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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Thanks. (by kumarmu at 2004-10-18 11:14:43 GMT)
Distrowatch is the Homepage of my webbrowser. I keep visiting the site about a dozen times a day. I learnt a lot about Gnu/Linux and various distributions, which I freely downloaded from the references given at Distrowatch. You are doing a wonderful service to the Linux Community.
Thank you very much.
2 • Its monday (by Nix_user on 2004-10-18 11:22:56 GMT)
Wow, what a treat. Reader acknowledgement. Very cool.
On a side not about RH's Anaconda installer is darn good. I havent used the other installers mentioned about (suse, mandrakes, TL), but it should still rank near the top. Personally, I like ncurses/curses based installers. FreeBSD and Debians installers are fantastic.
Well, the new debian installer (Anaconda based), which is what I have used and I think they deserve their place at the top.
Disclaimer: I dont like mice. Command prompts and green/amber screens for me since the ~1980. Ok, well there are no green/amber screens anymore but they can be simulated. Please no ebay posts for monitors. ;-)
xterm -fg green -bg black
Enjoy,
Nix_user
3 • forgot the important one (by Chris C. on 2004-10-18 11:34:41 GMT)
Ubuntu's first official release (not a beta or a preview release) is due out Wednesday:
http://wiki.ubuntulinux.org/WartyWarthog_2fReleaseSchedule
I think this is much more significant than the other three upcoming releases that were mentioned. And let me add that as a professional, I looove that fact that they stick to a schedule!
4 • RE: forgot the important one (by ladislav at 2004-10-18 11:47:02 GMT)
Ubuntu's first official release (not a beta or a preview release) is due out Wednesday:
We know - we had that covered in DWW two weeks ago:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20041004#upcoming
And let me add that as a professional, I looove that fact that they stick to a schedule!
Hmm, originally the final release of Ubuntu 4.10 was due out on the 13 October, but was later postponed by one week. So no, sorry - not even Ubuntu sticks to schedules.
5 • Good FOSS citizen (by George Schmied on 2004-10-18 12:06:38 GMT)
Mandrake is a good FOSS citizen.
When problems arise, they deal with it and usually very well.
6 • Anaconda : getting better ? (by KaZe on 2004-10-18 12:24:57 GMT)
The popularity of Anaconda may lead to an even better installer.
Imagine : some distro uses Anaconda, but need a new feature, like... maybe... partition resizing (let's say ;) ).
By coding this new feature, virtually any other distro which uses anaconda profits from this improvement.
And, as more and more distros use it, bugs could be killed more efficiently and quickly.
PS : sorry for typos, English's not my mothertongue ;)
7 • freebsd 5.3 slipping by a week (by sporadic235 at 2004-10-18 12:27:26 GMT)
First of all, I would like to thank you for putting up such a very useful website where everyone can get the latest update on distributions of GNU/Linux and *BSD.
I wish I could move away from Windows totally but my workplace requires that I engage each and every day developing applications for the said platform.
At home, my old desktop PC has Mandrake installed and my laptop uses SUSE. However, I gained interest in FreeBSD sometime last year and I have been waiting for FreeBSD 5.3 like crazy. I visited www.freebsd.org last weekend to see if they have already put up 5.3 (since the supposed date for upload was last October 15) but I didn't get what I was looking for. Well, I'll just have to wait until October 24 (I live in Japan) and see if the developers are true to their word (technically -- posting).
8 • weekly (by reddazz on 2004-10-18 12:28:45 GMT)
Ok, I'll confess, I am just like one of the other readers. I am addicted to visiting this site, gotta visit it a few times a day just to check out whats going on distro wise.
Now, talking about Anaconda, I believe it's one of the best, but I'd say behind Mandrake and Suse's. I think it's adoption by a lot more distro's can only make it better.
9 • Suggestion for project donation (by Offer Kaye at 2004-10-18 12:29:18 GMT)
Hi,
I'd like to suggest http://www.naturaldocs.org/ as the next project re receive a donation.
"Natural Docs is an open-source, extensible, multi-language documentation generator. You document your code in a natural syntax that reads like plain English. Natural Docs then scans your code and builds high-quality HTML documentation from it."
It's a really cool tool :-)
10 • Anaconda (by gunksta at 2004-10-18 12:37:53 GMT)
Maybe it's just early in the day, but I'm surprised that the question about Anaconda hasn't sparked more debate. I use Fedora, so I suppose I'm supposed to like the installer and for the most part, I do.
