[ILUG] Debian or Fedora?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting raoul duke (dr_gonzo at redbrick.dcu.ie):

> wow, i didn't know that there was a graphical installer for woody!
> http://archive.progeny.com/progeny/pgi/
> 
> seems to be great, although what's the hardware detection like when
> compared with knoppix or libranet? 

It's pretty good.  Progeny was the firm that developed "discover" which
is one of the two main general-purpose hardware-recognition tookits that
Debian-compatible installers use.  (The other is Red Hat's kudzu, which
I believe Knoppix mostly relies on.)

This page of mine on Jim Dennis's "sysadmoin" wiki includes, near the
bottom, the names of all the hardware-detection package I know of for
Debian.  It's kinda neat to just apt-get install them all.  Some of them
(e.g., mdetect, read-edid) definitely make subsequent steps like X11
setup smarter:

http://www.starshine.org/SysadMoin/DebootstrapInstallation/FollowUp

The hardware detection in Knoppix is usually hard to beat.  Like any
automated hardware detection, it sometimes chokes, though, and can even
cause hard lockups on some hardware.  That's an inherent risk of that
category of software:  Some hardware just reacts badly to being
agressively probed.

Libranet is also really good.  Sorry I can't be more specific.  I'm not
generally a good person to ask, because I'm risk-adverse where hardware
is concerned:  I let other people be the pioneers, so _they'll_ be the
ones getting arrows in their backs.

> still though, debian needs a hardware database where you can check if a
> certain devive will work properly with debian, like the one that mandrake
> has.

That would be cool.  I have major respect for what Mandrakesoft have
achieved, with that.

-- 
Cheers,                   The cynics among us might say:   "We laugh, 
Rick Moen                 monkeyboys -- Linux IS the mainstream UNIX now!
rick at linuxmafia.com       MuaHaHaHa!" but that would be rude. -- Jim Dennis