Debian vs Siduction: Siduction is better (Day 1 on Debian)

[David]

This is a brief overview of my experience installing debian buster- testing today and comparing it to my experience installing siduction a few months ago.


First and foremost:
Siduction has a GREAT installer in the form of a live CD which is pretty easy to use and doesn't fuck up. Not only is the Live CD useful for repairing broken installs, but the installer is dependable.


Today, I installed Debian Buster (testing) on my third hard drive (thinking that I'd therefore always have something that works, but reasonably up to date) and the installer is HORRIBLE!


The Debian graphical installer has an issue with the back button. If you click it, there's a 90% chance of breaking the install subtly. My first attempt at installing Debian Buster-Testing resulted in my root password being set to some crazy crap, and despite my best efforts using Siduction to try to change the root password of the debian install, alas, I could not reset the root password, thereby locking me out of the root account, and so the install was unusable. Had to reinstall.


No such problems with Siduction!


Secondly: Gnome
I hate gnome with a fiery passion like i've never felt before, I cannot imagine how anyone could use such a horrible desktop environment. Not only is it laggy and resource intensive, it lacks a task bar and it doesn't even have alt+mouse controls.


LXDE, which is the DE that I picked for my siduction install, is of course far superior. I did manage to get it on debian but Gnome is what Debian boots into.


The file manager Gnome uses is also quite bad, and doesn't have sort by type and list mode enabled by default. It's also clunky and I feel like my testicles are being strangled when I try to find a file.


Setting your desktop background and lock screen in the settings is also awful, as you can only search your pictures directory and only the top level. It took effort for them to fuck that up too, since they had to make a custom image file picker for that little applet.


Gnome is so terrible, that it took me 5 minutes to find the button to log out

Thirdly: Missing programs
Vim is missing, the "reboot" script is missing, dpkg-reconfigure is missing, There are so many programs most people would consider essential that are completely absent from Debian buster testing


Fourth: Improper configuration
Due to poor configuration, if you try to install a package with dpkg -i on debian buster, it won't work. Why? Because the PATH variable is not configured correctly. Every time I want to use dpkg, I have to run a script which sets the PATH variable correctly.


Fifth: Debian's theme is ugly
The desktop background in GNOME, LXDE and WindowMaker by default is really awful, a sort of pale-blue that reminds me of Microsoft Silverlight and bad adobe flash games.


The login screen is also ugly, and I'm still working on changing it. I'll see if my latest attempt is successful after I reboot. It's just a blank grey screen with a debian 10 logo on the bottom (I did manage to change the logo to an amiga ball)


On siduction, the default login theme looks great, I really like it. Siduction wins again.

[melmarker]

Nice post - but some remarks:
* buster live isos will come with calamares as installer (they will install the standard instead of the live system)
* there are live isos with non-free
* it's the old thing about being universal vs. specialized on one thing (Desktop and live)

[sunrat]

I agree Gnome is awful. That seems to be the basis of your review. The installer is beta software and, as melmarker said, won't be the same for release.
Your problem with the PATH variable is probably because of the difference between su and su - . It changed a little while back, look it up. apt can install local packages and resolves dependencies at the same time which dpkg -i doesn't do. I never use dpkg to install packages.
Themes are subjective and some people may like the default. It's trivial to change if you don't like it.

[melmarker]

sunrat - i beg to differ

d-i will remain the same, but the debin live isos will come with calamares the first time - additional to the classic installer from the boot menu if i understand the guys in #debian-live right.

It will not magically render debian live isos to something useful but it's a start. It might be that we (siduction) have a different understanding or different goals when we install a live system. In my definition of installing a live system that means: i take the system that i currently run, put it to disk and migrate the live user to the first installed user. Debian take a different approach: they use calamares to install the same things that the old installer will install too. So - right now i'm pleased that it is possible to install from a running system. The question of what to install might lead to discussions in the future.
(Ok, my opinion is crystal clear: Nuts. Why should i take a new installer and install the same old shit as with the text and graphic d-i (debian-installer), fine, it adds a third was to install the same things, i'm deeply impressed. )

[sunrat]

@melmarker - apologies, I should read more closely. You did say Calamares is for live system.  And I was wrong about testing d-i being beta software, it's alpha: https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

I've installed vanilla Debian with the standard d-i a few times, usually the netinstall, and it has worked fine.

[melmarker]

Even if declared alpha the d-i is a longterm stable and mature thing (as long i don't add some things to it like a DE called LXQt - it take some month to fix it after the last stable  )

And you can ask devil about my reactions about calamares nearly a year before we switched over to. Same for systemd. Things develop to a point where they are usable - it mostly take more time than the proponents expect in their worst nightmares So developing these things is a process. 

[David]

Thank you, Melmarker, for replying.
You've done quite a good job making siduction easy to install and use. Thanks.


I wish that the debian team had people like you working for them.


And, the only package I installed with dpkg -i was Minecraft. Funny thing is, after I installed it with dpkg -i I was able to use apt install --fix-broken to install the java dependencies. So how exactly is dpkg a bad option?

[sunrat]

And, the only package I installed with dpkg -i was Minecraft. Funny thing is, after I installed it with dpkg -i I was able to use apt install --fix-broken to install the java dependencies. So how exactly is dpkg a bad option?

It works so it's not really a bad option and I didn't say it is. You can save a step by installing downloaded packages with apt and it will install dependencies at the same time.

From the directory of the downloaded package:

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apt install ./downloaded_package.deb

[piper]

Yup, sunrat has it right

.debs like wbar and strawberry I take apart, put my personal configs in, rebuild, upload to my server and include them in my builds, after there installed in the build process, you check to make sure they were installed correctly by using

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dpkg -s wbar

Which will look something like this

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dpkg -s wbar
Package: wbar
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: x11
Installed-Size: 164
Maintainer: Markus Koschany <apo@debian.org>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 2.3.4-9
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.27), libgcc1 (>= 1:3.0), libimlib2 (>= 1.4.5), libstdc++6 (>= 5.2), libx11-6
Recommends: fonts-liberation, lxde-icon-theme
Suggests: bash-completion, wbar-config
Conffiles:
/etc/wbar.d/wbar.cfg 6aa3107675532801d54d51c938b8e450
/etc/xdg/autostart/wbar.desktop e8374e912cadca19742ca82b4072db56
Description: light and fast launch bar
Wbar is a quick launch bar. It's fast, light and cool eye-candy.
It was initially developed for Fluxbox, then tested on WindowMaker, Xfce
and GNOME 2 and it works very well with other window managers, too.
It can run on top of desktops such as xfdesktop or Nautilus with the
-above-desk switch.
Homepage: https://github.com/rodolf0/wbar

[David]

Oh. I misinterpreted
Thank you sunrat

[David]

I agree Gnome is awful. That seems to be the basis of your review. The installer is beta software and, as melmarker said, won't be the same for release.
Your problem with the PATH variable is probably because of the difference between su and su - . It changed a little while back, look it up. apt can install local packages and resolves dependencies at the same time which dpkg -i doesn't do. I never use dpkg to install packages.
Themes are subjective and some people may like the default. It's trivial to change if you don't like it.

You say it's trivial to change.


I still haven't figured out how to set my login screen background in the greeter dconf. I did manage to change the logo at the bottom (to the boing ball)



Can you tell me how?


I use gdm3 on debian, I don't know what siduction uses

[melmarker]

We use sddm - the reason is that it works more or less fine with all Desktop Environments. If one really need functionality from gdm3 it is easy to switch.