Dear Harry, I have started using debian only some months ago and was stuck with SuSE before (beginning to hate suse-config and yast).. Some things about installing debian are really important (from my perspective). it might seem very labourious but you will profit from the robustness and apt-get-abilities (and much more) once your main setup tasks are solved. i'd always recommend to a new debian user:
- Start with the *stable* release to get acquainted to the debian specifics. - Better spend your money on a decent debian book than on half-cooked woody-cds. There is the (german) book by Peter Ganten that is excellent. I don't know what english book is best. - Figure out your hardware manually using another system (e.g. with the freeware "sandra" from sisoft on windows) or (better) get very well-documented hardware when you buy the machine. It might even be worth opening the machine and actually look at the components. I have done that and some google searches later i knew the important things. - Just download the boot floppy images (and maybe the kernel module ones too) to a working unix (linux) box. follow the installation guidelines of your book and/or the online documentation on debians website. (dd the images to floppy disks and do the remaining install from the nearest official mirror. expect an install procedure that is less "automatic" and "smooth" than those of other distros. it will be getting much quicker when you install your second (or third) machine. :-) (if you have no fast and affordable net access, a set of official cdroms of the *stable* release are the best choice. (i was very annoyed by a gratis debian cd that was given away at "linuxtag" in germany. Those mixtures of potato and woody are real show-stoppers ... :-( - Go for a base system without X11 first. Then dselect a package like task-x-window-system-core and you will be prompted for your x settings. i must say that the "SaX experience" from suse was the only thing that made me swear about "awkward debian" when i was "anXious" for the first time ... ;-) (joke: the debian x-configuration tool is called "anXious" ... (maybe they knew how you feel when you use it.) - expand your package selection stepwise using dselect or apt-get-install. After some while when frustration starts that many packages are a bit old, work to optimize your /etc/apt/sources.list (the entries are basically defining resources for using with apt-get. I have added the ximian gnome distro, wine, blackdown java and a kde-2.2.-for-debian mirror. be sure to have the security update (mirror) resource in your sources.list. The GOOD news: After all that, system maintenance is *really* a (weekly) "snap": just do "apt-get update", "update upgrade" everytime you're curious enough to see what new stuff of your favourite packages is there on the mirrors and let apt-get do the whole job ... it will ask you for your personal settings though - with very reasonable default values. You take a look at my sources.list like this: wget http://fd-bib.math.uni-sb.de/~admin/pub/sources.list cheers oliver
