SOTL wrote:
> Thanks for your help.
>
> This is getting damn flustering.
> The objective was to make a small MySQL server of basely a telephone directory
> of clients for our business.
>
> What I have firmly established is that doing such with the current disarray in
> Commercial Linux distributions, Red Hat, SuSE, and Mandriva, that that is not
> possible for anyone on the lass that guru level.
>
Not true at all, and you know it.
Here's what should happen. I'm in the middle of doing this exact thing
right now on a new desktop machine. This is a Debian Sarge install,
using the new Debian installer.
1) You've downloaded and burned a CD that gets you a base Debian
installation (which would not include a GUI). That's the first CD of
Debian. This should be all you need to bootstrap an network install. But
in order to do a network install, Debian has to install a base system on
your hard drive. No other choice.
2) You've installed "successfully" from that distro. That means you've
answered the questions and come up with a base system, and were told to
take the CD out and reboot.
3) Once rebooted, Debian should, instead of giving the normal login
screen, start asking you questions about the roles you want your
computer to play. Two of the choices should be "Desktop" and "Database
Server". You should select those. DO NOT select manual package
selection, as you don't know enough at this point to do this without
getting confused. You can install things later, but for right now, just
select roles, not packages. Debian will pull in packages it needs from
the net to fulfill those roles.
4) You may in fact need to answer some questions about your network
card, the netmask and such, in order to actually get on line. Debian's
gotten much better about auto-detecting things, but you may still have
to answer some questions.
5) At some point in all this, Debian will have all the information it
needs and will get online, contacting the Debian mirrors and downloading
packages. Once all the downloading is done, it will start asking you
configuration questions about some of the packages it downloaded.
6) Once all packages are configured, it will tell you you're done and
present you with a login screen. If it managed to detect your video card
and monitor properly, it will present a graphical login. If not (as in
my case), it will tell you it can't figure it out and present you with a
console login. In that case, you'll have to do some more work to get
your system configured so it will come up in X properly.
Incidentally, "It didn't work" isn't really helpful. Error messages or
specific detailed machine behavior would be useful.
<snip>
> I will state one thing though that is sure to get me flamed but from the user
> perspective unless SuSE, Mandriva and Red Hat clean their act up fast.
> Consider the typical small business is the group that could benefit most from
> using Linus and that the typical small business is composed of 5 to 10 office
> level personnel that would utilize computers. I personally can not imagine
> any business type to switch to Linux until issues such as this are resolved.
> No small business personnel is going to waist the time that I have put into
> this in the last 2 weeks. Believe me they are not going to do it nor allow
> any of their employees to do it either. Things are simply going to have to
> work. ODBC and JDBC Connectors when install are going to have to connect
> [Mandrake]. MySQL when started will not give error messages indicating MySQL
> Server is not installed by will actually function [SuSE]. Kfish and Kbear
> will work [Red Hat] {Did not even bother to check any futher with Red Hat it
> is still so screwed up by the Blue Curve that I can not imagine anyone using
> Red Hat.]
Hundreds or thousands install Linux every day without these kinds of
problems. So it's absolutely possible to do so. Just because you can't
do it doesn't mean it requires guru level experience. But I've told you
before, Debian (despite the nifty new installer) is not a distro I would
recommend to people who don't have experience with Linux distros. That's
why they make things like Linspire and Mepis and Xandros, all of which
are based on Debian. The installs are nice and GUI, and you're asked a
minimum of hard questions. They have little one-click software
installers that make it easy for users to install or upgrade software.
-- Paul M. Foster ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
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