Book Review: The Debian System, Concepts and Techniques (Groklaw) [LWN.net]

Book Review: The Debian System, Concepts and Techniques (Groklaw)

Posted Jun 16, 2006 4:26 UTC (Fri) by horen (subscriber, #2514) [Link]

I took a look and liked what I saw. Although a Linux sysadmin since 1996, all my experience is with Redhat (now Fedora). Interestingly, I just purchased a Toshiba Satellite 2540cds laptop on eBay -- a lower-end AMD K6-II/333 with a max of 160MB RAM -- so I decided to install Debian (been wanting to for years, but was jaded by Redhat's GUI installation program). Bought the PDF version, and can't wait for it to arrive (via email).

The excerpted Chapter 4 reads well, is in-depth, and I'm sure that Debian's text-only installation policy (I'm going to use the netinstall iso) will humble me.

I might end-up buying the hardcopy book, as well. Stay tuned.

Book Review: The Debian System, Concepts and Techniques (Groklaw)

Posted Jun 16, 2006 9:31 UTC (Fri) by jhs (guest, #12429) [Link]

I too just ordered the PDF version. No Starch's policy of PDF sales works well for me in a developing country because PDF cost less, but there are also many local services that will print and bind a PDF into a decent book.

About Debian's installer, I don't think text vs. GUI makes much difference. The only advantage of a GUI is maybe the X config. But the part that I see trips people up with Debian is getting into advanced RAID and LVM configurations, where the partitioner UI is a bit tedious.

Book Review: The Debian System, Concepts and Techniques (Groklaw)

Posted Jun 16, 2006 10:31 UTC (Fri) by philips (guest, #937) [Link]

Debian's installer works in text mode since it has to support far too many platforms and many languages - both historically were not well supported by GUI toolkits.

But it's not that you need to do some drawings in the installer. Text mode is more than enough. (*)

(*) good ol' Caldera installer had a tetris inside. now *that* is cool feature one can use graphical mode for.

Book Review: The Debian System, Concepts and Techniques (Groklaw)

Posted Jun 16, 2006 10:53 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

The differences between text mode installer and a graphical install is one supports more colors then the other.. That's about it.

In fact I think the text mode is superior because you shouldn't assume that everybody who wants to install the OS has hardware or is doing the install in a way that supports graphical interfaces.

For instance say you have a bunch of headless machines were you get to the local console via the serial port. Also I've installed numerious Debian systems with debbootstrap + chroot technic. It's nice if you don't have a way to burn cdroms or if you can't boot from installer cdroms. I've used it to install Debian into virtual machines or similar things. (Xen and Vserver for instance)

The nice thing about graphical installs, IMO, is that they are very 'welcoming' to new users. It's comfortable and shows polish.. so basicly it's a marketting thing since that is the first thing people see. So that is important. (actually it is)

Book Review: The Debian System, Concepts and Techniques (Groklaw)

Posted Jun 16, 2006 10:57 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Oh.. I forgot to mention. This is also a very nice document on using Debian... A must read if you want to use it for a workstation or desktop.

Debian Desktop Survival guide.
http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/

It's actually very cool. I especially like wajig, which I learned about from that web page.. (wajig provides a front end for all those dpkg-*/apt-get/aptitude tools in a very user friendly manner. (for a command line app)). If your using debian unstable you can enable advanced bash autocompletion and it'll provide all it's commands with wajig <tab><tab>. Otherwise I have a hard time remembering all that stuff.

Book Review: The Debian System, Concepts and Techniques (Groklaw)

Posted Jun 16, 2006 15:50 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Bah, that's nothing. <http://www.movementarian.org/fscktris/fscktris.html> gives you tetris inside fsck!

(obviously you shouldn't actually use it, if just because the fsck in question is ancient. perhaps I should take it and hack it into the e2fsprogs-1.39 fsck... ;) )

I bought the book

Posted Jun 16, 2006 16:28 UTC (Fri) by richo123 (guest, #24309) [Link]

I agree with these comments. I think the English of the German author could do with a little more editorial supervision. This is however an excellent reference with a veritable ton of information. I consult it often.

Book Review: The Debian System, Concepts and Techniques (Groklaw)

Posted Jun 29, 2006 9:35 UTC (Thu) by wjl (guest, #26714) [Link]

I met Martin on last years' Linutag in Karlsruhe, and asked him about his book, which I first wanted to buy for my wife. After asking a bit about ourselves, Martin instead recommended his book for *me*, and he was right: it's a great source of information and inspiration since then.

Meeting him again on this years' FOSDEM in Brussels, and hanging out with these guys only confirmed: here is a book of a nice guy, an insider, a Debian Developer, who took a *lot* of effort investigating and consulting other fellow DDs before sitting down and writing.

Actually it was originally published by Open Source Press, and they have a link to the author's web site about his book.

Highly recommended stuff.
cheers,
wjl