuntu. I'm beginning to wonder, just how much of Ubuntu is already there in Debian? It looks like a lot more than I thought.
Update (1:23 p.m.): I click on the GIMP. I'm surprised (and actually happy) to learn it's not really there yet. An install window opens, in which I'm instructed to pick the amount of "tile memory" and the location of swap space for what won't fit in tile memory. I accept the defauts, although I 'm a bit nervous about the 128 MB I'm devoting to tile memory. But it's nice to know that at least for some apps, those I'm not using are not taking up space on the drive. Oh, and the GIMP loads in 20 seconds -- about a third of the time it took on Xubuntu 7.04. It's something I could sure get used to. Update of this update: On second launch, GIMP takes 30 seconds to load (I must've needed to do some swapping with Open Office already up on another desktop.)
Obvious revelation: I discover something that most savvy Linux users probably already know. To navigate among the four available desktops in most environments, ctrl-alt-right arrow (or left arrow) sends you from one desktop to the other without need for the mouse. Brilliant. Four distinct desktops accesible via mouse or keyboard? I consider it a Linux killer app and wonder why Windows and OS X haven't stolen the idea.
So far, GNOME in Debian 4.0 is no slower -- AT ALL -- then Xfce in Xubuntu 7.04. I still get the same "tiling" of windows when I drag them slightly off the desktop, but switching from app to app, window to window and desktop to desktop is as fast -- if not faster -- than it is on Xubuntu. And I'll have to do that GIMP time test again with Xubuntu, because that would be a real difference between the two systems.
With Debian doing so well on this 1 GHz box with an anemic 133 MHz front-side bus and 256 MB of RAM, I can only imagine at this point how much better it could run on a more "modern" desktop, say something with a 3 GHz or dual-core processor, 1066 MHz FSB and 1 GB of RAM. It's got to be great.
The next test: configuring a network printer. I went to Applications-System Tools-Printers, and just like in Ubuntu, a bunch of the printers on the network were detected automatically. I easily select one and successfully print with it. But ... I try to add my "favorite" printer (i.e. the closest one to my desk) ... and while the instructions are clear -- and there are more of them than with Xubuntu -- I am unable to make it happen. I go through all the steps, and at the end, after I click "Apply," nothing is added, nor are there any messages telling me what went wrong. So I am able to print, just not exactly where I want. I was able in Xubuntu, after consulting the Xubuntu Users Guide, to get printing going through CUPS via the browser, and I imagine I could do the same here -- and I just might. But I will give the Foomatic GUI another chance (or five) before I go that route. Update: I also try the utility under Desktop-Administration-Printing. While different, it still doesn't work. But since I can print somewhere, I'm good for now.
Update (2:15 p.m.): At the top left of the GNOME screen, there are menus for Applications, Places and Desktop. The division of labor among the menus is a nice touch. There are tons of configuration utilities. I guess I'm talking more about GNOME than Debian at this point, but GNOME, in this implementation, is the face of Debian in this desktop distribution, and again, it's done well.
Update (3:02 p.m.):Open Office Writer. It takes 1 minute, 3 seconds to launch. That's one of the reasons I'm not so happy with Open Office. I know it's doing all the things that MS Office can do, and that takes a lot of code, but all I need to do is create Word-compatible files (AbiWord can do that) with "typographical" or "smart" quotes (AbiWord can't do that). Still, for what I'm doing these days, I can really leave typographical quotes on the roadside, so maybe I'll try to install AbiWord just to have something that launches quickly and doesn't hog so many resources.
Update of this update: On second launch, Open Office loads in 30 seconds. That I can live with.
Even so, I've pretty much been using text editors to write blog entries and the like, and when it comes to the Daily News, things for publication go through a translation program that takes care of the typographical quotes, so I don't really need to be so anal about this ... but I did have an editor (ther person, not the application) in the past who never got the punctuation right -- quote marks, em dashes -- unless I had it just so in Word, and even then he'd screw it up. I guess it all depends on your situation. Most editors of non-computer publications like to see things in Word format ... though some are OK with pure text files. And creating and sending text files is just so quick and easy, I hope more publications move in that direction.
