debian question

[stick]

ok, finally deciding to try debian... so i got the book, installing debian... and the cd that came with it... debian 2.1

ok, now a few questions...

1. how am i supposed to get the stuff i need to get my nic to work... if my nic doesn't work??

2. it it true that i can upgrade debian for the next ten years and it will NEVER upgrade my kernel?????
if so, that makes me angry.... but i digress....

oh, my nic is a CNet pro200 PCI fast ethernet adapter....

have a drivers disk but it is zipped... bla.

is this going to be too difficult???

well here goes nothing... if i get the base install in, if sound or whatever works or not i can still fix it right???

man i am so scared of kernel upgrading... last time i tried it went crazy on me... and that was IN redhat using the kernel off of the redhat install cd...

it asked me a million questions... and wanted yes or no... did not know what to say so just hit enter, enter, enter... ect... and it crapped out on me... it is tooooooo hard... not sure i am going to like debian 2.1 with kernel 2.2 or whatever it is... bla!

anywas... any good advise would be appreciated.... thanks... stick!

[Tyr-7BE]

Are you installing plain old Debian? That could be a challenge. I gave myself a good 2 months of extensive exploration and reading and learning linux before I tried that, and it quite honestly scared the hell out of me. It's a menu-based interface similar to "make menuconfig" for the kernel, and it also asks you additional questions (additional to RedHat that is). All I can say is know your hardware. It'll ask you what type of CDROM you have, what type of floppy support do you want, I think it asks about filesystem support, etc etc...AFAIK, Debian comes with one of those superkernels that all the installers come with...something that has excessive modules so it can handle anything and everything. If you can get your NIC working off of RedHat, there's a good chance you can do the same thing off of Debian. Don't be prepared for a smooth flawless install though...almost everyone has to work to get Debian up and running...it's worth it in the end though.
If you decide to not go through with the Debian install, give Progeny or Libranet a shot. They're pretty much a pre-packaged Debian with an easy and pretty installer. If you do decide to go through with debian, good luck and have a change of underwear nearby :p
One more thing. I'm not sure whether or not Debian installs pppoe. I know that it does install ppp, but I had to boot into windows and download the pppoe .deb and learn how to use dpkg before I could get pppoe working . However, since you have a CD, I think it's a pretty safe assumption that it's gonna be on there. Good luck!

Edit: Oh yeah...do lots and lots of reading first. Learn how to use apt and dselect before you're there, or print out the instructions found on debian's site. Makes it a hell of a lot easier.
Also, don't let what I've said discourage you from Debian. No, it won't be a RedHat install (RH install being simpler than Win9x), but with a little thinking and a few tries you'll make it through. It took me about 2 days to get Debian up to full speed and working smoothly, but I've never had a hitch with it since. Beautiful beautiful distro.

[ 04 May 2001: Message edited by: Tyr-7BE ]

[frag79]

A lot of people consider their kernel not being upgraded automatically a good thing, especially if they have a custom kernel. I used to use redhat and had problems with compiling the kernel too, but in debian I have never had one problem.

Mike

[stick]

ok now i am totally stuck... am going to start new thread with my install prob... :-( :mad: :confused: