Yes, you too can experience the thrill of installing and upgrading the Debian distro!
You'll impress your neighbors with your buff pinky muscles, built after hours of banging the living bejeesus out of the enter key to accept the default configurations for a plethora of programs you never use or asked to install! You're provided with about 5 base configurations -- which give you a machine with 40 mb. of packages, 120 mb. of packages, or 400+ mb. of packages! The essence of flexibility! Of course, you *could* choose "custom"...go right ahead... You'll ohh and ahhh as apt-get fails on package name lengths that are too long! You'll quiver as apt-get begins returning "E: pre depends" messages! You'll dance as gdmconfig refuses to save a custom append line, forcing you to edit /etc/gpm.conf by hand! You'll writhe as gdmconfig tries to test your mouse and locks up the keyboard! You'll telnet in from other machines repeatedly to kill gdmtest! You'll install xf86setup and find the actual command name is XF86Setup! Of course, when you install xf86config, the name is xf86config (this is an xfree thing, I know). You'll visit the debian.org site approximately 3,596,391 times finding out what package provides a command you need...since apt-get doesn't have "what-provides" or query options. Sigh. I know it's good stuff, but the initial and post-installation configuration details are mind-numbing. Somehow, someway, people need to be able to pick from more base installs, and there needs to be a higher quality post-installation configuration system. I'm almost there, but this is heinous. Maybe after installing SVGA16 XF86Setup will start working right. Main problem now is that when I log in through gdm/helix gnome, there is no wm started -- just a gray stipple and a single button 2 menu. sawfish is installed and configured, but not launching I guess. Any help is appreciated. --- John