But, it's hard to recommend a distro to an interested friend that doesn't help shrink the M$ partitions.
I would live to learn more about why RH's developers, who are obviously quite capable, haven't added this into an otherwise terrific installation program. The only reason I can think of goes back to Red Hat's aversion to using ANY code that might not be 100% GPL and restriction free.
That's why FC 3 T3 ships with the Helix Player, not the new Real Player (not GPL). It's also why you can't mount your ntfs partitions or play mp3s on a fresh install (potential copyright violations).
--andy
11 • graphical installers (by nitroushhh on 2004-10-18 12:50:35 GMT)
Are the mandrake and suse installers open source ???
The suse installer uses many yast modules during install and they have open sourced Yast, but is the whole installer open ? Anyone know ?
If the mandrake installer is open I recommend projects looks
at mandrake's graphical partitioning tool. I found the graphical representation of the partitioning I've selected, very reassuring.
Now I've done more repartitioning schemes I'm happy with non grpahical
partitioners. But for a newbie distro I think its essential.
12 • anaconda (by crawancon at 2004-10-18 13:01:21 GMT)
well anaconda is one of the best installers out there, but with all the live cd's out, its just as easy to boot livecd, save settings onto usb drive for backup, then run whatever "hd-install" the live cd has. usually it asks for harddrive settings, then will get video/x settings, keyboard/mouse, etc, then at the end usually there's a boot loader install. im not sure if there's a "professional installer via livecd", but maybe thats one avenue anaconda can pursue, along with partition resizing.
happy 'nix'ing humans :-)
13 • Re: Anaconda (by gunksta) (by arki at 2004-10-18 15:50:06 GMT)
Based on the comments on http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html
the NTFS resizing code is 100% open source (GPL), no copyright or patent problems involved. It was written to be used restriction free by any Linux or other installers and Mandrake, SUSE, Debian, YOPER, MEPIS and many others indeed use it. Actually even the Anaconda based ThizLinux integrated it for well over a year.
14 • Re: Anaconda (by Platypus at 2004-10-18 16:31:25 GMT)
Personally, I prefer text based installers and one that really does it's job well is Libranet's installer. No frills no fancy shmancy graphics. Just a tool to get the job done and done well.
15 • Searching for a distro. (by fnobths at 2004-10-18 16:49:38 GMT)
I read a comment in the readers mail that you should make an easier way to search for a distro with the features you want. I too have been looking for a distro for an i686, and have been searching through tons of distro's I don't care about to find the few I like.
Besides that, I think you are doing a great job here, I would like to THANK YOU for all the hard work you put into this site. Keep up the good work.
16 • Searching for a distro (by User256 on 2004-10-18 17:13:07 GMT)
I like:
arch linux
crux linux
both are i686 optimized and as a bonus, they have *bsd init scripts. AKA: everything get modified in the /etc/rc.conf
Also: gentoo is cool
All 3 feature *bsd like package management systems.
Just my humble yet slightly biased opinion.
17 • Installer (by stranger on 2004-10-18 18:09:02 GMT)
i have tested Mdk, Suse, lindows, slackware, college and many more, and now i use Debian
mostly they didnt last long ,it was for testing purpose only :)
the installer i think is the best, ist the new one of Debian.
it's really easy (and 1000 times better than the old debian one...)
3 weeks ago we had a linux project at school - some new user tested fedora core 2 they could install it wirhout help.
so i think installers for linux are good. thats also the overall feeling i got from my tests
@ladislav:
your work is great, keep on going!
18 • my favorite linux distro (by Mark Van Tilburg at 2004-10-18 18:12:11 GMT)
I have tried Mandrake, Knoppix, Damn Small, and now finally SimplyMepis. I must say, for ease of installation, hardware detection, and complete (if not fully assembled) multimedia solutions, SimplyMepis rocks. All the others promise, but SimplyMepis delivers. Thanks Woodrow, well done.
19 • i686-optimized (by Adam Baker at 2004-10-18 20:06:48 GMT)
I haven't tried Yoper, but from what I hear it's a great flavor that is optimized for i686 systems. http://www.yoper.com
Although Ubuntu is my Linux of choice.
20 • re: debian installer (by Luk van den Borne at 2004-10-18 20:16:45 GMT)
I have also tried the new debian installer. It wasn't able to dhcp my network interface, however. That was really a showstopper. I have never encountered such a lame bug in any installer, even if they were beta. So I can't really comment on this.
