I decided to get away from Gentoo due to lack of time. I only have a couple precious hours in the evening, and the last thing I want to be doing is constantly spending my time on system maintenance and compiling stuff. When I get home and want to play with new programs and install things I can’t wait 20 minutes for a program to compile, I want it now.
I’ve been going back and forth in my head about whether I should re-install Debian or Ubuntu. The recent move of Debian’s Sarge to stable was a big deciding factor, now that Etch is out I feel Debian is taking a step to a higher level, and I figured it was time to give it a go again. But I was afraid of the installation. I didn’t want to completely depend on Michael to install the system for me, and I didn’t want to screw it up and make a fool of myself, like the last time I tried to install Debian. The last time I tried installing it was a couple years ago with Woody, where the install asked all sorts of questions about hardware that, quite honestly, scared the crap out of me, and made me run to Michael and ask him to do it.
So what would it be? Scary Debian install or easy Ubuntu?
There were issues with both.
Ubuntu
Pros:
Uses apt – still very Debian
Easy to install, detects all my hardware with no scariness
Newer packages than Debian Testing
Looks pretty out of the box
Cons:
Smaller repository than debian
Once the system is installed I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the Ubuntu way of system administration
Default installation of Gnome, which I’d never use
Losing a zillion geek points
Debian
Pros:
Gigantic repository
I’m used to the “Debian-way” of system administration
Leetness
Cons:
The install scares the crap out of me
So I thought about it. I’d heard from Michael and others that the Debian Testing install was easier these days, but I was weary. Will it detect all my hardware? Should I just give up on using my USB mouse with Debian now so I don’t have the headache of recompiling my kernel before I get x running? Is this going to take a week to get working myself? Maybe I should just install Ubuntu, which I know would “just work” and I don’t need to worry.
But what am I?
Am I going to surrender my Linux geekiness because I’m an accountant at work now?
Never!
I enjoy tweaking my computer. I may think that the GUI login screen for Ubuntu is cool, but it means nothing to my geeky self unless I installed it myself. I was afraid that if I installed Ubuntu that I’d just reinstall my whole system in a couple months because I’d be annoyed with the Ubuntu way of doing things (I already decided that I’d enable the root account first thing).
So the choice was clear.
Debian. And a glass of 10 year old red wine.
I was worried about the raid0 that Michael set up on the system with the Gentoo install, but after taking a look at the partition table with Michael, I learned that I didn’t really need to use raid0. I backed up my Windows files in case it became unbootable and went to edit the partition table (which Michael helped me with, since the raid on the table still scared me).
40 gigs still goes to Windows XP on ntfs.
40 gigs of fat32 to share files between the two OSes
80 gigs of Debian (128M for /boot 2 gigs for /swap and the rest for /)
The install went flawlessly. The first thing I did upon reboot was boot into WinXP. It worked. I then booted into my shiney new Debian install.
I went through the setup, and chose not to install anything (there are options to install a workstation, mailserver, etc), opting for the manual install of every package. I got x going with the default nv driver, my USB mouse worked! Installed gcc, make, binutils, and other essentials, and then tackled the install of the real NVidia drivers. This is when I grabbed Michael again, it asked for kernel source and I wasn’t sure what package that would be, so he helped me out with that.
nvidia module loaded without a problem.
In fact, everything is running great. I was able to grab pictures off my digital camera without fussing with anything. I had backed up my /etc
/ from gentoo so was able to grab the correct xserver settings to get my screen resolution back to 1600×1200 (could go higher, but I can’t read things after that). I’ve bugged Michael a bit to help me set up some of the more trivial things, and still have a bunch of things to customize, but that’s all fun stuff.
It’s good to be home.
