Weblog entry #1 for miguel
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#1
Preview of Debian 4.0
Posted by miguel on Sat 25 Nov 2006 at 17:05
First, help me add the important stuff of Debian 4.0 to this list!
Hello folks, you know that the release is close, and this time there is a little chance, or no chance at all that the release will delay.
I have been a regular reader of the debian-release and debian-devel mailing lists. And I can say for sure that everybody is doing best the effort to make a release.
Another important thing to say, is that Debian 4.0 will free the project of the label "stable has old software". Sarge was close to current upstream versions in a lot of packages, and Etch is a lot more this time, making this release what I consider the best distro ever, that will have a rock solid base and a huge set of almost or exactly the same upstream version, with security support and well tested.
This is what makes Debian very different from Ubuntu. In Debian, EVERY package counts, EVERY package needs to DO NOT have problems that will or can harm the user, or it will not be in the stable release.
I will show what already has been done since Sarge.
Xfree86 -> X.org
This was a hardcore migration, I was using unstable on that time and a lot of stuff broke. And broke more when X.org "modularized" was uploaded. But today, we have almost all current drivers and the latest release of X.org base. My machine has an Intel video card, DRI with OpenGL support works "out of the box".
gcc 3.3 -> gcc 4.0 -> gcc 4.1
This is another and in my opinion the most hard migration ever, because of the huge ABI changes, lots of packages stop compiling and the list goes on. Today we have a gcc4.1 as the default compiler.
gcj/classpath and Java support
I programed with Java for some college projects, and for my happiness, At the time Etch already had a LOT of Java tools, libs and applications available and working without Sun's VM. The Java policy states that all packages on main should not depend on packages outside main. Today we have Eclipse 3.1, Tomcat 5, Azureus and some other important software ready to use, and best of, they don't need Sun's JRE.
Do you need the Sun's JRE? No problem, Sun's JRE 5.0 is available on non-free, and by the way, compiled with the Debian tool chain. `aptitude search java` returns 250 packages. And most important, you can have Java applications on hardware platforms that Sun doesn't support.
python2.3 -> python2.4
Now the default Python version is 2.4, and Debian has the most complete set of modules and packages for programing in Python, most of them in sync with upstream, like pygtk, twisted, wxpython, pyqt and the list goes on. `aptitude search python` returns 986 packages. By the way, to you need the python 2.5? No problem, it is packaged to. :-)
The default kernel is 2.6.18
Debian will come with a brand new kernel, this will bring a new level of hardware support, because kernel 2.6.8 from sarge is showing his age, with various SATA controllers unsupported. The Debian kernel has backports of some fixes done in the 2.6.19 cycle, that at the time of this writing, is not released yet.
Virtualization support
Debian 4.0 has kernels and full range of tools for Xen and vserver virtualization. Steve's is one of the guys that made this happen. Making virtual servers in Debian 4.0 is 4 or 5 commands away of you. We have qemu ready to go to, and kqemu accelerator in non-free if you need.
New and complete installer
The Debian Installer is better, the biggest change that I noted is the ability to resize partitions, by the way, you can resize NTFS partitions to, I tested with 2 computers, worked very nice. Now the setup will be done with only one boot, this one came as an Ubuntu contribution IIRC. The graphical installer to!
Complete Desktop
Debian 4.0 will not miss a desktop application. Comes with the latest KDE 3.5 and Gnome 2.14 and some packages of Gnome 2.16. Xfce 4.4, OpenOffice 2.0.4, Gaim2, Inkscape, Dia, Krita, Koffice, Iceweasel (Firefox 2), Thunderbird. IRC clients, CUPS, CD/DVD recording, GIMP, aMule and the list goes on!
Multimedia support
The xine-lib, vlc, amarok, listen, xmms, totem, flash9 (package will download after you accept the license), ffmpeg, helix player and various free libraries with HIGH level of support for codecs. And thank god, they didn't removed the mp3 decoding support. In case of proprietary codecs, debian-multimedia.org comes to the rescue.
Development
There is a magnitude of libs, parsers, compilers, editors, and all you need to develop programs. We got mono to, in case you want to learn and develop in C#.
Games
The great Tremulous, zsnes, xmame, and a lot of games ready to go.
Well, the list of new stuff in Debian 4.0 is long, I showed the areas that I'm more close. What is important to you in Debian 4.0, that differs from other distros?
Hello folks, you know that the release is close, and this time there is a little chance, or no chance at all that the release will delay.
I have been a regular reader of the debian-release and debian-devel mailing lists. And I can say for sure that everybody is doing best the effort to make a release.
Another important thing to say, is that Debian 4.0 will free the project of the label "stable has old software". Sarge was close to current upstream versions in a lot of packages, and Etch is a lot more this time, making this release what I consider the best distro ever, that will have a rock solid base and a huge set of almost or exactly the same upstream version, with security support and well tested.
This is what makes Debian very different from Ubuntu. In Debian, EVERY package counts, EVERY package needs to DO NOT have problems that will or can harm the user, or it will not be in the stable release.
I will show what already has been done since Sarge.
Xfree86 -> X.org
This was a hardcore migration, I was using unstable on that time and a lot of stuff broke. And broke more when X.org "modularized" was uploaded. But today, we have almost all current drivers and the latest release of X.org base. My machine has an Intel video card, DRI with OpenGL support works "out of the box".
gcc 3.3 -> gcc 4.0 -> gcc 4.1
This is another and in my opinion the most hard migration ever, because of the huge ABI changes, lots of packages stop compiling and the list goes on. Today we have a gcc4.1 as the default compiler.
gcj/classpath and Java support
I programed with Java for some college projects, and for my happiness, At the time Etch already had a LOT of Java tools, libs and applications available and working without Sun's VM. The Java policy states that all packages on main should not depend on packages outside main. Today we have Eclipse 3.1, Tomcat 5, Azureus and some other important software ready to use, and best of, they don't need Sun's JRE.
