Well, I'm not a linux newbie, and I've been using debian for almost a
year.
First, praise: I installed slackware from scratch in '95. I installed
debian from scratch in '98. If M$ could make a ease-of-use jump that
large in 3 years i wouldn't care if they took over the world. They
can't. We can. [Insert the playground taunting of a six-year-old.]
Second, criticism: I think the debian distribution web page *could* be
organized a bit more. A simple suggestion is that when one clicks on
'support' in the red button bar at the top, one should be able to get
to the documentation page from there -- those nav elements should echo
the site 'map' in the pale blue table on the left.
I can understand a newbie who finds most of the jargon frustrating
going to the support page and figuring the only options for help are
IRC, the mailing list, and paid consultants, missing the great
documentation.
My experience yesterday helps me sympathize with the original
poster. My personal installation last year went beautifully as i ran
from a bootable cd. On the other hand, I run debian at work, where i'm
developing a kiosk system. I've a handful of thin clients -- NONE WITH
CD ROM DRIVES -- set up by a vendor. I'd forgotten their password. The
boot/rescue disks that they included didn't work. I decided i wanted
to make rescue disks (one one of the systems I've had going for a
while). I can remember with slackware system had the boot/root disks
quite findable with clear instructions on how to build them from both
the DOS linux OS. I could not find anything like that for Debian,
although i did find the DOS tools directory.
So, maybe where the initial boot up stuff is could be pulled out, or
at least a top level symbolic link so that one doesn't have to dig...
Or maybe *i* missed something, too.
Anyhow, if the original poster is still reading this -- once you go
through the struggle of installation, Debian is a joy to maintain!
IRIX is *almost* as nice to maintain, as long as you use all of SGI's
development stuff (their C, gack). Win95 doesn't come close.
(BTW i did see mkrboot's man page -- but i wasn't up to then digging
around to figure out how to build a compressed root image. I'll figure
that out when i get around to building an installation for my Thinkpad
750C)
Cheers,
j
