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>I never understood the fixation about ease of installing The only time I use linux is when I need a linux VM for something. This happens maybe 2/3 times a yea

>I never understood the fixation about ease of installing The only time I use linux is when I need a linux VM for something. This happens maybe 2/3 times a year, and I can never remember all the random linux specific installation stuff. Ubuntu goes into enough detail that I don't need to google it, Debian doesn't. My fixation is because I don't care about what version of linux I'm using, I'm not going to be using it for much, I just need a linux kernel and a reasonable package manager.

Jedd 8y ago
Are you re-installing, or re-starting, a VM for this? If you're re-installing from scratch each time you're possibly doing that wrong. An installation from scratch, in any case, should only ask you hostname, domain name, maybe wifi details (probably not for a VM), partitioning preference, and package / function (set of packages) --- none of this stuff benefits from a flashy / GUI installer. > ... I just need a linux kernel and a reasonable package manager. That last bit - that's kind of my point.
- isostatic 8y ago
  The only graphical installed I've seen was the corporate 'build' of redhat, a 65 page mammouth document that talked about 'disabling telnet'. WTF? Why the hell is telnetd even on the machine? They also had X on there -- on a frickin server. That's when I spent some time doing an ubuntu build, which even as of 16.04 is ncurses based installer. Boot from pxe, give an IP address/gateway/dns/hostname etc, approve the automatic partitioning selection, select which support area looks after the machine (for user generation, monitoring, etc), and that's it. Everything gets the same base install, including things like active directory based logons (with ssh keys for those who want them), automatically adds itself to nagios. Build a dev installation (which you select form pxelinux) and auto patching gets enabled, and syslogs get fired off the the right location. On a VM this can of course be passed as part of the creation process, so it just take 5 minutes to build from scratch. When it comes to building on real hardware it's just a matter of typing the stuff into the boxes then going and making a cup of tea. After the base install is on, you can then either apply an ansible script to do various package installs, or do it old-skool with apt-get install $package. It's entirely possible that debian testing may work, however from a corporate signoff (and when you've got nearly 2,000 of these machines installed you need that) saying you're basing the company on 'Ubuntu LTS' is far better than basing it on "Debian Testing". We've run this way for over a decade over 6 continents, it just works.
- Dayshine 8y ago
  >Are you re-installing, or re-starting, a VM for this? Yes, of course I am, as an amateur in linux it would be reckless for me reuse an existing linux installation in a different context. The only way I can safely re-use is docker. >An installation from scratch, in any case, should only ask you hostname, domain name Domain name has already lost me, I'm not a website, why do I need a domain? :) In practice, you're usually asked about root, usernames, home folders, etc, too. >none of this stuff benefits from a flashy / GUI installer No it doesn't need a flashy installer, but I'm equally talking about the Ubuntu Server edition's text installer. I'm not sure if you're talking about GUI vs CLI or "graphical" vs "text-based oldschool GUI". I would say totally vanilla CLI installers absolutely don't explain things well.
  - Jedd 8y ago