Do you need the Sun's JRE? No problem, Sun's JRE 5.0 is available on non-free, and by the way, compiled with the Debian tool chain. `aptitude search java` returns 250 packages. And most important, you can have Java applications on hardware platforms that Sun doesn't support.
python2.3 -> python2.4
Now the default Python version is 2.4, and Debian has the most complete set of modules and packages for programing in Python, most of them in sync with upstream, like pygtk, twisted, wxpython, pyqt and the list goes on. `aptitude search python` returns 986 packages. By the way, to you need the python 2.5? No problem, it is packaged to. :-)
The default kernel is 2.6.18
Debian will come with a brand new kernel, this will bring a new level of hardware support, because kernel 2.6.8 from sarge is showing his age, with various SATA controllers unsupported. The Debian kernel has backports of some fixes done in the 2.6.19 cycle, that at the time of this writing, is not released yet.
Virtualization support
Debian 4.0 has kernels and full range of tools for Xen and vserver virtualization. Steve's is one of the guys that made this happen. Making virtual servers in Debian 4.0 is 4 or 5 commands away of you. We have qemu ready to go to, and kqemu accelerator in non-free if you need.
New and complete installer
The Debian Installer is better, the biggest change that I noted is the ability to resize partitions, by the way, you can resize NTFS partitions to, I tested with 2 computers, worked very nice. Now the setup will be done with only one boot, this one came as an Ubuntu contribution IIRC. The graphical installer to!
Complete Desktop
Debian 4.0 will not miss a desktop application. Comes with the latest KDE 3.5 and Gnome 2.14 and some packages of Gnome 2.16. Xfce 4.4, OpenOffice 2.0.4, Gaim2, Inkscape, Dia, Krita, Koffice, Iceweasel (Firefox 2), Thunderbird. IRC clients, CUPS, CD/DVD recording, GIMP, aMule and the list goes on!
Multimedia support
The xine-lib, vlc, amarok, listen, xmms, totem, flash9 (package will download after you accept the license), ffmpeg, helix player and various free libraries with HIGH level of support for codecs. And thank god, they didn't removed the mp3 decoding support. In case of proprietary codecs, debian-multimedia.org comes to the rescue.
Development
There is a magnitude of libs, parsers, compilers, editors, and all you need to develop programs. We got mono to, in case you want to learn and develop in C#.
Games
The great Tremulous, zsnes, xmame, and a lot of games ready to go.
Well, the list of new stuff in Debian 4.0 is long, I showed the areas that I'm more close. What is important to you in Debian 4.0, that differs from other distros?
Comments on this Entry
Posted by dkg (216.254.xx.xx) on Sat 25 Nov 2006 at 18:26
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It's not thunderbird, it's icedove!
But yes, i'm very excited about the etch release as well. Some features i'm looking forward to:
- secure apt on most installations, with builtin keyring management (despite the teething pains recently, i think we have a good model in place now)
- lvm2, version 2.02, which fixes some serious bugs in the snapshotting mechanism and interacts better with modern kernels
- threadsafe MIT krb5 libraries
- Large file support (>2GB) in apache2 version 2.2
- the authorization/authentication split in apache2 version 2.2
- Joey Hess' moreutils package
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (83.98.xx.xx) on Sun 26 Nov 2006 at 13:38
Hi,
im setting up a new server for some webhosting.
im running debian from woody already so i'm no noob.
but 1 question. as you are saying, lot has changed.
is better in your opion to run etch now. server is going live
1 jan 2007 ;-) thats te start date for my new uptime record. :-))
what do other people think.. Start now with the stable sarge..
or start now with the almost stable etch..
thanks for the respones.
im setting up a new server for some webhosting.
im running debian from woody already so i'm no noob.
but 1 question. as you are saying, lot has changed.
is better in your opion to run etch now. server is going live
1 jan 2007 ;-) thats te start date for my new uptime record. :-))
what do other people think.. Start now with the stable sarge..
or start now with the almost stable etch..
thanks for the respones.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by dkg (216.254.xx.xx) on Sun 26 Nov 2006 at 15:03
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[ Send Message | View dkg's Scratchpad | View Weblogs ]
I hope you don't mean that you're still running woody. Security support for woody ended months ago, and there have been major vulnerabilities published since then on several important components.
If you're comfortable with troubleshooting the transition to stable, i'd definitely start with etch given your timeframe. Otherwise (/me crosses fingers) you'll be facing a machine that's out of date very shortly after launch.
If you're comfortable with troubleshooting the transition to stable, i'd definitely start with etch given your timeframe. Otherwise (/me crosses fingers) you'll be facing a machine that's out of date very shortly after launch.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (83.98.xx.xx) on Sun 26 Nov 2006 at 15:18
HI nog im not running woody, im past that. ;-) thats why im running sarge now and im now looking for etch.. ;-)
I'll give etch a try, thanx for the response.
I'll give etch a try, thanx for the response.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
All sounds pretty good, but I have a question or two. We're about to recieve a large number of new PC's using one of Intels DQ965 mainboards, and it's integrated graphics adapter, which leads me to these:
Firstly, you mention that "My machine has an Intel video card, DRI with OpenGL support works "out of the box"." Which intel video card is that (from the 915, 945, 965 etc.?)
