This is a message I /should/ have sent before I even tried to install Debian. Oh well, better late than never.
Here's the deal: I want Debian on my machine. Mandrake is in many ways wonderful; it has the best install in the world (in my experience); it has loads of bundled software; and it does a great job of detecting and configuring existing hardware. However, it's a toy OS. Administration can be confusing and goofy; there's rarely a canonical Mandrake Way to do common tasks like there is a Debian Way; upgrading is a joke; and besides, it has no Policy. After doing a lot of reading, I've come to the conclusion that Debian is the most technically superior distro out there. So, I want Debian, and I'm determined to install it. However, there are some requirements I have. There are certain things I want on my new Debian system, and I don't want to dick around with configuring them after the install, or waiting hours or days for large packages to download over my measly 56k connection. Here's what I want out-of-box: ReiserFS: I've had great experiences with this on Mandrake. It's fast, and when the power goes out unexpectedly I needn't worry about disk integrity. I want to be able to format my boot/system partition with ReiserFS during the install. KDE 2.2(Preferred)/KDE 2.1(Acceptable): I use both KDE and GNOME apps, and I don't want to wait hours to upgrade to a recent KDE. GNOME 1.4(preferred)/GNOME 1.2(acceptable): See above. XFree86 4.*: Must include drivers for an NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Kernel 2.4.* Nice-To-Haves: GRUB as the default bootloader: I like GRUB. It's less finicky than LILO. The other things I want in a Debian variant: A good installer. Not necessarily a super-easy one; but one that people have found is solid and doesn't do anything nonsensical (like overwrite your MBR after asking a single, non-obvious question *cough*Progeny*cough*). Also one that either a) auto-detects hardware *WELL*, or b) prompts the user for hardware info. Not one that does a half-assed job of hardware detection, and leaves the system half-configured. I want it to be very Debian-Compatible. By which I mean, I want to be able to grab packages from standard Debian "testing" or "unstable", and have them install without conflicts. Basicly I don't want a lot of unnecessary proprietary tweaks. So, there are my requirements. What I'm trying to figure out is, which Debian Variant to install. I've already tried Progeny, and found it lacking in many respects. What I'm asking is, should I go with Libranet? Or should I chance using Stormix, even though they are out of business? Or is Progeny really my best bet, and I should stick with it? Or should I just tough it out and get an Official Debian CD, and suffer through hours of package downloads? Is there any Debian-based distro I'm missing? (I have no interest in Corel, that's why it's not listed) Thanks for your time, -Avdi Grimm __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