    > Yes, of course I am, as an amateur in linux it would be reckless for me reuse an existing linux installation in a different context. The only way I can safely re-use is docker. If you're using Docker - or even know about it - you're not an amateur. Since you're talking about your need to 'build a Linux VM for something' this also suggests you're significantly better than average on the GNU/Linux awareness scale. But to your question -- if you're using a VM instance, make a base build, make it just right, and then snapshot it. When you need to spin up a new Linux VM for something, replicate the snapshot, do an apt-get update/upgrade (or equiv) and carry on. This is fairly common practice and saves having to remember your domain name, root password, home folders etc. To your last point -- I rarely install Ubuntu, and can really only compare Debian vs various Microsoft installations processes for the past twenty years. GUI GNU/Linux installers were popularised by Ubuntu, and that's why that came up. You're right that totally vanilla CLI installers don't explain things well, but that's what we used to have on Windows 3.1 / 95 / 98 ... and people somehow managed to struggle on. Either average Microsoft users have become dumber (quite possible) or IT types continue to underestimate people's ability to read or work things out. Given almost everyone that installs an OS now has another device to hand to look up guides and answers, I'd suggest it's (installer complexity) even less of a distinction now. Aside - Microsoft installers always had it much easier than most GNU/Linux installers simply because Microsoft installers (for a very, very long time) didn't give a flying if there was an existing operating system on the box. They'd just re-partition, re-format, install, and overwrite the MBR. Pretty much every GNU/Linux installation process took great care to accommodate other OS's already in situ, and also documented the process and correct ordering required to be sociable with other OS's.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
I honestly don't know what you're talking about with "random linux specific installation stuff". Installation of Linux hasn't really been any different from Windows since the early aughties as far as I can tell. Select keyboard layout, provide hostname, just let the partitioner use the whole disk automatically, configure the network, etc. As someone who frequently hates on Desktop Linux, I agree with the sentiment that the fixation over ease of installing is pretty silly. Only a few distros in recent memory have anything remotely difficult about their installation process, and it's usually that they don't bother with any wizards and just make you do everything by hand from the shell, but those were meant for experts anyway.
- collyw 8y ago
  I would really like to run Arch, but last time I checked it was a manual process (so I am on Majaro). The docs are really good. I am expert enough to get a lot of benefit from that amount of detail, but not expert enough to be bothered with the manual install process. One thing that gets me is ~12 years ago I used to install distros all the time. There was a semi standard way to partition your drive, / home and swap. Now I look at the partitions that are produced and a lot of the time I have no idea what is going on. And please stop moving the bloody usb drive mount location about.
  - nobleach 8y ago
    I feel the same. 12-20 years ago, I was installing Linux distros (and NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD...) multiple times in a week. It was such a wonderful playground. As a software developer, now days, I just want something to work without fiddling with it for days. That said, I just installed Arch again a week or so ago. I have 2 observations: 1. Getting it bootstrapped and running is downright annoying. I see little value in it other than teaching someone what an installer _would_ do for them. Do you know how to chroot? mkinitrd? fdisk? install a bootloader? ensure that you have the right drivers/modules to run your WiFi chipset? manually configure everything??? The end product _does_ give you a feeling of accomplishment... but, I'm still not sure it's worth the cost. 2. ArchLinux docs are about the best I've seen. Kudos to the community for doing such a fine job.
  - 8y ago