If you want a i686 optimised distro with a wonderful package manager, give Arch a try. You shouldn't be afraid to edit a config file by hand, however. Also, you will have to know (or find out) what modules your system needs.
21 • Partition resizing during installs ... not necessarily a good idea! (by Ed Borasky at 2004-10-18 20:23:44 GMT)
No matter how stable the code is, you absolutely postively must back up your existing system before doing anything to the partitions. When you give me an installer that does the backups first, I'll use it. Till then, I'll do my partitioning off line with PartitionMagic for a dual-booted box.
22 • re:re:debian installer (by stranger on 2004-10-18 20:53:15 GMT)
>>I have also tried the new debian installer. It wasn't able to dhcp my >>network interface, however. That was really a showstopper. I have >>never encountered such a lame bug in any installer, even if they were >>beta. So I can't really comment on this.
of all distros i tested, there was only one which had trouble with my network, it was suse. it wouldnt even have a driver for my card! that was really disapointing. (my ethenet card is quite a default 10/100mbps one)
23 • Re:Linux installers (by William Templeton at 2004-10-18 20:57:06 GMT)
I use Libranet and like it`s non graphical installer.
Over the years i have grown to dislike Anaconda mainly because, if things go wrong,it says "we are sorry such and such
did not do whatever and you have to shut down.I don`t have the problem if i am using a Red Hat that is based on Enterprise
Red Hat, like White Box,Fermi or Scientific Linux.
Now the best installer of all time is Mandrake`s Drake X.
I always have a copy laying around.I don`t have partition magic
and the others i find too intimidating for a 67 year old man.
Frankly i Use the 1st current Mandrake CD to partition Windows NTFS hard drives.I boot Mandrake to Drake X and create 3 or 4
partions in Fat 32 and leave about 8 Gbs free for Linux.
Since you can not just right click on your new Windows partitions after a reboot,i go into admin tools in XP and try to format my new Windows Fat 32 partitions, it says no
unless you want to Force, I force, and Fat 32 is now NTFS after a reboot abd you use the free space for your brand of linux.I don`t like Mandrake but for someone new, SuSE 9.1 is a great distro to install.
Bill
24 • RE: Linux installers (by Michael Salivar at 2004-10-18 22:42:43 GMT)
My favorite three have been Arch, Libranet, and CCux.
Arch is very minimalistic ncurses, it basically installs packages, kernel, and bootloader and prompts you to configure everything. Considering the distribution's philosophy, it's perfect. This is my primary distro.
Libranet is a great little hybrid ncurses/graphical installer that does everything you want in a straightforward manner. The thing I like most is the way they handle dselect (if you're not familiar with Debian, choosing specific packages within groups). From the group selection you choose 'details' and it gives you a checkable list of packages within said group. It's hard to explain, but it's much smoother than a lot of distributions which just throw everything at you all at once when you choose a custom install.
CCux is by no means usable yet as a distribution, as it's still in alpha, but the installer shows a ton of promise (graphical). My favorite part of it is that it's tabbed, so you don't have to fuss with back and next buttons. You can go to any point in the install process with a click of the mouse. To anyone choosing to try it, I suggest having a dedicated hard drive on /dev/hda (it still has problems with other locations), and I disconnected all my other drives to be save. This is ALPHA!
Personally, I've never liked Anaconda, but it's been too long since I've used it to really comment.
25 • Anaconda Installer (by edwin at 2004-10-18 23:42:47 GMT)
For me the best installer was the one that came with Mandrake 7.x. You could jump to any point back in the installation process (I can't do that in MDK 9.x - 10.0), you could change the colors of the installer, etc.
26 • Re: Partition resizing during installs (by Whiz at 2004-10-18 23:43:24 GMT)
It's funny you say that because the open source resizers are more reliable than Partition Magic. Not only based on my own and friends' experiences, but it's also easy to read or find many examples in newsgroups or web pages, e.g. http://pete.kruckenberg.com/blog/archives/2004/04/
However it's true that Linux 2.6 kernels have CHS geometry detection problems that caused Parted to corrupt partition tables in certain cases (when Windows is told to use BIOS during boot and the disk access is set to CHS). But this may corrupt only some bytes in the partition table an easily recoverable way (Parted was fixed already) meanwhile Partition Magic can completely mess up all the user data an unrecoverable way. Also, if a distro has the CHS problem then no one can avoid to hit the issue if the conditions are met, even if she used Partition Magic because Parted will corrupt it when the installer reads the partition table.