Will the CD ISO/distribution media be able to install directly on this platform?
And will the default kernel include support for the marvell IDE chipset found on these boards?
The reason I ask is that we received a test machine (that should be) identicle to those that we will be recieving in early December, and I've had to jump through some major hoops just to get Debian/Ubuntu installed. No distribution CD's would recognise the SATA board, and now that I've got a 2.6.18 kernel running on it, it won't recognise the marvell IDE controller, so I have no visible DVD drive...
Sigh.
It's the first time that I've found hardware that just can't run a distro CD. So, can you offer me hope for the near future? I hope so ;-)
Cheers.
Firstly, you mention that "My machine has an Intel video card, DRI with OpenGL support works "out of the box"." Which intel video card is that (from the 915, 945, 965 etc.?)
Will the CD ISO/distribution media be able to install directly on this platform?
And will the default kernel include support for the marvell IDE chipset found on these boards?
The reason I ask is that we received a test machine (that should be) identicle to those that we will be recieving in early December, and I've had to jump through some major hoops just to get Debian/Ubuntu installed. No distribution CD's would recognise the SATA board, and now that I've got a 2.6.18 kernel running on it, it won't recognise the marvell IDE controller, so I have no visible DVD drive...
Sigh.
It's the first time that I've found hardware that just can't run a distro CD. So, can you offer me hope for the near future? I hope so ;-)
Cheers.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
About your not working controller, the installation will be done with kernel 2.6.18, stay tunned for the debian-installer RC2, it will be the final RC before release and will use 2.6.18 by default, so if you have any problems, report it on the debian-boot mailing list. This is the output of lspci from my computer. It's a Dell. Everything works fine.
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 945G/GZ/P/PL Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 02) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 945G/GZ/P/PL Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 02) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 945G/GZ Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 945G/GZ Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 01) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 01) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 01) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 01) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 01) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01) 03:03.0 Modem: Smart Link Ltd. Unknown device 8800 (rev 02) 03:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) LAN Controller (rev 01)
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Thanks for the info. Just for the record, here's the output of lspci on the test box we have: (AFAICR this is an ICH8 board, rather than the ICH7 listed in your output.)
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Memory Controller Hub (rev 02) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02) 00:03.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation HECI Controller (rev 02) 00:03.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation PT IDER Controller (rev 02) 00:03.3 Serial controller: Intel Corporation KT Controller (rev 02) 00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Unknown device 104a (rev 02) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02) 00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02) 00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation HD Audio Controller (rev 02) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev f2) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation LPC Interface Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation SATA Controller 1 IDE (rev 02) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation SMBus Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation SATA Controller 2 IDE (rev 02) 02:00.0 IDE interface: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Unknown device 6101 (rev b1) 06:03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
As you can see, it lists 2 "Unknown" devices, 1) the ethernet controller, which just seems to work, even though it's "Unknown", as far as I can tell, it's using the e1000 module, and 2) the Marvell IDE interface, which just flat out refuses to work at all, and this is what the DVD writer is plugged into. Now, for the students that probably is too much of a problem (as it'll just stop them being naughty ;-) but for the staff that we're trying to ease into linux it'll be more of a issue...
I'm also having minor issues with the graphics. ATM I'm using the VESA driver for X, and while it mostly all works as expected, when starting up kdm from init (i.e. on boot), it just hangs the box with a black screen, but if I press a key reasonably soon after kdm starts (about 4-5 seconds), then I get dropped to tty1, from where pressing CTRL+ALT+F7 takes me to a starting KDM... So something's a bit screwy there too, but I'm not sure where to start looking on that one.
Thanks for the info. Cheers.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (85.22.xx.xx) on Mon 27 Nov 2006 at 11:40
If the IDE controller is not supported by the kernel, you still have the option of buying an adapter which allows you to connect your IDE drive to a SATA port. Not the perfect solution, I know.
If you have a choice, there are SATA DVD writers available.
If you have a choice, there are SATA DVD writers available.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (213.240.xx.xx) on Thu 28 Dec 2006 at 11:47
One annoyed user:
I have much notes about the topic. I am somewhat professional developer on C/C++/Java and good administrator on Windows 2000/XP and Debian.
I recently (2 months) migrated to Debian, always was in Windows 2000 / XP. Although I hate Windows, I cannot ignore some very end-user-level problems in Debian Etch:
1. I do dual-boot with Windows XP and I gave it about 10% of my hard disk. But then I wanted to install some good games and the space was not enough. I searched for tool like PartitionMagic -- I wanted to shrink my ReiserFS partition and give the space to the NTFS partition. Of course, nothing like it. Some people said that I should shrink my ReiserFS partition, then go to Windows, run PartitionMagic and merge the current NTFS partition with the un-allocated space. Sounds very risky to me because PartitionMagic has been blowing me away not a single time before. I think such a program under Debian will be great. Yes, I know about "parted", but it turned out, that it needed additional packets to be able to resize NTFS, some of them turned out to be inaccessible, since their name changed -- how to hell should I guess how they are named now? And yes, I found them finally, but is it worth giving 2 hours of your life in pain for this?
2. I do not see as fine controlled "service manager" as in Windows XP. Yes, KDE has something like it, but it controls only a few daemons. My machine is running rather slow on the work (and it is P4 2.4 GHz with 1 GB RAM and i945G chipset -- this is NOT slow hardware, and I also fine-tuned my kernel, at least I think so) and I am quite sure that there are many "services" (daemons) which are running and which I will never need. How should one be able to fine-control his/hers machine? I have heard the speech that the command-line tools are the best thing ever, since they are easy to be combined and to automate many tasks. I know this -- I have created not one script or small command line tool, and I do not object AGAINST them -- I object against the lack of GUI interaction programs which eventually use the command line tools.
