Moving to Debian

**Jameson** · 01-04-2005, 06:25 PM

Alright I'm considering downloading the latest Debian release and installing it on a spare box but have a few questions.

How difficult would you say it is, to move from Knoppix (and its features) to a plain Debian release?

Is their anyway I could use the ndiswapper script in Knoppix on the Debian install? (worked when tried in Kanotix)

I noticed in Knoppix that its very difficult to upgrade the kernel without breaking it, is it so in Debian? (Provided you have some knowledge on how to do it?)

Do the Debian releases generly come with many features or is it a pretty bare OS?

Thanks for any replies, I apologize if this should be in general section but I'm looking for opinions rather then answers.

-Jameson

**chris-harry** · 01-05-2005, 02:47 AM

ok.. i can only safely reply to two of these question you asked... but hopefulyl i have been helpful...

How difficult would you say it is, to move from Knoppix (and its features) to a plain Debian release?

its not that hard... infact, knoppix is a debian based system... they have some very simular features

Do the Debian releases generly come with many features or is it a pretty bare OS?

depends what you get... i got a dvd of debian, and it had a whole heap of functions and applications and you name it on it... if you only get the boot floppies however, you will only get the kernal... deh... it comes with wine (well me version did, dont know about the cd ones yet), and also an arange of desktop things (aka KDE, Gnome, Ice)....

hopefully i have been helpful... with me limited knolege...

**eco2geek** · 01-05-2005, 06:06 AM

Originally Posted by Jameson

How difficult would you say it is, to move from Knoppix (and its features) to a plain Debian release?

Not difficult at all. Download Sarge install CD(s), install Sarge, then change /etc/apt/sources.list to "unstable" and do a dist-upgrade. (A high-speed Internet connection helps, as does another computer you can use to go on IRC if you have problems or forget a command.)

Originally Posted by Jameson

Is their anyway I could use the ndiswapper script in Knoppix on the Debian install?

Don't know, but try it and find out. If it worked on Kanotix, chances are good it'll work on Debian Sid.

Originally Posted by Jameson

I noticed in Knoppix that its very difficult to upgrade the kernel without breaking it, is it so in Debian?

If you're willing to stay with Debian's kernel packages, it's as easy as "apt-get install kernel-image-2.x.x-your_computer's_architecture. If you want to build your own, mzilikazi has a how-to here.

Originally Posted by Jameson

Do the Debian releases generly come with many features or is it a pretty bare OS?

There are approximately 12,800 packages available. (Which is why you probably don't want to run Aptitude during the installation process.)

**garyng** · 01-05-2005, 07:25 PM

If you don't need KDE, sarge is already pretty up-to-date and is basically production quality for x86, the outstanding bugs preventing its release as stable are mostly non-x86 related. Wait another 2-3 weeks or so, even the latest KDE will go into sarge. By then, I would consider it to be 'stable', as far as x86 is concerned. The only catch will be security updates would lag a bit, unlike a true 'stable' release.

BTW, if you are desktop oriented, try ubuntu. It moves much faster than debian(to stable) mostly because it focus only on x86, thus no such dragging by other non-x86 platforms. It has Xorg Xserver(fork from xfree86 4.4) for example in the beta which is supposed to be released in March. I would say this is a better release than debian for x86 desktop(it is just a refined debian but not that much deviated like KNOPPIX etc.)

**Jameson** · 01-06-2005, 02:38 AM

Not difficult at all. Download Sarge install CD(s), install Sarge

I noticed that in the CD sets theirs 15 sarge binarys, could you shed some light on about how many I'll be needing? (15 ISO's would take awhile

)

I actually have Ubuntu running on a really old box that was going to be a mail server but I could never get working, ubuntu is really nice but the only thing I dis-like is it deafults to gnome. Thanks again for the replies everyone!

-Jameson

**Durand Hicks** · 01-06-2005, 06:32 AM

You only need just the sarge netinstall cd. It's about 100 mb or less. It installs a base system that really works but you'll need to run apt-get or aptitude to install additional packages to complete your server system to your liking.