On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 10:17:14AM +0200, Emmanuel Charpentier wrote: > Hamish Moffat wrote : > >> And you might want to give Ubuntu a try. The amd64 version is quite > > How nice of you to say so on the debian-amd64 list! More like how > > insulting... > > I am not a total newbie in using Linux or Debian (I must still have e > set of floppies bearing ham, in the same box where lies my treasured > two-floppies linux 0.12 lies...). Nonwhistanding this experience, I have > to tell that, when I made a very serious effort to install debian-amd64 > on a new shiny laptop, I had the hardest time Debian gave me since the [...] > So, while Debian remains my tool of choice, its current amd64 > incarnation *CANNOT* be given to Linux newbies. Ubuntu almost can.
Emmanuel, I understand that you had problems installing on your laptop. However I don't think you can conclude that all users will have trouble with debian-amd64 because it wouldn't install on your laptop. I don't think lack of DMA on the disk was the end of the world either, at install time. I have an nForce3-based Athlon64 desktop system and the installation was perfect. I suspect my scenario is far more common than yours. > Then, and only then, I hade a useable system ... with no openoffice. I > had to install a chroot and grab a $#-+load of ia32 packages to do that. Yes. This will be addressed in Debian in the future, through one of (or probably both) amd64 packages for Oo.org, and/or multi-arch. > In contrast, putting an Ubuntu (amd64 5.10 preview) CD in the drive and > installing took me one hour (two to get some fine-tuning working)... The Right. So its kernel supported your hardware better. I expect there are cases where the opposite is true. > So the point made by T. Steffens seems quite valid to me. I tend to > think that, if something is "insulting", it is the currend usability of > Debian-AMD64 on modern hardware by newbies/end-users/non-hackers... I think your sample size of 1 is unhelpful. There are plenty of other successful users of Debian-AMD64. Your rant about DDs is misplaced. There are plenty of people who do care about getting the stock kernel as useful as possible. They're doing a great job; pretty soon I'll have no systems at all running custom kernels. My real point was though that your Ubuntu advocacy is misplaced. I don't care if you use Ubuntu, but this is a Debian list. Hamish -- Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
