On Monday 28 January 2013 22:21:06 john lewis wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 11:54:44 +0000
>
> Lisi <hantslug@???> wrote:
> > On Monday 28 January 2013 10:36:26 john lewis wrote:
> > > Even Debian, which used to have a reputation for being
> > > difficult to get running, is nowadays a breeze.
> > >
> > > (It took about ten minutes to get a minimal install of Wheezy up and
> > > running on an aopen Xcube box a few weeks ago
> >
> > You clearly have entirely open hardware!! Now that the installation
> > kernel has *no* binary blobs, Debian is back to being sometimes a bit
> > tricky. There is, of course, an unofficial installation disk which
> > has proprietary drivers, and you can have a particular driver
> > available on a USB key. But I would not call it a breeze any more.
>
> I have no idea how linux compatible the xcube box is. My existing
> 'server' died after quite a few years of service, probably motherboard
> failure so I looked on ebay for something cheap to replace it - the
> xcube box was on offer for £40, it had a reasonable spec as far as
> memory, speed, etc were concerned and had no OS installed. It arrived
> two days after I ordered it and I had it up and running about half an
> hour after the courier delivered it.
>
> I used a Debian wheezy netinst CD that I'd downloaded recently to give
> the updated installer a try out and it worked perfectly. As usual I
> only installed the basic minimum to get a bootable system, added a few
> extras, geneweb for example and that was it.
>
> I like the system, it seems reasonably fast, it is silent and is
> small enough to sit on top of the desk in an otherwise unused corner.
> I haven't even looked inside the box ;-)
>
> Oh yes, nearly forgot - I did modify the /etc/apt/sources.list to
> include the "non free" packages before the installer went off looking
> for stuff to download.
The crucial stumbling block would not usually exist on a second hand box,
which is that many new boxen have wi-fi and/or ethernet cards that are not in
the installation kernel because free drivers do not yet exist.
This does make installation more tricky than it was in, say, Lenny. And many
people new to Debian stumble on it.
I am not saying that it is an insuperable obstacle, but it is a trap for the
newbie Debian user.
Lisi
--
Please post to: Hampshire@???
Web Interface:
https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire
LUG URL:
http://www.hantslug.org.uk
--------------------------------------------------------------
