Talk:Debian-Installation
From Grokdoc
I didn't have a newbie to follow, since I am one, but I thought describing the problems I had might be of help.
First of all, I was eventually successful, because I'm using my new (properly firewalled) installation to write this.
It took me a total of five weeks to successfully install. I spent two weeks last January learning how to install and use BootX (I have an oldworld mac that can't be booted directly). Then I had to give up when school started. I spent an additional three this summer, most of which involved learning how to make a masquerading firewall and figuring out how to make the Xwindow manager work.
Primary stumbling blocks include:
1) basic vocabulary. For example, what the heck is a keybinding, and why should I care? (There are lots of specific vocabulary words that you gradually learn reading all the howtos--but it's a long process)
2) Lots of documentation out there doesn't apply to Debian. For instance, the IP Masquerade Howto is very thorough, but written for Red Hat distributions (I think). So the place you put your init script is different. Other times files that don't exist in Debian will be described in the documentation, and I've spent a lot of time trying to find them before I realized that. I'm sure the situtation is reversed for someone reading Debian documentation and installing some other distribution.
3) Firewalling. One of the major reasons I want a linux box is to have an up-to-date secure buffer for the aging macs we own, so learning how to make a firewall was the highest priority. Ipmasq, fortunately, takes care of everything--but I didn't know that until I had worked making my own firewall for three weeks.
4) Xwindows-KDE initially wouldn't run for an obscure reason. Then I reinstalled it and it would run but the fonts were very small and unreadable and there were video glitches. Unfortunately, I still needed to use the command line to work on my firewall and other issues. The only way I could figure out to get to a command line that used a font I could read was open a terminal within KDE and kill KDE. (I know better now) KDE took umbrage at this callous treatment and stayed dead.
I came close to giving up many times.
PJ: I hear you. You picked the one distro that seems to be the hardest. I tried and did give up some years ago. I hear it is easier now. Newbies usually enjoy Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Mandriva until they are used to things and folks who aren't newbies do too. But if you got this far, you may want to stay where you are. If not, consider the alternatives.