And speaking about text editors: I like gedit, the GNOME text editor. It looks a lot like Mousepad in Xfce, except that it's got a nice toolbar and actually does the word-counting feature I need.
On a related point, I installed Scribus (open-source publishing program) in Xubuntu. I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but I will if I ever hook up the hard drive with Xubuntu on it ... or maybe I'll just download it here in Debian.
Update (3:25 p.m.): Once the screen-saver takes over, why do I have to enter my password to bring the computer back to life?
Update (4:30 p.m.): I think I fixed the screen-saver problem. All I did was uncheck a box. That was easy.
Update: (4:45 p.m.): I'm using the GNOME music player, Rhythmbox and listening to one of the included Internet radio stations, this one called Groove Salad. And the audio is perfect. I couldn't get audio this good from Puppy Linux. And the sound chip on the motherboard was detected and set up during the install and required no tweaking (OK, I lowered the volume a bit). Impressive. I switch to the Secret Agent "lounge" channel, which is more to my liking.
To sum up: I've run quite a few distros over the past three months, and with many being based on Debian, I've been led to believe that there's something difficult about Debian, something that needed fixing for the "general Linux public," whatever that is. So far, there's no truth to that. Debian 4.0 is as ready for the desktop as any other distro out there -- and by any other, I include Ubuntu and Mepis. Both of those are great, but Debian is running so well and is so easy to use, I wonder what the fuss over the others is all about.
Debian 4.0 is a great product, and if there was a lot of hype, I'd encourage you to believe it. As it is, with little hype (and a lot of negative news about the gap between releases and other developer squabbling), this is a very fine distribution that every Linux user should try. It sets a standard that others should live up to.
Final words: Xubuntu Feisty would not turn my system all the way off. Drives would spin down, but the power light remained on. No such problems in Debian 4.0.
Comments
Debian's great. I have to agree it's way simpler than most people realize. A couple notes for ya:
1. GIMP was installed already, it just needed a couple post-install options set.
2. Etch has 3 varieties of CD-1 - the default CD-1 with GNOME, a KDE CD-1, and an Xfce CD-1. If you take a look here, you'll see the 2 alternate CD-1s down at the bottom with the netinstall and business card ISOs.
There is also a way to install KDE(or Xfce too? probably) instead of GNOME from your netinstall CD. You have to enter tasks="standard, kde-desktop" at the CD's boot prompt that comes up and says basically, "got any options? If not press Enter to continue".
The Etch Releases page is where I got the first link above where you can find the KDE and Xfce CD-1 ISOs(look in the directory containing the ISO you would otherwise download if you didn't want KDE or Xfce), and where you can find the Etch Installation Guide, where I found the info on boot parameters and selecting packages(KDE) with a boot parameter.
Posted by: Geoff C | April 25, 2007 9:30 PM
Debian's a very sturdy and beautiful product. Have been in love with it until Ubuntu came out, but still have a soft spot for it.
My two cents to speed up OpenOffice (valid under Ooo 1.5, slightly different under Ooo 2., but the concept is the same): under Menu "Tools" select "options", go to "OpenOffice.org" and select "Memory". Increase as much as you can afford. On my machine I set 96Mb. Save. Close app. Restart app. You should notice the improvement.
A sort of reassigning a fixed amount of RAM to this application. If you have ever tried to work with MacOS up to 9.x, it should be somehow familiar...
Posted by: Bruno H.Michele | April 26, 2007 7:30 AM
Oh, please. How many seconds did you spend and how many rumors did you absorb to conclude that Slackware is too hard to figure out?
For a complete (or incomplete?) beginner, perhaps, but not for, well a Linux user.
Posted by: Morten Juhl Johansen | April 26, 2007 10:28 AM
Nice to see a comparison from 'the other side of the fence' as it were. I've always been a Debian user and never did understand what the fuss was all about. Nice writeup.
Posted by: mzilikazi | April 26, 2007 10:35 AM
One thing you could try is unchecking the java option in OOo, go to Tools > Options > Java. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I _think_ that it's only needed for setting up database connections, and thus is rarely needed. If you do find you need Java to run OOo succesfully, it can't hurt to make sure you have the official one from Sun as opposed to say the blackdown jre.
