LWN.net Logo

Friendlier install

Friendlier install

Posted Oct 21, 2004 12:01 UTC (Thu) by HoserHead (subscriber, #828)
Parent article: Ubuntu Linux and the future of Debian

As I understand it, Ubuntu uses the standard debian-installer, so its install shouldn't be significantly friendlier (or different in any way, really) than Debian Sarge's installer.


(Log in to post comments)

Friendlier install

Posted Oct 21, 2004 18:04 UTC (Thu) by maney (subscriber, #12630) [Link]

If you'd like to stop trying to understand from a distance and get close enough to try it yourself, you might learn something of interest. I've installed both from recent installer releases. I can't speak to the default disk partitioning, because I never use that; the rest of the install *is* simpler with Ubuntu IME. I can point to one mildly crufty piece of hardware - the "yenta" PCMCIA annoyance in our Inspiron laptop - that Debian trips over, but Ubuntu (and Libranet before it) handle just fine.

So, no, just as the common origin of most of the packages (both started from a snapshot of Sid, more or less) don't mean the packages are all identical, the use of debian-installer doesn't insure they behave identically dusring the eraly install phase either.

I'm thinking that Ubuntu ought to be described to Debian users as "Try it, you'll like it!" :-)

Friendlier install

Posted Oct 22, 2004 2:57 UTC (Fri) by jdub (subscriber, #27) [Link]

The installer is based on debian-installer, but is fairly dramatically simplified.

Friendlier install

Posted Oct 23, 2004 9:12 UTC (Sat) by joey (subscriber, #328) [Link]

Much as your explination of it has been. ;-)

(Most the the "dramatic simplification" is available by booting the standard debian installer with DEBCONF_PRIORITY=critical)

Friendlier install

Posted Nov 1, 2004 18:48 UTC (Mon) by mdz@debian.org (subscriber, #14112) [Link]

Joey, surely you realize that when that work began, the installation would fail in various ways if the priority was set to 'critical', and fixing those bugs was a significant part of our work on d-i.

Most, if not all, of that work has since been folded into d-i proper, but it isn't fair to trivialize it by implying that we simply changed the priority.
A great deal of effort was put into simplifying the process for a wider audience.

Copyright © 2008, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds