My previous experience with operating systems
The first OS I have installed was probably some DOS for a friend or classmate in primary school, I can't remember which. You understand if normal people can't install and configure that properly, as it is considered pretty difficult. I then did winblows a few times, though that's a harder treat. How do you expect a normal user to feel at home with his computer if he can't even install it for himself? It's supposed to be user friendly or so.
Also note, that after removing the installer disk and placing it on the shelf does not end your responsibilities. If you install new hardware, software, or just simply switch some setting that change a major part of the system, you will need to get used to handling setup dialogs and wizards. And by the way, if the installation process is usually done by a semi-professional anyway - either in the shop before you buy, or if you ask help from a friend - then that voids the major part of the very common argument against using any unusual operating system.
Anyhow, I think I even did an NT or XP once at school through the same, old, boring wizard. You hardly understand how people have difficulty handling these things. Of course if something breaks about these kind of magical systems, you still need to do the dirty work with running web searches, fiddling with the command line or hacking the registry. Sadly, in most cases the only fix is to download a third-party utility or "hacker" tool just to fix a system that worked "flawlessly" before. (Compare that to the well documented config files present in UNIX-like systems.) Some say that you can keep both parts when it breaks, because they're not fixing it, or at least not with any less than a reinstall.
Then came the golden ages for me. Sadly, we did not have a chance to practice the installation of any other OS in secondary technical school. I once had a chance to test a UNIX-like system myself, however, when my brother gave me his disk that was attached to a computer magazine of some sort. It was Corel Linux 1.2, if I recall right. You can find a lot of reviews for yourself on it if you are interested. All in all, it was a system very easy on novices, sometimes it even felt a little too easy. It would have needed some more polishing, though. Sadly, I did have to trash it after a year or so because of storage shortness.
The next one I tried was Damn Small Linux, that was just emerging at the time. It did have quirks and all, but it did do the job, and spared the resources on my "mature" hardware configuration. Installation and setup went all smoothly. I did a full hard drive install of it to gain some bootup speed and to make addons permanent. I modded it up (or have ruined it, depending on your perspective) by upgrading some packages to Debian Stable (it was either Sarge or Etch). That caused some conflicts and required the installation of a great number of packages. On another note, I did have a need for some software that were either not available in the "package system," or were snapshot of a way obsolete version. I needed to compile these from source. Just imagine the hours and days of compiling I needed to do!
Then came Debian Etch. After realizing that I was at that time using a distribution that pretty much resembled Etch, it seemed like a good idea to try the real thing, but without the long compiles this time. I have partitioned my hard drive to many small pieces beforehand. I booted the installer disk in QEmu, and started to follow the instructions. I did the minimal server install, but stopped at the rebooting step.
After gaining confidence of seeing how nice it works out, I stopped the virtual machine and copied the virtual drive to a real one. I ran qemu with the root user this time and have mounted my master disk as a whole device - a pretty dangerous feat, I must add. Everything went smoothly, and I could listen to some music, do some programming and browse the web on another virtual desktop while I was waiting between parts. The whole install was pretty entertaining. I did write down all the steps involved for the benefit of a possible reinstallation.
However, 2GB was starting to feel a bit short with the various programming environments and specialized utilities I have installed. So I decided to migrate my distribution to a 3GB partition. I did it with debootstrap and in a chroot this time, built directly on the target partition. I figured that I did not need all the stuff that has accumulated over time. This is one system that I still use regularly.
Then came Debian Lenny a month or so after the big freeze, and about one month to the planned release. I needed newer versions of some software for my work: mainly Erlang, but it was very nice to have Emacs, Firefox and Fluxbox updated too. To be frank I have been planning to have a testing partition just for Firefox 3.1 beta and the Webkit browsers alone, but I couldn't talk myself into it. Until the day I tried to install mysql-server that is! I had a grave need for mysql, and I needed it fast. I had to realize that I ran into a problem that nobody had a ready-built solution for - other than a complete reinstall. As I was in a hurry, I decided to give Lenny a go instead of wasting any more time on finding a possible fix.
