Re: [vox] Ponder, ponder... perhaps a silly notion

["Richard S. Crawford" <rscrawford@mossroot.coMAPSm>]

Thanks, guys.

For simplicity's sake, I'm going to stick with Red Hat for now.  I know 
it and I'm familiar with it. ;-)

However... I'm anticipating getting a new computer in a few months to 
act as a web/file/print server in our home.  When that happens, I will 
be using Debian on that system.  It won't even be a dual boot system so 
I won't have to worry about creating a boot loader or anything.

Oh, and any future laptops I arGB hard drive, 96M RAM, 233 Intel Celeron 
processor (it's an old Gateway Solo 2500).  Would that computer be a 
candidate for a Debian install?  It's currently running Win98SE but I 
have no qualms about zarking that.

Richard


Rusty Minden wrote:
> I used Libranet and liked it back in the 1.9.2 release. I have to 
> say why not just use Debian and if you like the Libranet tools 
> add libranet to your apt.sources list. I did and set up sound 
> using it :-)
>
> The next IF would be a good place to bring your computer to have 
> Debian installed :-)
>
> Rusty
>
>
> On Wednesday 08 January 2003 11:56 pm, Rick Moen wrote:
>
> > Quoting Henry House (hajhouse@houseag.com):
> >
> > > What about LibraNet? A copy for the library (donated by the
> > > LibraNet company) arrived yesterday. I have not tried an
> > > installation yet, but the promise of a Debian-compatible
> > > system with easy hardware autodetection during install is
> > > very appealing.
> > I like the _beta_ of that Libranet version a great deal,
> > having retrieved the ISOs while it was still freely available
> > on the Net. (I've not tried the subsequent release version,
> > which is available only in a retail boxed set, of which the
> > library obviously just received a copy.)  I gave Pete copies
> > of the ISOs, for the beta.
> >
> > Some people don't like the non-graphical (ncurses-based)
> > installer, ditto the fact that it scrolls past you huge
> > amounts of information as it does "dpkg -i" and "dpkg
> > --configure" on each package installed. Other installers (PGI,
> > Xandros) are all-GUI and have less of the scrolling-messages
> > displays that apparently bother some of the more skittish
> > desktop users.
> >
> > Note#1:  Knoppix's hardware autodetection during bootup (and
> > thus during optional installation to HD) is difficult to beat.
> >
> > Note#2:  Hardware autodetection during installation is very
> > much a mixed blessing, which is possibly why the plain-vanilla
> > one for Debian doesn't do much of it without the user's
> > involvement.  The biggest problem is that aggressive
> > autoprobing can cause installers to seize up, with the result
> > that some distributions are (avoidably) not installable on
> > some systems.  To pick a hypothetical example, suppose an
> > installer were to always autoprobe for my on-board sound
> > chipset, and that the chipset happened to react badly and
> > cause seize-ups.  (This _sort_ of thing does happen, though my
> > specific example is invented.)  In that case, having automatic
> > autoprobe during installation would be a bad thing.
> >
> > The aim of the vanilla-Debian installer[1] is to support
> > enough of your hardware to complete installation on the
> > broadest possible range of hardware, using the widest possible
> > choice of installation methods -- floppy, ftp, http, NFS,
> > PLIP/laplink, SLIP/serial, ZIP drive, CD-ROM, tftp/bootp, or
> > files prepositioned on a hard drive partition.  _After_ that
> > necessary first step, there are extensive Debian packages for
> > hardware autodetection.  Quoting my Debian tips file:
> >
> >
> > Hardware-recognition (and related) packages:
> >
> > discover
> >  hardware identification system (thank you, Progeny Systems,
> > Inc.) mdetect
> >  mouse device autodetection tool
> > read-edid
> >  hardware information-gathering tool for VESA PnP monitors
> > sndconfig
> >  sound configuration (thank you, Red Hat Software, Inc.)
> > hotplug
> >  USB/PCI device hotplugging support, and network autoconfig
> > nictools-nopci
> >  Diagnostic tools for many non-PCI ethernet cards
> > nictools-pci
> >  Diagnostic tools for many PCI ethernet cards
> > mii-diag
> >  A little tool to manipulate network cards
> >
> > Don't forget that lspci and pnpdump will list installed PCI
> > and ISApnp devices, respectively.
> >
> >
> > But, people who nonetheless honestly want Debian via an
> > installer with hardware autoprobing during installation have
> > lots of options:  Xandros Desktop OS and Knoppix are the ones
> > that come to mind, aside from Libranet.
> >
> > [1] Which comes with several different kernel/driver sets, to
> > let the user either have the widest possible driver support or
> > some subset of those to finesse around problem hardware
> > components that seize up other installers.
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