Debian Squeeze - Thoughts - 2

v0.1

With this post, I want to finish off some general thoughts I have about Debian Squeeze and some of the installation issues that people will or will not see.  I'm not going to cover dual-booting with Windows as there are plenty of how-tos available, and since I don't have Windows 7 I have no first-hand knowledge of setting up with the latest Windows.

My experience with the Debian Installer has been very good overall.  I have found it to be the most reliable of any that I've dealt with (Slackware would be on a par).  There have been a number of times I was looking at installing an "easy to use" Distro on someone's older machine and some issue or another got in the way, and I continually found myself returning to Debian's Installer to get the job done.  I should note that I always use the text version of the installer, not the Graphical interface.  It is faster and more reliable, and is effectively the same thing.

I've already noted the excellent install guide at Howtoforge but there is one other step I find really helpful.  Before I start the installation, I use a specialist Distro like PartedMagic to prepare the disk with gparted.  It just lets me get the installation disk set up the way I like before I start the main installation.  Whilst I'm talking about that, I use a minimum of three partitions, one for root, one for home and a swap.  The advantage of the home partition is that if you ever need to re-install, or want to install a different flavour, you can do that without disturbing your user data.

Don't worry about a failed installation - all you need to do is to go back and do it again.  You will learn something from every install - it is just part of life.

It is possible there may be an issue with NetworkManager that needs minor correction to ensure reliable wired Internet connection.

After installation, understanding the package management and how to add and delete programs, installing drivers for webcams or 3d and then how to get those printers working, comes high on the priority list.  The good news here is that these chores have been made much easier lately.  Even when manual intervention is needed, these things are really quite straightforward - like a lot of things, it is easy when you know how.


later ....