But of course I do agree on the importance of REGULAR backups (disks crash, softwares misbehave, users misbehave too, etc).
27 • Console installers... you are an old timer. (by Kristian on 2004-10-19 01:01:52 GMT)
I personally think, GUI based installers are the future. I don't mind if people claim their fave towards text-based installers, but that's WAY OLD SCHOOL. Anyone who is nostalgic about the console day's that's okay, but if you are trying to push it (promote it)--sorry, your days are done; it is time for you to retire 'pa.
Anaconda is a great GUI installer. I prefer it over SuSE's YAST. I guess it is because its 100% opensource, Anaconda seems to work better and looks better compared to YAST. I can't really comment on Mandrake's since the last time I've tried it was back in '99, but, I assume their installer is doing just as well.
28 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2004-10-19 03:43:52 GMT)
I'm a relatively newbie but I don't mind text based installers, afterall not all of my linux installation need X.
What I need is clear, logical and flexible enough installation procedure. I hate to be asked something that I don't know anything about (and no explanation offered by the installer either).
Flexibility in choosing and configuring partition is essential for serious distros.
And when I choose to install X graphical server, I want help on detecting the best driver for my current hardwares.
And if I forget to install some package or setup some config, I want to be able to do that easily (doesn't have to be pretty graphical thing, just easy) after the system is installed, and without having to connect to the internet if the package is actually already on the CD.
Ands I don't like multiple CD installation, make the essential and most used features installable by only using the 1st CD, the optional and less used features may go in the 2nd,3rd,4th,... optional CDs.
29 • Best Installer... (by Paul on 2004-10-19 06:02:07 GMT)
There is no doubt in my mind that SuSE has the best installer. The hardware detection, features, and look are all fantastic.
My dell laptop - which i despise - has had many issues with installing OSes; however, SuSE, RH 8 (Fedora bomb), FreeBSD, and Gentoo all worked extremely well.
30 • multiple CD installation (was Anaconda) (by Garrett at 2004-10-19 06:08:55 GMT)
<>
That matches Slackware's description. I've used it in the past and will always come back to it. Now I am using the Gentoo based VidaLinux, which also has all of the essencials on one CD... anything else just needs "emerged" after installation.
-Garrett
AZ, USA
31 • No subject (by Holger on 2004-10-19 06:19:32 GMT)
My favorite installler: d-i (Debian Installer):
Watch out for the final release guys!
32 • re: old timer (by Luk van den Borne at 2004-10-19 06:58:36 GMT)
That's YOUR definition of a good installer. What if I want an installer that never chrashes, is lightening fast and does everything that I want it to do? I always end up with a ncurses based installer. I am particulary fond of FreeBSD, arch, slack and probably debian's new installer as well, when the issue with dhcp gets fixed.
It is perfectly possible to write a ncurses installer that does everything a GUI does. In other words, I am sure it is possible to port anaconda to ncurses, without losing any user/newbie friendliness. It just won't have mucht eye candy and will probably be stabler and faster.
Don't get me wrong, I like GUI's. I use KDE, Gnome or xfce4, depending on my mood, but imho an installer doesn't need to have a GUI. I won't mind using a GUI installer as long as it does want I want it to do. But just don't say the ONE way to go is GUI.
33 • Anaconda vs. YaST (by Benjamin Vander Jagt at 2004-10-19 08:26:27 GMT)
I don't understand why nobody else is using YaST. It's been SuSE's claim to fame for a long time, because it's very powerful. It's a complete configuration system for new installations, modifications, hardware and software, users and settings, text mode and graphical mode, server administration, odds and ends, etc. It creates standard config files and can work with other standard config files, so it's widely compatible. It's programmed in a modular, scalable way, so it should be relatively easy to pick out just the pieces that you want. With all this in mind, I'm surprised that I haven't seen YaST used in anything else.
Past arguments were that YaST was not free software. Well, the YaSTPL was relatively free before, requiring only that derivatives of YaST be somehow marked as modified, which sounds easy enough to me. But now, Novell has released YaST into GPL, so why no excited parties? I was pretty pleased, and I started hacking up a copy to work on Slackware-current right away! (Of course, the packaging system is completely different between Slackware and SuSE, but a surprising amount of the tools worked right out of the box. For instance, SAX picked up the XFree86 4.4.0 options from Slackware-current, then picked up the X.org 6.7 options when I installed that.)
