After having failed the installation of Debian 8 from the live session and the associated issues I had with that. I moved on to do an install from the first installation ISO.
Once again I am doing this in a virtual machine running on my desktop along side multiple other browsers and ide's and applications. I have allocated 1Gb of RAM and a limited but sufficient drive space. The VM software is Virtualbox.
The first thing that hit me is that when starting, Debian defaults the GRUB boot menu to selecting a text mode install.
 |
| Defaults to text mode install. |
This leaves it to the user to specifically choose to use the graphical installer. In this day and age, defaulting to a text mode over a graphical installer just isn't something I would consider a wise choice.
Having selected the graphical installer, I continued on.
Despite running in a 64bit virtual machine with only 1Gb of RAM allocated, the installer is fast. It is simple and easy to understand, whilst still providing the required options.
Here are some screenshots from the install process.
 |
| Initial language selection |
 |
| Disk partitioning options |
 | |
| Offering the ability to configure separate /home partition during guided partitioning is a nice touch. Although, some explanation as to the benefit of doing so would help educate new users. |
 |
| There is no warning of weak passwords. Yes, using a strong password should be a standard thing, but it's surprising how often it's not done. |
After the partitioning and base system install. The installer gives the option to select additional packages. This is a pretty basic list, comprising a choice of desktop environment and some other (mostly server related) options.
Note: Despite the option to disable standard system utilities, I wouldn't recommend doing so unless you really know what you're doing.
I chose an XFCE desktop because it is fast and clean and simple. You're free to choose from the standard options. (Gnome, KDE, xfce, cinnamon, etc)
 |
| Basic desktop environment and package option selection. |
Having done that and hit continue I waited a few minutes for the packages to install. Eager to reboot into the shiny new Debian system.
The install was straight forward with no real surprises. It's worth noting that when installing the GRUB bootloader, it doesn't default to the first hard drive and must be selected.
It hasn't got the flash of the likes of Ubuntu and I feel this is going to be the case with Debian as a whole.
Debian isn't the sort of distro that is big on providing a customised experience out of the box. It provides the default desktop experience direct from the developers of the desktop environment. This isn't a "bad" thing, but it does tend to mean the initial system is somewhat bland.
On the same note, from a user point of view it is important to understand that the stable Debian release only receives security updates and not updates to desktop environments and applications.
This tends to mean that the Debian packages can be somewhat out of date compared to distros that are more regularly updated.
For example: Debian 8 features pretty up to date packages for things such as the Apache web server and PHP, whereas Darktable remains back at version 1.4 when other distros have it at 1.6+.
No comments:
Post a Comment