3. Still missing high-level packet management. Somebody said that "dselect" should be enough. Bah! Small visible area, tree view (why? the packets have categories -- the view should be sorted by categories or as a table) and in the end I cannot figure out how many packages do exist for the category "editors" because the packages are scattered all over the tree. Since one of the computers I work on has limited disk space, I very much want to have at most 2 programs for every single purpose, not 20. Well, excuse me, but as bad as Windows is, one default installation takes between 1.5 - 2.0 GB. Debian + KDE takes 3 GB at least. And this is only the beginning -- when I started to fight to drive my peripherals (printer, scanner, TV tuner, web camera) and then started to install developer tools, now I have 12 GB busy and I do not even know what the hell is so big? :(
4. Again package management: when I cannot find something (like renamed package), I go to "packages.debian.org" and do a search there, but why is this not automated already? Maybe something like this:
# apt-web [--files | --files-and-dirs | --package] [-d,--distro=DISTRO] [-a,--arch=ARCH] search [FILE|DIR|PACKAGE]
could do the job? Such tool could also not even locate files in packages, but to install the packages for you -- and if you do not have 'contrib' in your '/etc/apt/sources.list', you should be asked do you allow it to be added (if the package is in 'contrib') -- and in general to do more advanced package dependency resolution?
5. I had some trouble with my USB flash memory stick -- it worked in cached mode -- copying ends very fast, but then in the background the real copying takes place. Okay, but I do not want that -- I want direct access to it, so that when the copying finishes, I can unmount it and physically disconnect it. The troubles were that even after it stopped blink its light (in the theory that should mean that nobody reads/writes it) and I have unmounted it with no warnings, the next time I tried to use it, its whole filesystem was a mess (it is FAT32). I never had non-ASCII letters in any file name there, and it showed me quite a lot of crap. :(
I have observed many others very small glitches and inconveniences which, grouped together, render the "Debian 4.0 + KDE 3.5.5" combination a tough experience sometimes.
Do not get me wrong -- I do not want the Windows style -- "Can I do everything instead of you, and I know better than you what you want to happen, and I will happily break everything else just to make a single damn library working for you, because this is good for you, but you do not realize it, and hey, I will report all this to Microsoft, do you mind?" :)
NO! Never again! I just think that the end-user tools are a very small part of developer efforts in Debian and I am 100% sure that if this does not change, Debian will never catch up with Windows for home or small business users. Many people are using Windows illegally because they do not want to give that kind of money, and they are concerned about using OS illegally because here the government shows some muscles from time to time. One sunny day your Windows will silently "upgrade" itself and on the next sunny morning it will refuse to restart on BIOS level because your Windows is not legal. Paranoia? Maybe. You should read the rumors about Pentium D (and other families) processors which can protect an OS from being illegal ON PHYSICAL PROCESSOR LEVEL. Scary, if you ask me.
Many people I know (most of them are owners or co-owners of small firms) are willing to migrate to free software so that they are not in the line of sight of the government (and Microsoft), but they cannot. Why cannot they? Because the same setup which one Windows XP does (say 1 hour OS installation and 4 hours installing Microsoft Office, a database and accounting programs -- just an example) takes days or (more often) weeks on Debian because they do not know how to setup the kernel for their smart card readers, they do not know which is the alternative of MS Office, they do not know how to start a database under Debian (not the mention the database brand migration nightmare), they do not know how to share files to each other in their local network, which browser to use, which e-mail program to use, and so on). Also, I know one man whose four office computers were confiscated because they used Windows illegally. Not to mention one big "operation" of our "SWAT" teams here when they confiscated 132 computers from a big computer club network just because they SUSPECTED that there the software is used illegally. Eventually (one year later) the boss of the firm proved in the court that they did not had the right to do so and the court agreed, but they never returned him the computers anyway -- they did not even respond to a public letter with thousands of citizen's signatures, and in the court they claimed that what they do is legal -- it turned out the law for this was accepted for inspection, but not yet accepted for use. But court did not punished them -- why is this no surprise... Also, not to mention that there are five cases (in the news they showed that count, which means they are 500 actually) where home users had their computers confiscated because they used torrent programs -- note that there even the OS does not matter. Scary, again.
So, let me continue on the topic.
After all, even though I am a C/C++/Java developer and I have very good programming experience in Windows (NT families) and good experience in Linux (Debian and Ubuntu), I do not want to play the "advanced user" everywhere and all the time :( I just want the things to work. Okay? We all have something to do -- I do not want to spend my half working day figuring out how to do something which in Windows is just four shortcut keys away. I do not want to spent half of my life always learning something new in order to be able only some BASIC THINGS. Though, I want to be professionally educated in programming and at good level in administration in both Windows and Linux, and I am, but at the cost of not having free time. Many others are like that, too -- I do not think it is acceptable.
Arguments I heard were that "yes, setting up your computer in Debian the first time takes quite a lot of time and pain to make everything work perfectly, but it is very unlikely that you will ever format your partition and install again because of a 'catastrophic system failure' like in Windows". Hm, this is true, I agree with it. But hell, why it should be so hard the first time anyway? :( And who knows? After all, computers are changed with new ones sometimes -- how to do all this "apt-get install" stuff from scratch AGAIN? How to tweak 'xorg.conf' again? How to avoid conflicts between this kernel module and that config option of my TV recording software again? Much other questions like this still exist.
