First, I want to thank members of this group for responding rapidly to my problems and questions, and thoughtfully. This group is in itself a strong arguement in favor of uprading to Debian.
I have now installed debian Linux three times, and would like to ask some questions before proceeding further. 1. I want to upgrade to ELF. Is the development stuff really that bad? What steps would I have to take on a new base system (with few or no new packages installed) to avail myself of libc5, new binutils, and gcc 2.7.2? I tried installing the libraries, etc.; a wild-goose-chase ensued, with each package indicating a bunch of binaries it depended upon. In the end, ???? I haven't been able to get the ELF stuff from the development area to run, at least not all of it. 2. Each time I have installed, I have had to make two passes at installing disks 1-3. The first pass is accompanied by messages warning that bdflush is not running. After the second pass, the system has been running ok. 3. I have a 30MB partition in the lower 500 MB /1024 cylinders of the drive, from which to boot Linux. What is a good scheme for the directories? I have called it root, and mounted the larger, 300MB partition as /usr. I have already had to set up a /usr/root directory and make /root a symbolic link to it. Sorry. I know this is in the FM, but I don't remember where, I don't have the FM at hand easily. I am now searching for this. 4. Related to #1: Is has been suggested that one install 0.93, then upgrade piecemeal. Is it really alot better to install the whole 0.93, everything, before upgrading piece by piece? Does anyone have a concrete working plan that has worked? Most of the stuff I am using is not being mentioned in the bug questions, as far as I know. I have had great success taking chances with BETA Linux stuff; is this debian development (_ALPHA_) stuff that much worse? (Repeating #1). Thanks to many who have helped. Alan Davis.