Jedd 8y ago

Are you re-installing, or re-starting, a VM for this? If you're re-installing from scratch each time you're possibly doing that wrong. An installation from scratch, in any case, should only ask you hostname, domain name, maybe wifi details (probably not for a VM), partitioning preference, and package / function (set of packages) --- none of this stuff benefits from a flashy / GUI installer. > ... I just need a linux kernel and a reasonable package manager. That last bit - that's kind of my point.

isostatic 8y ago
The only graphical installed I've seen was the corporate 'build' of redhat, a 65 page mammouth document that talked about 'disabling telnet'. WTF? Why the hell is telnetd even on the machine? They also had X on there -- on a frickin server. That's when I spent some time doing an ubuntu build, which even as of 16.04 is ncurses based installer. Boot from pxe, give an IP address/gateway/dns/hostname etc, approve the automatic partitioning selection, select which support area looks after the machine (for user generation, monitoring, etc), and that's it. Everything gets the same base install, including things like active directory based logons (with ssh keys for those who want them), automatically adds itself to nagios. Build a dev installation (which you select form pxelinux) and auto patching gets enabled, and syslogs get fired off the the right location. On a VM this can of course be passed as part of the creation process, so it just take 5 minutes to build from scratch. When it comes to building on real hardware it's just a matter of typing the stuff into the boxes then going and making a cup of tea. After the base install is on, you can then either apply an ansible script to do various package installs, or do it old-skool with apt-get install $package. It's entirely possible that debian testing may work, however from a corporate signoff (and when you've got nearly 2,000 of these machines installed you need that) saying you're basing the company on 'Ubuntu LTS' is far better than basing it on "Debian Testing". We've run this way for over a decade over 6 continents, it just works.
Dayshine 8y ago
>Are you re-installing, or re-starting, a VM for this? Yes, of course I am, as an amateur in linux it would be reckless for me reuse an existing linux installation in a different context. The only way I can safely re-use is docker. >An installation from scratch, in any case, should only ask you hostname, domain name Domain name has already lost me, I'm not a website, why do I need a domain? :) In practice, you're usually asked about root, usernames, home folders, etc, too. >none of this stuff benefits from a flashy / GUI installer No it doesn't need a flashy installer, but I'm equally talking about the Ubuntu Server edition's text installer. I'm not sure if you're talking about GUI vs CLI or "graphical" vs "text-based oldschool GUI". I would say totally vanilla CLI installers absolutely don't explain things well.
- Jedd 8y ago
  > Yes, of course I am, as an amateur in linux it would be reckless for me reuse an existing linux installation in a different context. The only way I can safely re-use is docker. If you're using Docker - or even know about it - you're not an amateur. Since you're talking about your need to 'build a Linux VM for something' this also suggests you're significantly better than average on the GNU/Linux awareness scale. But to your question -- if you're using a VM instance, make a base build, make it just right, and then snapshot it. When you need to spin up a new Linux VM for something, replicate the snapshot, do an apt-get update/upgrade (or equiv) and carry on. This is fairly common practice and saves having to remember your domain name, root password, home folders etc. To your last point -- I rarely install Ubuntu, and can really only compare Debian vs various Microsoft installations processes for the past twenty years. GUI GNU/Linux installers were popularised by Ubuntu, and that's why that came up. You're right that totally vanilla CLI installers don't explain things well, but that's what we used to have on Windows 3.1 / 95 / 98 ... and people somehow managed to struggle on. Either average Microsoft users have become dumber (quite possible) or IT types continue to underestimate people's ability to read or work things out. Given almost everyone that installs an OS now has another device to hand to look up guides and answers, I'd suggest it's (installer complexity) even less of a distinction now. Aside - Microsoft installers always had it much easier than most GNU/Linux installers simply because Microsoft installers (for a very, very long time) didn't give a flying if there was an existing operating system on the box. They'd just re-partition, re-format, install, and overwrite the MBR. Pretty much every GNU/Linux installation process took great care to accommodate other OS's already in situ, and also documented the process and correct ordering required to be sociable with other OS's.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

I honestly don't know what you're talking about with "random linux specific installation stuff". Installation of Linux hasn't really been any different from Windows since the early aughties as far as I can tell. Select keyboard layout, provide hostname, just let the partitioner use the whole disk automatically, configure the network, etc. As someone who frequently hates on Desktop Linux, I agree with the sentiment that the fixation over ease of installing is pretty silly. Only a few distros in recent memory have anything remotely difficult about their installation process, and it's usually that they don't bother with any wizards and just make you do everything by hand from the shell, but those were meant for experts anyway.

collyw 8y ago
I would really like to run Arch, but last time I checked it was a manual process (so I am on Majaro). The docs are really good. I am expert enough to get a lot of benefit from that amount of detail, but not expert enough to be bothered with the manual install process. One thing that gets me is ~12 years ago I used to install distros all the time. There was a semi standard way to partition your drive, / home and swap. Now I look at the partitions that are produced and a lot of the time I have no idea what is going on. And please stop moving the bloody usb drive mount location about.
- nobleach 8y ago
  I feel the same. 12-20 years ago, I was installing Linux distros (and NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD...) multiple times in a week. It was such a wonderful playground. As a software developer, now days, I just want something to work without fiddling with it for days. That said, I just installed Arch again a week or so ago. I have 2 observations: 1. Getting it bootstrapped and running is downright annoying. I see little value in it other than teaching someone what an installer _would_ do for them. Do you know how to chroot? mkinitrd? fdisk? install a bootloader? ensure that you have the right drivers/modules to run your WiFi chipset? manually configure everything??? The end product _does_ give you a feeling of accomplishment... but, I'm still not sure it's worth the cost. 2. ArchLinux docs are about the best I've seen. Kudos to the community for doing such a fine job.
- 8y ago