Again, do not get me wrong -- there is a lot of progress compared to 2 years ago. Then it was much worse. The things ARE really progressing, I know it.
And finally, here many people could say "Use Fedora if you do not want such fine control as in Debian and Slackware", but I do not want to. Debian is the truth in the Linux world, I know it and it everywhere looks like that. Also, it is not that I do not want fine control. I want it, but I want to be able to do a "user" installation, and if I choose to fine-control the things, to do it THEN, not to be forced being advanced user right from the beginning. I love Debian already, but hey, be more friendly! There are already tools in existence which present some GUI and then just call the command line tools with the arguments deduced from GUI interaction (like KDE and Gnome network setup, which modify '/etc/network/interfaces' and call ifconfig/ifup/ifdown accordingly). There is a huge room for more of these tools. That's my opinion for Debian etch on the user side.
On the system side, Debian works great -- although the most recent hardware pieces need some time to be added in the kernel, which is normal and is not a minus (but still, it was quite a pain to drive my system with SATA HDD, JMicron controller and ICH8 south bridge). Further, fine-tuning the kernel is something that should not be commented -- it is just the one and only right thing to do.
Conclusion:
Excellent job, almost perfect in any aspect I could see while I work on the Debian etch machine. But again, many, many end-user-level tools are missing.
Conclusion of the conclusion:
Of course, the whole problem may be that I am already too lazy to hunt day and night for the information I need and to fight to make the OS or the installed software do what I want them to do. It is most likely that this is the case. But when a somewhat professional developer and a good administrator comes to this mind, does not this mean something important to the developers of operating systems?
I have much notes about the topic. I am somewhat professional developer on C/C++/Java and good administrator on Windows 2000/XP and Debian.
I recently (2 months) migrated to Debian, always was in Windows 2000 / XP. Although I hate Windows, I cannot ignore some very end-user-level problems in Debian Etch:
1. I do dual-boot with Windows XP and I gave it about 10% of my hard disk. But then I wanted to install some good games and the space was not enough. I searched for tool like PartitionMagic -- I wanted to shrink my ReiserFS partition and give the space to the NTFS partition. Of course, nothing like it. Some people said that I should shrink my ReiserFS partition, then go to Windows, run PartitionMagic and merge the current NTFS partition with the un-allocated space. Sounds very risky to me because PartitionMagic has been blowing me away not a single time before. I think such a program under Debian will be great. Yes, I know about "parted", but it turned out, that it needed additional packets to be able to resize NTFS, some of them turned out to be inaccessible, since their name changed -- how to hell should I guess how they are named now? And yes, I found them finally, but is it worth giving 2 hours of your life in pain for this?
2. I do not see as fine controlled "service manager" as in Windows XP. Yes, KDE has something like it, but it controls only a few daemons. My machine is running rather slow on the work (and it is P4 2.4 GHz with 1 GB RAM and i945G chipset -- this is NOT slow hardware, and I also fine-tuned my kernel, at least I think so) and I am quite sure that there are many "services" (daemons) which are running and which I will never need. How should one be able to fine-control his/hers machine? I have heard the speech that the command-line tools are the best thing ever, since they are easy to be combined and to automate many tasks. I know this -- I have created not one script or small command line tool, and I do not object AGAINST them -- I object against the lack of GUI interaction programs which eventually use the command line tools.
3. Still missing high-level packet management. Somebody said that "dselect" should be enough. Bah! Small visible area, tree view (why? the packets have categories -- the view should be sorted by categories or as a table) and in the end I cannot figure out how many packages do exist for the category "editors" because the packages are scattered all over the tree. Since one of the computers I work on has limited disk space, I very much want to have at most 2 programs for every single purpose, not 20. Well, excuse me, but as bad as Windows is, one default installation takes between 1.5 - 2.0 GB. Debian + KDE takes 3 GB at least. And this is only the beginning -- when I started to fight to drive my peripherals (printer, scanner, TV tuner, web camera) and then started to install developer tools, now I have 12 GB busy and I do not even know what the hell is so big? :(
4. Again package management: when I cannot find something (like renamed package), I go to "packages.debian.org" and do a search there, but why is this not automated already? Maybe something like this:
# apt-web [--files | --files-and-dirs | --package] [-d,--distro=DISTRO] [-a,--arch=ARCH] search [FILE|DIR|PACKAGE]
could do the job? Such tool could also not even locate files in packages, but to install the packages for you -- and if you do not have 'contrib' in your '/etc/apt/sources.list', you should be asked do you allow it to be added (if the package is in 'contrib') -- and in general to do more advanced package dependency resolution?
5. I had some trouble with my USB flash memory stick -- it worked in cached mode -- copying ends very fast, but then in the background the real copying takes place. Okay, but I do not want that -- I want direct access to it, so that when the copying finishes, I can unmount it and physically disconnect it. The troubles were that even after it stopped blink its light (in the theory that should mean that nobody reads/writes it) and I have unmounted it with no warnings, the next time I tried to use it, its whole filesystem was a mess (it is FAT32). I never had non-ASCII letters in any file name there, and it showed me quite a lot of crap. :(
I have observed many others very small glitches and inconveniences which, grouped together, render the "Debian 4.0 + KDE 3.5.5" combination a tough experience sometimes.