It's good to hear you're enjoying debian. In my opinion debian represents the true state of linux. Take all the hype from 6 months ago, remove the bugs and tricky install routines and you're prety close to what debian ships.
Regards,
ABCC
Posted by: ABCC | April 26, 2007 10:57 AM
Your post is a bit length to read in detail while working ;-) but I want to point that you already had Gimp installed in your had drive, what you find is a per user, post-install process.
Posted by: Shulai | April 26, 2007 10:59 AM
The obvious answer: because you will not get any new software for the next 18-24 months. Users who watched the nice beryl youtube clips are tempted go along the way messing up their system by installing software packaged downloaded elsewhere. If you are using Ubuntu, perhaps you have the patience to wait for 6 months, or 3-4 months for an alpha version.
Posted by: Alan | April 26, 2007 11:27 AM
I've very recently changed back to Debian, after a couple of years of using Ubuntu and then Kubuntu. What I really missed from Debian was the simple things.
I got angry with Feisty requirin me to install the whole kubuntu-desktop package and the kitchen sink just to upgrade correctly, that I grabed the net install and did a clean Debian install the way I like my system to be; that is, without lots of unneeded programs, with ext3 instead of reiserfs, without lvm (no such need after all) and all other things Kubuntu installs by default.
I'm really happy now that I see how faster Etch is in comparison to Edgy. Go Debian!
Posted by: Sebastián Benítez | April 26, 2007 11:28 AM
About Flash, it is a debian package :)
http://packages.debian.org/stable/web/flashplugin-nonfree
That package will download flash from adobe.com and set it up to work with iceweasel, I'm happily able to use youtube from debian with it.
However you will have to enable the contrib repository before you can get that package. it is an official debian repository and you can probobly enable it from synaptic, if not just hand edit /etc/apt/sources.list
if you enable the debian non-free repositorys you can get official sun java packages
and the unofficial but very popular and well tested respoitories at http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ have w32codecs and libdvdcss
here is an example /etc/apt/sources.list that has all those repositories
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ etch main
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main
deb http://mirror.home-dn.net/debian-multimedia etch main
if you want to automatically update to lenny when it hits stable just replace the word etch with stable.
Or if like me you use debian testing just say lenny in all of them, I try to avoid testing for a few weaks after a debian release so I use lenny rather than testing and hand update my sources when I'm ready for lenny +1. However debian multimedia dosn't have a lenny archive, but it dose have a testing archive so you'll have to use that.
Posted by: me | April 26, 2007 11:34 AM
Welcome to the club.
--machiner
Posted by: machiner | April 26, 2007 1:01 PM
Now days most of the code that gets into Debian comes from Ubuntu and not the other way around. Hard to beleve but thats the way it is.
So even if Debian is the source its not where the source code comes from :-)
Posted by: Ted Millon | April 26, 2007 2:49 PM
Need help getting flash or other proprietary media codecs to work or have other questions that you want some quick feedback on? Try the #debian IRC channel on irc.debian.org.
If you want snappy startup times for your applications, try this:
1) Make a large swap partition.
2) Start all your applications when you login.
3) Never logout and never shut down your machine.
(You may also want to turn the password option back on on the screensaver or otherwise provide for some security.)
Another tip is to use LVM2 and never have to worry about getting the sizes wrong on your partitions,
retiring old drives or whatever.
Debian has so many packages that you almost never need to install a 3rd party application. This makes for a smooth upgrade -- you don't have to manually re-integrate all your 3rd party software with your upgraded system. (MS Windows users are re-discovering the problem of software integration as they upgrade to Vista. Their old software no longer works, not to mention their old hardware! "Use binary-only drivers, hate life.")
The only trouble with Debian is that it gets old. If you're happy not upgrading your computer for up to a couple of years at a time then Debian's great. It "just works".
Posted by: Karl O. Pinc | April 26, 2007 2:50 PM
I also try the utility under Desktop-Administration-Printing. While different, it still doesn't work.
And later:
Debian 4.0 is as ready for the desktop as any other distro out there -- and by any other, I include Ubuntu and Mepis.
Amnesia?
Dude! Use it for a week or two and then write a review.
Posted by: Anonymous | April 26, 2007 5:32 PM
The fact that I could print at all -- and without doing anything -- is one of the reasons I say Debian is ready for the desktop. I don't think that not being able to add a printer is a deal-breaker if I can print in spite of it.