The complete instructions have already been published in another entry.
Also note, that after removing the installer disk and placing it on the shelf does not end your responsibilities. If you install new hardware, software, or just simply switch some setting that change a major part of the system, you will need to get used to handling setup dialogs and wizards. And by the way, if the installation process is usually done by a semi-professional anyway - either in the shop before you buy, or if you ask help from a friend - then that voids the major part of the very common argument against using any unusual operating system.
Anyhow, I think I even did an NT or XP once at school through the same, old, boring wizard. You hardly understand how people have difficulty handling these things. Of course if something breaks about these kind of magical systems, you still need to do the dirty work with running web searches, fiddling with the command line or hacking the registry. Sadly, in most cases the only fix is to download a third-party utility or "hacker" tool just to fix a system that worked "flawlessly" before. (Compare that to the well documented config files present in UNIX-like systems.) Some say that you can keep both parts when it breaks, because they're not fixing it, or at least not with any less than a reinstall.
Then came the golden ages for me. Sadly, we did not have a chance to practice the installation of any other OS in secondary technical school. I once had a chance to test a UNIX-like system myself, however, when my brother gave me his disk that was attached to a computer magazine of some sort. It was Corel Linux 1.2, if I recall right. You can find a lot of reviews for yourself on it if you are interested. All in all, it was a system very easy on novices, sometimes it even felt a little too easy. It would have needed some more polishing, though. Sadly, I did have to trash it after a year or so because of storage shortness.
The next one I tried was Damn Small Linux, that was just emerging at the time. It did have quirks and all, but it did do the job, and spared the resources on my "mature" hardware configuration. Installation and setup went all smoothly. I did a full hard drive install of it to gain some bootup speed and to make addons permanent. I modded it up (or have ruined it, depending on your perspective) by upgrading some packages to Debian Stable (it was either Sarge or Etch). That caused some conflicts and required the installation of a great number of packages. On another note, I did have a need for some software that were either not available in the "package system," or were snapshot of a way obsolete version. I needed to compile these from source. Just imagine the hours and days of compiling I needed to do!
Then came Debian Etch. After realizing that I was at that time using a distribution that pretty much resembled Etch, it seemed like a good idea to try the real thing, but without the long compiles this time. I have partitioned my hard drive to many small pieces beforehand. I booted the installer disk in QEmu, and started to follow the instructions. I did the minimal server install, but stopped at the rebooting step.
After gaining confidence of seeing how nice it works out, I stopped the virtual machine and copied the virtual drive to a real one. I ran qemu with the root user this time and have mounted my master disk as a whole device - a pretty dangerous feat, I must add. Everything went smoothly, and I could listen to some music, do some programming and browse the web on another virtual desktop while I was waiting between parts. The whole install was pretty entertaining. I did write down all the steps involved for the benefit of a possible reinstallation.
However, 2GB was starting to feel a bit short with the various programming environments and specialized utilities I have installed. So I decided to migrate my distribution to a 3GB partition. I did it with debootstrap and in a chroot this time, built directly on the target partition. I figured that I did not need all the stuff that has accumulated over time. This is one system that I still use regularly.
Then came Debian Lenny a month or so after the big freeze, and about one month to the planned release. I needed newer versions of some software for my work: mainly Erlang, but it was very nice to have Emacs, Firefox and Fluxbox updated too. To be frank I have been planning to have a testing partition just for Firefox 3.1 beta and the Webkit browsers alone, but I couldn't talk myself into it. Until the day I tried to install mysql-server that is! I had a grave need for mysql, and I needed it fast. I had to realize that I ran into a problem that nobody had a ready-built solution for - other than a complete reinstall. As I was in a hurry, I decided to give Lenny a go instead of wasting any more time on finding a possible fix.
The complete instructions have already been published in another entry.
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