Do not get me wrong -- I do not want the Windows style -- "Can I do everything instead of you, and I know better than you what you want to happen, and I will happily break everything else just to make a single damn library working for you, because this is good for you, but you do not realize it, and hey, I will report all this to Microsoft, do you mind?" :)
NO! Never again! I just think that the end-user tools are a very small part of developer efforts in Debian and I am 100% sure that if this does not change, Debian will never catch up with Windows for home or small business users. Many people are using Windows illegally because they do not want to give that kind of money, and they are concerned about using OS illegally because here the government shows some muscles from time to time. One sunny day your Windows will silently "upgrade" itself and on the next sunny morning it will refuse to restart on BIOS level because your Windows is not legal. Paranoia? Maybe. You should read the rumors about Pentium D (and other families) processors which can protect an OS from being illegal ON PHYSICAL PROCESSOR LEVEL. Scary, if you ask me.
Many people I know (most of them are owners or co-owners of small firms) are willing to migrate to free software so that they are not in the line of sight of the government (and Microsoft), but they cannot. Why cannot they? Because the same setup which one Windows XP does (say 1 hour OS installation and 4 hours installing Microsoft Office, a database and accounting programs -- just an example) takes days or (more often) weeks on Debian because they do not know how to setup the kernel for their smart card readers, they do not know which is the alternative of MS Office, they do not know how to start a database under Debian (not the mention the database brand migration nightmare), they do not know how to share files to each other in their local network, which browser to use, which e-mail program to use, and so on). Also, I know one man whose four office computers were confiscated because they used Windows illegally. Not to mention one big "operation" of our "SWAT" teams here when they confiscated 132 computers from a big computer club network just because they SUSPECTED that there the software is used illegally. Eventually (one year later) the boss of the firm proved in the court that they did not had the right to do so and the court agreed, but they never returned him the computers anyway -- they did not even respond to a public letter with thousands of citizen's signatures, and in the court they claimed that what they do is legal -- it turned out the law for this was accepted for inspection, but not yet accepted for use. But court did not punished them -- why is this no surprise... Also, not to mention that there are five cases (in the news they showed that count, which means they are 500 actually) where home users had their computers confiscated because they used torrent programs -- note that there even the OS does not matter. Scary, again.
So, let me continue on the topic.
After all, even though I am a C/C++/Java developer and I have very good programming experience in Windows (NT families) and good experience in Linux (Debian and Ubuntu), I do not want to play the "advanced user" everywhere and all the time :( I just want the things to work. Okay? We all have something to do -- I do not want to spend my half working day figuring out how to do something which in Windows is just four shortcut keys away. I do not want to spent half of my life always learning something new in order to be able only some BASIC THINGS. Though, I want to be professionally educated in programming and at good level in administration in both Windows and Linux, and I am, but at the cost of not having free time. Many others are like that, too -- I do not think it is acceptable.
Arguments I heard were that "yes, setting up your computer in Debian the first time takes quite a lot of time and pain to make everything work perfectly, but it is very unlikely that you will ever format your partition and install again because of a 'catastrophic system failure' like in Windows". Hm, this is true, I agree with it. But hell, why it should be so hard the first time anyway? :( And who knows? After all, computers are changed with new ones sometimes -- how to do all this "apt-get install" stuff from scratch AGAIN? How to tweak 'xorg.conf' again? How to avoid conflicts between this kernel module and that config option of my TV recording software again? Much other questions like this still exist.
Again, do not get me wrong -- there is a lot of progress compared to 2 years ago. Then it was much worse. The things ARE really progressing, I know it.
And finally, here many people could say "Use Fedora if you do not want such fine control as in Debian and Slackware", but I do not want to. Debian is the truth in the Linux world, I know it and it everywhere looks like that. Also, it is not that I do not want fine control. I want it, but I want to be able to do a "user" installation, and if I choose to fine-control the things, to do it THEN, not to be forced being advanced user right from the beginning. I love Debian already, but hey, be more friendly! There are already tools in existence which present some GUI and then just call the command line tools with the arguments deduced from GUI interaction (like KDE and Gnome network setup, which modify '/etc/network/interfaces' and call ifconfig/ifup/ifdown accordingly). There is a huge room for more of these tools. That's my opinion for Debian etch on the user side.
On the system side, Debian works great -- although the most recent hardware pieces need some time to be added in the kernel, which is normal and is not a minus (but still, it was quite a pain to drive my system with SATA HDD, JMicron controller and ICH8 south bridge). Further, fine-tuning the kernel is something that should not be commented -- it is just the one and only right thing to do.
Conclusion:
Excellent job, almost perfect in any aspect I could see while I work on the Debian etch machine. But again, many, many end-user-level tools are missing.
Conclusion of the conclusion:
Of course, the whole problem may be that I am already too lazy to hunt day and night for the information I need and to fight to make the OS or the installed software do what I want them to do. It is most likely that this is the case. But when a somewhat professional developer and a good administrator comes to this mind, does not this mean something important to the developers of operating systems?
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (67.101.xx.xx) on Thu 28 Dec 2006 at 20:57
Your complaints have little to do with Debian specifically, and more to do with Linux in general. Linux is not Windows, it was never intended to be, and (hopefully) it never will be. You should not refer to yourself as a "good administrator" of any sorts, because "good administrators" understand that there will be differences between platforms, and do not whine about having to learn them. "Good administrators" are also a step beyond "advanced user" which you yourself proclaim is beyond your interests, bringing you down to a level of "average newbie" at best.
The "lack of end user level tools" and hand holding is quite easy to explain. Its not necessary. We don't need bloatware to help us find our way through system configuration, because that configuration is usually laid out plain and simple in the form of human readable and alterable configuration files.
Conclusion, spend more time learning and less time complaining.
