stephan.sens wrote:
Dear Russell,
Thank you very much for your help, indeed!
Having a broadband connection, I am going to 'install from network' as you
suggested as 'best' approach.
Thanks again for you advise with the O'Reilly's books.
All the best
Stephan
Dear Stephan,
Thanks for the note. I have done numerous network installations of
Debian; changing CDs is tedious. From start to finish, plan to spend
about four hours, including an hour in which the machine is doing
nothing but downloading files. Then you likely shall spend another full
day loading and configuring application packages according to your use
of the machine. My work is primarily composition and typesetting, and
setting up a comprehensive and comfortable working environment with
Xemacs and LaTeX takes a while.
The tedious part of any installation is partitioning the drive, because
there are many trade-offs. This comes about primarily because
experienced Linux users typically set up separate partitions for the
major directories (boot, root ("/"), home, var, tmp, and usr). However,
there is no universally-accepted rule to follow regarding the size to
make each partition, so deciding upon the proper sizes can be
particularly troubling to the newcomer to Linux.
This matter caused me endless concern, until I finally decided that the
best way to determine the required partition sizes is simply to install
Linux, run it for a month or so, and see how much drive space is used
for each partition. Then reinstall Linux, setting partition sizes
according to your actual personal requirements. To make sure that this
scheme works properly, the first (trial) installation should put all the
major directories (home, var, temp, user, etc.) into one large
partition, so that each directory can grow as large as necessary while
you are installing packages. It is good to check the partitions from
time to time, making a note of the used/free ratio for each, so that you
can intelligently increase or decrease partition sizes at the next
installation.
Though Debian in easily upgraded without the necessity of reinstalling
the system, I've found it beneficial to reinstall the system every year
or two. This gives me the opportunity to adjust partition sizes; but
more importantly, it is an opportunity to look over the packages which
are installed and to clean out old packages for which I no longer have
need -- a "spring cleaning".
RLH
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