Re: Some thoughts on SEUL

[George Bonser <grep@oriole.sbay.org>]

On Tue, 24 Feb 1998, Gregory Bell wrote:

> DEBIAN:
> The list has been promulgating the benifits of Debian dselect.  My own
> personnel observation on it is that it is a mish-mash.  The user
> interface
> suffers from lack of user friendliness.  For those that don't have
> Debian's
> dselect it basically presents you with a screen that lists all available

Huh?!!! I have NEVER seen anyone here say dselect was easy or friendly.

That is exactly why dselect is being replaced.  It sucks for the new user.
It is very powerful once you learn it but otherwise ... it can be less
than useful.

> 
> programs (also called packages) on the CD-Rom.
> The interface, as mentioned above gives a listing of all the packages
> available on the CD, but at least to me, in a vary strange manner.  When
> 
> attempting to install a package after the basic install all uninstalled
> packages
> are listed last, by major grouping (which also seems to be the
> directories
> on the CD-ROM).  This was somewhat of an annoyance to me because
> I found it difficult to find what I wanted to install.

In a debian install, you are better off doing the following (though you
will not find this documented anywhere):

Decide which MTA, MUA, news transport, newsreader, and editor you want and
select them.  AFTER you do this, it is usually safe to UNselect the the
ones Debian preslected for you.  Then simply install what is now selected
... ADD NOTHING ELSE.  After you have this installed, re-run dselect to
add the stuff you want.


> Next point, the vaulted dependencies.  I don't understand this at all.
> I had
> assumed that once you installed a program it would work, alas this is
> not
> the case.  For example, after doing a basic install that included X, I
> couldn't
> get X started.  Don't know why, but there you go.

You still have to configure it for your machine.  Installing the packages
do not configure them.

> Redhat beats out Debian hands down.  Where Debian requires that you have
> up to
> 8 3.5 disks set aside Redhat lets you install from the CD-ROM (through
> the use
> of scripts that last of which runs loadlin).  This is a good idea (TM)

You can install debian off the CDROM.  You do NOT need anything but a boot
disk and if your computer can boot from CDROM, you do not need ANY
floppies for a Debian install.  WHat you say is only for an FTP install.


George Bonser 
If NT is the answer, you didn't understand the question. (NOTE: Stolen sig)
http://www.debian.org
Debian/GNU Linux ... the maintainable operating system.