Well, my favourite Linux distribution, Debian has just released version 5. If you don’t know what Debian is, think of it as Ubuntu but easier to customise and much faster, with the added bonus that the Linux community doesn’t laugh at you when they find out you are using it.
I generally do a completely minimum 64bit install from the 150 (ish) megabyte netinst CD and remove every option it gives me, even “standard system”. Rebooting then takes you to a command line login prompt where you can log in as root and installing a GNOME graphical desktop is as easy as plugging in a network cable and typing “apt-get update” (to download the latest package lists) and then “apt-get install xorg gnome-core gnome-themes gdm”. You probably also want to install the “iceweasel” web browser, which is Debian’s name for Firefox to avoid copyright infringement. From there, you have all of the basic features that you would expect to find in Ubuntu but it will run at least 2 or 3 times faster and because you have installed everything yourself, you know exactly what is on there.
See the follow up entry in this blog for full details and step by step instructions:
Installing Debian
I didn’t even notice that the testing branch had been renamed from Lenny to Squeeze (both characters from Toy Story, if you are wondering) months ago, though I did notice that Lenny was gradually losing essential packages such as Iceweasel and the Adobe Flash Player plugin which was making it rather hard to use. In future I should probably use the “testing” synonym for my repositories rather than a specific release name such as “Lenny” or “Squeeze”, as I now know that they get quite bad towards the end of their life.
Now I have the choice to either switch to Debian 5.0 or Debian Squeeze (testing). I used the testing branch (Lenny) before because the stable branch (Etch) stays so far out of date, which is fine for servers but not so good for desktops and terrible for laptops, as laptops tend to take a while to get decent hardware support for devices such as WiFi adapters and waiting a year before you can use your laptop is just ridiculous.
Aside from a lack of working drivers for my ATI Radeon HD4870 X2 graphics card, forcing me to use 1600×1200 rather than 1920×1200 and making scrolling down in a window impossibly slow (the page down key still works quickly), I have no hardware problems with Lenny at all, which should mean that I will have no hardware problems with Debian 5.0 out of the box either. I don’t necessarily want the latest software, just software that works. In fact, a lot of changes made to Linux software frustrate me as they can make things worse.
Because Debian’s website is a nightmare to navigate unless all you want is the “base model” (stable, i386, 31 CDs), here are some links:
Debian 5.0.1 AMD64 netinst can be found here (136 MiB)
Debian Squeeze (testing) AMD64 netinst can be found here (131 MiB)
When these links break in a few months (and they will) post a comment and I will update them. Alternatively you can browse around on http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/, which is how I find them in the first place and is far easier than using the main Debian website.