34 • NTFS/resizing/installers (by BigLinuxandBSD FAN on 2004-10-19 12:17:00 GMT)
I'm surprised no one mentioned SystemRescueCD. It resizes partitions in a breeze. All you have to do is boot from it and run_qtparted. Select the amount allocated for the partitions that you want to make. Partition Magic is at the top, but why no go with open source. I have used it a numerous amount of times and it works great! First use SystemRescueCD and make the partitions and then use anaconda's installer to install either Fedora Core ?/ or another distro which uses it. Reading the comments about anaconda, the reader who said that it stops when it finds an error and you have to reboot is right. And then you may also get that the error that you cannot boot Windows if you have made it dual boot because of a fdisk/partition table error. But those are some of the intangibles that you can face. Mandrake's installer is great. Fedora's installer is great and some of the live cd's installers also work fine. Just use the one that you like.
35 • yast beyond suse (by nitroushhh on 2004-10-19 12:38:31 GMT)
My PcLinuxOS machine has several yast modules that come with the distro. So yast is being reused (at least a little)
IMHO yast install and config is one of the best out there for the user moving from windows. yast in suse is still some distance from a total config solution. Definitely moving in the right direction though.
Looks like there might me a wireless roaming module in 9.2
It is still hard to find a company that supplies Linux preinstalled. So a simple gui installer and configurator is very important for those making the move from windows.
Many people are happy with text installers but spare a thought for those seeking asylum from an appressive software vendor ;-)
36 • Mandrake installer (by Yann Bouan on 2004-10-19 15:43:30 GMT)
I must vote for the Mandrake installer.
I have not tried Suse since 7.0.
The few times I used Anaconda I hated the partitioning.
On another note - less related to the installer itself and more to the distro - I also hated the Anaconda installer because Fedora didn't configure Yum or Apt automatically.
Mandrake installed everything...
The partitioning is really the only big difference between Mandrake and Fedora.
But it changes everything.
37 • Installers (by Jay Miller at 2004-10-19 16:31:20 GMT)
I tried a couple of distributions, and was really impressed with the Ark Linux installer - it's so easy to handle that even my grandmother could install it, and now she can send me email.
It's a pity this project doesn't get more attention - it's very usable for newbies and still very powerful technically (how many other distributions are at kernel 2.6.x, gcc 3.4.x [for the entire system], xorg 6.8.1 etc.? Most aren't).
38 • Some food for thought (by EEDOK at 2004-10-19 17:56:12 GMT)
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,96410,00.html?f=x1410
Well this story is a bit old, but raises the question about speech recognition becoming a major factor in the computer world. It makes me wonder why there is no software like Dragon Naturally Speaking for linux, or is there and I'm just not seeing it?
39 • Mongoose... (by Matt Wilson at 2004-10-19 19:49:07 GMT)
Mongoose is actually an Anaconda fork.
40 • Kanotix Bug-Hunter 9 A (2004-10-16) (by Moe on 2004-10-19 20:10:10 GMT)
After tooling around with this latest version of Kanotix I have to give it five stars for ease of use and rock hard stability. Of all the liveCds this one has proven to be the best yet on my old Dell XPS T500.
Keep up the great new addiction! DistroWatch!
41 • Distro chooser (by EEDOK at 2004-10-19 20:21:55 GMT)
Hey I know this is quite a few weeks late, currently only has 11 questions, and has a database limited to the free x86 linux distributions I've tried, but hey it's a start
http://eedok.voidofmind.com/linux/chooser.html
42 • Distro Chooser (by Tux5 at 2004-10-19 21:52:00 GMT)
I did something similar at www.tuxs.org/chooser
Choosing a distro is a very inexact science but it was interesting to see your different questions and answers.
43 • re: old timer and Luk van den Borne (by Anonymous on 2004-10-20 00:57:04 GMT)
I agree with you a 100% Luk van den Borne.
You can customize a system during a manual install vs. a cookie cutter (one size fits all) installation. It is the content and quality of the installer not the eye candy. Honestly, what good is an X-Based installer on a system w/out a graphics card?
As for the old timers comment? Welcome to old school young pup.
I would take a manual install and ncurses based install over a pretty gui anyday. Just MHO.
