Jason (and anyone else interested), Following the distro discussions yesterday I thought that I would add something which affects my choice - mirror locations.
While I too like Mandrake for its ease of installation and normally easy package management system (urpmi), I prefer, in the long term, Gentoo or Debian based systems because they have local (NZ) mirrors. AFAIK there is still no NZ mirror for Mandrake. (Having said that, for some reason our Telecom ADSL Jetstart connection, which is normally about 18kbps max, is currently downloading Mandrake 10 using Bittorrent at 400kbps) Robert -----Original Message----- From: Jason Greenwood [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, 18 February 2004 11:06 a.m. To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Debian and MEPIS Linux - YAIR (Yet Another Installation Report) Wow, that's weird that it did not automagically configure your Internet Con (DHCP) for you. It did for me as I have the same setup here. It is a sweet looking desktop and seems to be stable as heck so far (from my limited playtime with it). I would say that if you are happy with it, leave it as it sounds as though it is now configured how you want it and I guess you can apt-get/upgrade anything you may want at a later stage. I particularly liked Synaptic which I had never used before... Cheers Jason PS, new to Debian so take my ravings re it with a grain of salt. Andrew Errington wrote: > Well, thanks Jason, for burning a copy for me so quickly. I booted the > ThinkPad with the Live CD (disc 1), and it booted up into KDE quite nicely. > There were two problems I immediately noticed: > > 1) Although the PCMCIA subsystem was detected, and the ethernet/modem combo > card therein was found, I had to type 'pump' manually to get it to > configure (I have a DHCP server in my router). I would expect this to > happen automatically. > 2) The (known) tricky sound on the 600E did not work, but the single line > modprobe-with-arguments that is the simple solution also worked. > > So, I have a dilemma- do I keep Debian woody on the laptop, with kernel > 2.4.18, and an old KDE, which all mostly works even though I haven't > tweaked it yet, or do I install MEPIS, which is a later kernel, later KDE > and has a bunch of other apps neatly packages (oh, and it *looks* *nice*)? > > I am sure to get a range of comments to help me decide- fire away! (Sorry > Jason, you can't give me MEPIS and then tell me to install Mandrake...) > > Thanks, > > Andy > > On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 10:09, you wrote: > >>I am not sure, have a look at mepis.org for more info. I have the latest >>version (2-10-03). I think it is a 'combination' but of course you can >>apt-get (or Synaptic) anything and it comes pre-configured to get >>software from several repositores and you can specify whether to include >>stable/unstable etc. They have included a GUI Control Centre for >>handling most tasks, which is cool. >> >>Cheers >> >>Jason >> >>Andrew Errington wrote: >> >>>On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 23:44, you wrote: >>> >>>>Hi All, >>>> >>>>Well after the hell that was the first Debian (standard, text based) >>>>installation I tried, I just experienced pure joy with MEPIS Linux. It >>>>is a Debian based Distro (I have been wanting to toy with Debian on a >>>>spare partition for some time now) that is very easy to install. >>> >>>Hi, >>> >>>I just put Debian 3.0 (woody) on my laptop (IBM ThinkPad 600E). I >>>don't think the installer is so bad, but you do have to concentrate. I >>>will post to the list my final choice of partitions (since this is the >>>decision I had the most difficulty with). >>> >>>Anyway, my question for you is- with MEPIS do you end up with a >>>'standard' installation (i.e. completely 'stable' packages) or do you >>>get a happy combination of stable, testing and unstable? Since I only >>>put Debian on at the weekend I am willing to discard it and try >>>something new if it is better. My only worry is keeping it up to date, >>>since this is easy with the staid and stolid Debian woody, but a little >>>more involved with Knoppix and its ilk. >>> >>>Of course I will RTF-MEPIS-M, but that is no substitute for hearing >>>someone's experience related. >>> >>>Andy >>> >>>PS The Debian installation went very smoothly. Everything but sound >>>worked out of the box, and a quick Google showed an easy >>>order-of-execution solution. My advice- write down all the hardware >>>settings reported by Windows device manager before reformatting. > > >