The "lack of end user level tools" and hand holding is quite easy to explain. Its not necessary. We don't need bloatware to help us find our way through system configuration, because that configuration is usually laid out plain and simple in the form of human readable and alterable configuration files.
Conclusion, spend more time learning and less time complaining.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (213.240.xx.xx) on Fri 29 Dec 2006 at 13:14
Yes, I expected something like this, what you say is mostly true, I agree. I am so annoyed though.
And yes, you are right -- I talked more about Linux than Debian. Excuse me about that.
So, let us clarify some terms -- by saying that I am tired of "always playing the advanced user" I meant that I just wanted "out of the box working OS, _MOSTLY_", okay? I agree that it is incredibly stupid to expect the OS to try to auto-detect any hardware you have (not to mention that this could be physically dangerous in some rare cases).
And by saying that I am a "good administrator" I mean that I learned to do basic administration (setting up router, forwarding traffic, configuring X, compiling and booting to new kernel, and finally writing some shell scripts, for example searching particular thing in a set of JAR files) of Debian in 3 weeks half working time a day, which should mean something ;) More importantly, I knew a bunch of GNU tools years before going to Debian -- I have been writing more bash scripts under Cygwin environment than cmd ones. Again -- I know where to find this and this, I know how to do it and where to seek if I do not, and most of the time I prefer it (this claim is omitted in my previous post, sorry, it was not clear from my words).
But I disagree that GUI (or ncurses) tools are a bloatware. As you know, Debian is about 100% free software and more importantly, it is about having a choice. So, if someone does not want GUI helpers to quicken his/hers setup on [post-]instalation, he/she can hapily omit them.
As you know, Debian installer has one "GUI" helper when finishing installation; it is the place where you choose whether you want desktop environment, file server, print server and so on. How about putting there "GUI (or ncurses) System Configuration Helpers"? I do not know if there is currently such thing in KDE/Gnome, maybe partly (the network configuration I mentioned before), and I don't think it's that bad, how about you?
So, it is not what you think, if you allow me to say that -- I am not a "average newbie" (although I acted as such), I really am "annoyed user and very annoyed administrator", apart from being a four languages programmer. I spent way too much time in Windows :( -- work duties, regrettably -- and I migrated to Debian in order to avoid the instability and obfuscateness when setting up something and when working with any kind of software in general. Those things surely disappeared when I migrated (thank God), but now the problem is this -- after the good low-level tools are there and most of them are pretty mature and proven to be good in time, why not developing some more high-level tools? Debian installer does DHCP search before ever asking you "do you want to set up your network manually", you know.
Does this do any harm to the spirit of Debian and Linux in general? I never heard nobody telling that Debian installer has "bloatware" because of this installation step.
So, please excuse me for my sharp tone in my previous post. Now I want to put some facts.
The people around the world have jobs to do -- thousands of industries. It is not such a bad idea the computer setup to take less time, don't you think? After all, everybody which uses computers to send e-mail and compose corporate meeting plans (or whatever) is actually harmed when the OS does not do something the human expects. The people which are not programmers/administrators of any kind and actually find their time setting up the computer/OS as a superfluous time expense, and, in a sense, they are right, wouldn't you agree?
After all, one accountant (for example) has to do his/hers job, for which the computer is just the tool, as were the pen and the paper in the past.
I believe that at this point we should see our common ground. Again, my point was that I do not want to spent my entire life doing the things the hard way. And here comes my thought about this:
The automated installation. I have heard about it, but never really tried it, never even read something detailed about it. I believe this could be the solution of many of the problems I tried to address.
I think that your point for not having GUI/ncurses interaction tools is as "extreme" as is "extreme" the point of strictly-Windows users which do not want the OS to ask them anything, ever, and which just click "Next, Next, Next, Finish".
Of course, this would be the case if I understood you correctly (or if you said it straight) ;)
Perhaps the most true thing still lies in my previous post: that code contributors are not so much and they are not much GUI oriented, but functionality-oriented, and not much interaction tools are produced.
I do hope that in the future more contributors of this new kind will join Debian.
Again, excuse me for the sharp tone before, and mostly I apologize for not being clear because I was frustrated.
I am looking forward to see some arguments.
And yes, you are right -- I talked more about Linux than Debian. Excuse me about that.
So, let us clarify some terms -- by saying that I am tired of "always playing the advanced user" I meant that I just wanted "out of the box working OS, _MOSTLY_", okay? I agree that it is incredibly stupid to expect the OS to try to auto-detect any hardware you have (not to mention that this could be physically dangerous in some rare cases).
And by saying that I am a "good administrator" I mean that I learned to do basic administration (setting up router, forwarding traffic, configuring X, compiling and booting to new kernel, and finally writing some shell scripts, for example searching particular thing in a set of JAR files) of Debian in 3 weeks half working time a day, which should mean something ;) More importantly, I knew a bunch of GNU tools years before going to Debian -- I have been writing more bash scripts under Cygwin environment than cmd ones. Again -- I know where to find this and this, I know how to do it and where to seek if I do not, and most of the time I prefer it (this claim is omitted in my previous post, sorry, it was not clear from my words).
But I disagree that GUI (or ncurses) tools are a bloatware. As you know, Debian is about 100% free software and more importantly, it is about having a choice. So, if someone does not want GUI helpers to quicken his/hers setup on [post-]instalation, he/she can hapily omit them.
As you know, Debian installer has one "GUI" helper when finishing installation; it is the place where you choose whether you want desktop environment, file server, print server and so on. How about putting there "GUI (or ncurses) System Configuration Helpers"? I do not know if there is currently such thing in KDE/Gnome, maybe partly (the network configuration I mentioned before), and I don't think it's that bad, how about you?