44 • Mandrake has the best installer (by escort on 2004-10-20 03:41:07 GMT)
Super easy to use, straight forward, and absolutely the best partitioning around. So easy. Graphical. Easy to undo.
It's also the best looking installer IMO. Honestly, I don't much care for the distro, and haven't since 8.2, but their installer is hands down the best. I've never had a problem with it, and I've run it through three different systems over the years with vastly different hardware. All home desktop systems.
Lycoris is my favourite distro to use, though, with Xandros being a close second.
As for text based or ncurses installers, I don't mind them really, but I get nervous when forced to use some crusty old partitioning system. Mandrake's partitioning has all the features, and is by far the easiest to use and understand for new users.
45 • Serious issue with partitioning in some distros (by Benjamin Vander Jagt at 2004-10-20 06:25:54 GMT)
Windows, Mandrake, Slackware, and several other OS's will perform partitioning the moment you select the way you want your drive partitioned. This is not a good thing. Anaconda and YaST wait until all the moves are decided, then they go forth and do the work. YaST is easily the smartest at proposing partitioning schemes for you based on what's already on the system.
Drake and YaST aren't as foolproof on resizing partitions as they advertise. I've had about 1 in 20 systems lose partition tables upon subsequent reboot. Perhaps there's a bug that Red Hat doesn't want to risk coming across and tarnishing their name? (Others seem to resize okay.)
Mandrake: The Windows Millennium of the Linux world.
Red Hat: The Windows 2000 of the Linux world.
Debian: The Windows 3.11 of the Linux world.
SuSE: The Windows XP of the Linux world.
FreeBSD: The OS/2 of the Linux world. ;-) (just kidding, it's awesome)
46 • Anaconda for Slackware ??? (by Karl Fischer at 2004-10-20 14:04:31 GMT)
Like that ever gonna happen :p
Karl
47 • "Old Timer" (by P. Pearson on 2004-10-20 16:24:42 GMT)
I think the reason some folks say they prefer the non-GUI partitioners is because they (the partitioners) do the job they're intended to do, and (mostly) in an intuitive manner. The opposition isn't necessarily against "new-fangled technology" - it's against losing capability and usability. I've seen too many farily easy to use applications become practically unusable when a GUI was added - because the GUIs were either so complex that I couldn't find/use anything, or so simplistic that features were lost.
A good ncurses app is much preferred over a bad GUI app.
My US$0.02 worth.
48 • Distros of the Linux world (by PastorEd at 2004-10-20 17:23:25 GMT)
Benjamin Vander Jagt wrote:
--
Mandrake: The Windows Millennium of the Linux world.
Red Hat: The Windows 2000 of the Linux world.
Debian: The Windows 3.11 of the Linux world.
SuSE: The Windows XP of the Linux world.
FreeBSD: The OS/2 of the Linux world. ;-) (just kidding, it's awesome)
--
Slackware: The Linux of the Linux world.
49 • Re: Serious issue with partitioning in some distros (by Elek at 2004-10-20 21:30:17 GMT)
Red Hat had and apparently still has exactly the some problem as Mandrake and SUSE:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=115980
Why? Because, the partition table corruption have nothing to do with resizing. When Parted, what most installers use, reads the partition table on a Linux 2.6 kernel then the partition table can get corrupted. Parted believes the wrong CHS disk geometry the 2.6 kernels report and wants to fix the partition table (silently) but instead it thrashes it. There are more info here for example: http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html#troubleshoot
BTW, Parted, Mandrake 10.1 and SUSE 9.2 have fixed this problem. Red Hat and Fedora apparently still didn't.
50 • Anaconda? Nope, one more vote for the Mepis installer (by Gnobuddy at 2004-10-20 22:14:18 GMT)
I'd have to say the best Linux installer I've used is the Mepis installer. I do not know its ancestry...but it has never failed me yet during multiple installs on multiple machines of multiple versions of Mepis. It is also quick, clear, includes the ability to resize Windows partitions, and allows for both simple default "newbie" installs, and more complex custom installs for the more experienced user.
Ive used Red Hat a couple of times. Anaconda is one of my least favourite installers...it is long, clunky, and sometimes unclear.
-Gnobuddy
51 • Re: Anaconda for Slackware ??? (by LoST on 2004-10-20 22:55:32 GMT)
i don't think it possible, Slackware is Slackware, only Slackware, nothing else, right PJV?
52 • Distros of the Linux World (by jmirles on 2004-10-21 01:21:48 GMT)
Mandrake: The Windows Millennium of the Linux world.
