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My 2p on installation/setup

Morning World,

Here are some thoughts about Debian. Its the crack of dawn here (9:40!) so please make allowance for this :)

So Debian - my understanding was that Debian was supposed to be, both a distribution in its own right and a base distribution for other folk to build value added distributions on. As I see it the package basis of Debian serves the second function very well. It also provides an extreemly flexable environment for experienced UNIX hackers like myself.

Unfortunately it is not clear to me, as I watch others trying to build Debian systems that the current bootstrap/dpkg mechanism serves novice users very well at all. From my observations newbie unix users making the move from the M$ world struggle very badly indeed. In many ways there is nothing we can do about this. UNIX is difficult compared to the M$ world. Also, I have noticed that even experienced UNIX users are seriously confused when they encounter dpkg for the first time. Well to be honest I confuses me sometimes!

Might I therefore suggest that maybe we build some scripts that run dpkg to configure various flavours of machine. Say:

1. A newbie machine, fairly minimal with all the documentation.
2. A stand alone workstation./development machine - compilers etc 
3. A server machine - NFS, yp etc 
4. An Internet server machine. Networking, ppp, www/ftp/smtp server etc.
5. A general workstation. Most things

Well, you get the idea. After you have built the base system you say something like

   # install workstation

and the apropriate set of packages are installed. Once users are familiar with Debian they can then use dpkg like the rest of us to add/remove/upgrade whatever they want.

Well anyway, that all. Maybe I'm putting the users down but from what I have seen I dont think so. I must have switched at least 30 people on to Debian in the last few years.

:)

alvar

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