So, it is not what you think, if you allow me to say that -- I am not a "average newbie" (although I acted as such), I really am "annoyed user and very annoyed administrator", apart from being a four languages programmer. I spent way too much time in Windows :( -- work duties, regrettably -- and I migrated to Debian in order to avoid the instability and obfuscateness when setting up something and when working with any kind of software in general. Those things surely disappeared when I migrated (thank God), but now the problem is this -- after the good low-level tools are there and most of them are pretty mature and proven to be good in time, why not developing some more high-level tools? Debian installer does DHCP search before ever asking you "do you want to set up your network manually", you know.
Does this do any harm to the spirit of Debian and Linux in general? I never heard nobody telling that Debian installer has "bloatware" because of this installation step.
So, please excuse me for my sharp tone in my previous post. Now I want to put some facts.
The people around the world have jobs to do -- thousands of industries. It is not such a bad idea the computer setup to take less time, don't you think? After all, everybody which uses computers to send e-mail and compose corporate meeting plans (or whatever) is actually harmed when the OS does not do something the human expects. The people which are not programmers/administrators of any kind and actually find their time setting up the computer/OS as a superfluous time expense, and, in a sense, they are right, wouldn't you agree?
After all, one accountant (for example) has to do his/hers job, for which the computer is just the tool, as were the pen and the paper in the past.
I believe that at this point we should see our common ground. Again, my point was that I do not want to spent my entire life doing the things the hard way. And here comes my thought about this:
The automated installation. I have heard about it, but never really tried it, never even read something detailed about it. I believe this could be the solution of many of the problems I tried to address.
I think that your point for not having GUI/ncurses interaction tools is as "extreme" as is "extreme" the point of strictly-Windows users which do not want the OS to ask them anything, ever, and which just click "Next, Next, Next, Finish".
Of course, this would be the case if I understood you correctly (or if you said it straight) ;)
Perhaps the most true thing still lies in my previous post: that code contributors are not so much and they are not much GUI oriented, but functionality-oriented, and not much interaction tools are produced.
I do hope that in the future more contributors of this new kind will join Debian.
Again, excuse me for the sharp tone before, and mostly I apologize for not being clear because I was frustrated.
I am looking forward to see some arguments.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (129.125.xx.xx) on Fri 2 Feb 2007 at 13:59
I cannot agree more with the previous comment. The guy that responded to your first posting unfortunately represents a kind of neocon linux user which we better can get rid of.
"Linux is not Windows,it was never intended to be, and (hopefully) it never will
be."
Quit that "Oh my god, linux is becoming too windooze"
argument. The guys point was that you need to get a system
which is more usable so that it can also be used for production
needs instead of only hacking. Geek.
"The "lack of end user level tools" and hand holding is quite
easy to explain. Its not necessary."
Allright. so we don't need spreadsheets, a graph tool, a gui.
Just a command line and we're ready, huh? If you're now
going to say that these tools are already available in
linux, then you didn't got the argument. Go and do some
thinking dorky.
We don't need bloatware
to help us find our way through system configuration,
because that configuration is usually laid out plain and
simple in the form of human readable and alterable
configuration files."
hahahahaha, ROFLOL!! What an enormous BS!! "Configuration is
usually laid out plain and simple" my ass.. did you ever
take a look at an Xorg.conf file? Apperently you didn't.
Seriously.. people that say that a max on userfriendliness has already been reached on linux may consider to go do some very deep thinking.
"Linux is not Windows,it was never intended to be, and (hopefully) it never will
be."
Quit that "Oh my god, linux is becoming too windooze"
argument. The guys point was that you need to get a system
which is more usable so that it can also be used for production
needs instead of only hacking. Geek.
"The "lack of end user level tools" and hand holding is quite
easy to explain. Its not necessary."
Allright. so we don't need spreadsheets, a graph tool, a gui.
Just a command line and we're ready, huh? If you're now
going to say that these tools are already available in
linux, then you didn't got the argument. Go and do some
thinking dorky.
We don't need bloatware
to help us find our way through system configuration,
because that configuration is usually laid out plain and
simple in the form of human readable and alterable
configuration files."
hahahahaha, ROFLOL!! What an enormous BS!! "Configuration is
usually laid out plain and simple" my ass.. did you ever
take a look at an Xorg.conf file? Apperently you didn't.
Seriously.. people that say that a max on userfriendliness has already been reached on linux may consider to go do some very deep thinking.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Posted by Anonymous (192.88.xx.xx) on Thu 15 Feb 2007 at 15:47
I just thought of something funny, and I thought I should share it to lighten the mood. This is a quote from the OP:
This is what makes Debian very different from Ubuntu. In Debian, EVERY package counts, EVERY package needs to DO NOT have problems that will or can harm the user, or it will not be in the stable release.
"Harm the user," eh? you mean the package won't cause the monitor to explode and send shards of glass through my eyes? Good, but what about my family? I would be more concerned with the possibility that Debian will make my computer grow arms and legs and beat my wife. If you can guarantee that that won't happen, I will consider the package stable.
This is what makes Debian very different from Ubuntu. In Debian, EVERY package counts, EVERY package needs to DO NOT have problems that will or can harm the user, or it will not be in the stable release.
"Harm the user," eh? you mean the package won't cause the monitor to explode and send shards of glass through my eyes? Good, but what about my family? I would be more concerned with the possibility that Debian will make my computer grow arms and legs and beat my wife. If you can guarantee that that won't happen, I will consider the package stable.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]