Red Hat: The Windows 2000 of the Linux world.
Debian: The Windows 3.11 of the Linux world.
SuSE: The Windows XP of the Linux world.
FreeBSD: The OS/2 of the Linux world. ;-) (just kidding, it's awesome)
--
Slackware: The Linux of the Linux world.
Correction on Debian
Debian: The Windows 3.11, Windows 2000, Windows XP and LongHorn of the Linux World (Stable, Unstable, Testing and Experimental)
53 • Anaconda installer is the best... (by azbaer at 2004-10-21 03:50:52 GMT)
My linux life has revolved around Red Hat. starting with 6.0. So when Anaconda came alone, I got spoiled. After reading all the postings about all of the other I felt like I was missing something so I tried Gentoo, Slackware and Debian. I really disliked the text installers and the work involed in getting each loaded. Yesterday I download the Anaconda installer for Debian, what a difference. looks like I will be moving on to Debian, the apt-get thing is the most wonderful thing!
54 • Mandrake Installer (by zkorvezir at 2004-10-21 12:28:10 GMT)
For edwin
ALT Linux use older Mandarake Installer (9.1 and older).
55 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2004-10-24 12:44:13 GMT)
I can't agree that anaconda is the best installer - I have used the mdk one several times and the ease of setting up mount points on multiple hard disks and making sure I keep /home partitions is great. Also anaconda has always fallen over on me - every time I have used it it has given up. I don't know what it is on my box that it doesn't like but till I find a version of anaconda that works on my box it will never stand a chance of being my favourite.
Dave Jackson
56 • My Ideal Installer (by Ed Borasky at 2004-10-24 16:57:06 GMT)
After thinking about it a bit, I've come up with a design for my ideal installer. This is x86-biased; that's the only thing I have any experience with.
Step One: boot it. It comes up in something resembling Ghost for UNIX (G4U), which you can use to back up existing partitions. G4U is BSD-based, but I suspect it could be ported to Linux without much difficulty and modified to use either Samba, FTP or NFS as an image storage repository. Step One offers to back up existing partitions. You need a server, of course.
Step Two: hardware analysis. This step does a detailed analysis of everything on the system and documents it. I think Knoppix and its derivatives probably are the leading edge here; someone correct me if they have a better idea. If you need to do any research for a successful install, this step should tell you that. It would create a PDF checklist of things that the user needs to do and find out, and ship it to a network printer or fileserver.
Step Three: here's where I diverge from the mainstream. The biggest source of difficulty in installers is dual-booting with Windows and verifying that the system is going to be bootable afterwards. *Anybody* can wipe out a system and load Linux on it, but there's a bit more intelligence required to preserve an existing Windows install and keep it as the primary OS. The problem is made worse by the fact that floppy disks are nearly extinct, so there's no convenient place to back up the MBR and no way to make a "boot floppy".
So we do the re-partitioning in two phases. In the first phase, we shrink the Windows partition and recover a user-selected amount of free space, then eject the install CD and reboot to verify that Windows still comes up!
Step Four: the actual install. Armed with the knowledge that we're going to be able to get back to Windows if something fails and the research on questions the hardware detector couldn't answer, we reboot the install CD. First, we create a "/boot" partition and install Grub and its config file, presetting it to boot back into Windows as the default. Then we go into whatever partitoning routine our users prefer. Then we continue with the rest of the install, either from CD or the Internet.
Step Five: Assuming the install completes successfully, we add a pointer to the Grub config file for the new Linux, and give the user the option to select either Windows or Linux as the default.
Comments anyone? I've been doing dual-boots for a few years now and I've only burned myself five or six times and haven't nuked a Windows partition since last month. :)
57 • The Mother of all Installers (by IK at 2004-10-25 04:26:51 GMT)
Mepis Linux.
It simply does what it's supposed to do, and beautifully, invoking QTParted if you need to (easy enough for a Windoze cripple to figure out).
Period. Granted, that's a long sentence... :-7
IK
58 • Windows XP / Linux Dual Boot (by KYDUNG at 2004-10-31 06:56:27 GMT)
Have Mandrake 10.1 and Suse 9.2 really fixed the problem " Windows XP no longer boots after installation of Suse 9.1 " ? My idea is to resize Win Xp with Acronis Partition Expert and leave free space for Suse 9.2.
Thank you for your advice.
Number of Comments: 58
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