Posted by: Steven Rosenberg | April 26, 2007 5:49 PM
I don't think that not being able to add a printer is a deal-breaker if I can print in spite of it.
Linux advocates always very forgiving when it comes to linux. I still think your "review" is premature. One or two weeks of continuous use will undoubtedly reveal more problems. It's a given. So for you to try it for couple of hours and proclaim: "Yep, it's ready!" just doesn't seem credible. Especially if you came across a major problem. Yes being unable to add printer is a major problem. Maybe not for you but in general it is.
Posted by: Anonymous | April 26, 2007 6:32 PM
"Now days most of the code that gets into Debian comes from Ubuntu and not the other way around. Hard to beleve but thats the way it is."
That's rubbish. I don't understand how you did get that idea. What you say is not true. The truth is complete opposite of what you say. Without hard work of Debian Developers there still would be no Ubuntu.
Posted by: miksuh | April 26, 2007 8:11 PM
I'm not sure if I understood what your problem with printer exactly is. But if you have HP-printer. then check that you have hplip installed.
Posted by: miksuh | April 26, 2007 8:35 PM
I've been a Debian kid for at least 2 years now, and I'm glad you found it as well. What I don't get is why everyone always assumes you can't get new versions of packages until a new STABLE version comes out. A simple editing of /ect/apt/sources.list and changing the word stable/etch to unstable or testing in all the lines gives you the latest and greatest, and my computer has never gone off of the deep end because I'm using unstable.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that unstable has a lot more stability than it's name indicates.
Posted by: galeru | April 26, 2007 9:48 PM
@machiner
I find that impossible to believe, what evidence do you have to claim this?
Posted by: me | April 27, 2007 12:42 AM
I'm an "old school" debian user (meaning, I'm not afraid of the command line ;-) and I've found a guide called "Debian Reference" very useful -- it's the first place I look whenever I have problems with debian. If you'd like to try configuring CUPS for your printer the "old school" way, take a look at Debian Reference:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/
Debian has also helpful and friendly user forums that are worth visiting if you have any problems with debian or if you just want to discuss any debian-related issue with other users:
http://forums.debian.net/
Posted by: Laika | April 27, 2007 2:04 AM
Personally, I find Slackware easier than Debian. It is (to my mind) much more logically set out & things like the Slackware book & great forums really help.
I am not knocking Debian. Though Debian has more 'ease of use' tools I just find it easier to modify Slackware into what I want.
(BTW, I was using it within a year of first using Linux so it can't have been that hard).
Posted by: Guy_P | April 27, 2007 3:34 AM
curious about the layout of the "comments"
There is a solid continuous line betwen each comment; yet the author of the comment is listed below this line. This, imho, makes it somewhat ambiguous as to which comment should be attributed to which author.
Obvously it is possible to figure it out; but why cause this extra work?
Your site is not the only one that does this and so perhaps there is a logical explanation. If you know of some detailed explanation I would appreciate hearing it.
Many thanks for a very interesting review of Debian,
Some of the points raised by commentators could be expanded.
Posted by: jack | April 30, 2007 8:11 AM
Ah ... the problems of Movable Type, the software that runs this blog -- let me count the ways. I see your point with the line above the commenter's name -- it is misleading. I will look into it, but I'm not sure if I have the power to do anything about it. But I will check, to be sure.
The worst thing about Movable Type comments are that while these are set to be posted only after approval of the blog "owner," there's no "word verification," where you type in a series of characters you see morphed somewhat on the screen. I get a LOT of spam because of the lack of that feature. The fact that Blogger.com has word verification is ome of the many things it has going for it -- and I wish Movable Type would get it already!
We tried Typekey for awhile, but that's just too cumbersome for the casual blog commenter -- almost nobody has a Typekey account, and few see a reason to get one, or to remember yet another password.
Posted by: Steven Rosenberg | April 30, 2007 9:53 AM
I finally solved my Debian printing dilemma with HPLIP, the HP printer configuration utility. It easily found my printer on the network -- nothing could be easier, in fact. Thanks, HP!
Posted by: Steven Rosenberg | May 1, 2007 3:47 PM