Debian installations
I’ve been recommending to people for ages that they use a bootable live-CD to install Debian. After the slight lack of success alluded to in the last entry, I’ve just tried using the 10MB netinst installer (discovered from Rick Moen’s Debian installer list, and installed Debian with it. While this was a woody installer, and therefore hasn’t seen some of the latest updates, it asked only one hard question: what type my PCMCIA controller was. I guessed at the first (of the two offered) and it’s worked, so I must have got it right. I walked through the installer, and then grabbed grub, the latest 2.6 kernel, and udev with apt. I’d forgotten just how good Debian is; I’ve discovered with live CDs that I’m sometimes afraid to grab arbitrary things because I might break their live-ness or the setup, which is built in arcane ways I don’t understand. Coming back to real Debian is like returning to an old friend; the comforting embrace of feeling confident of what I’m doing is worth a hundred flashy hardware diagnostic things.
Naturally, I haven’t installed X yet. That’s next.
I know this doesn’t go well with this entry, but I really like you new layout. Very reminiscent of a newspaper it is.
As for Debian, the netinst is my preferred way of installation. It installs just the bare essentials. Upgrading to testing or SID from there is easier than the times I had a full Woody install.
Recently I experimented with installing Knoppix on my desktop. I won’t do that again, for the very reasons you specified. Things break upon upgrading.
2 days later