It’s not everyday I’m trying out Linux and certainly not since I switched to MacOSX on my workstations. I still have a big heart for Linux of course, but it’s mostly when it comes for running it on some servers.

Today’s Slashdot posting about Debian 4.0, dubbed Etch, releasing a Beta 3 got me curious. Curious enough to actually download the smallest iso with a network installation to try it out. I had to check whether my old Dell Inspiron 8000 would still spin its drive and although looking terrible ugly (oh my) compared to my PowerBook, it still made the exact annoying sound as before. So the hardware was working..

Same old, same old.. Not much changed on the default installation wizzard. Goes through everything, I’m choosing LVM for the first time since I have to check it out. After setting the wrong timezone (I did not care) I started to wait for the download of more than 600 packages.

Mind this is still Beta. I do understand that there can be things that can.. fail. I do work for MySQL after all!

After the blue screens: a red screen! It failed on ‘Select software’ or something. Blast! Apparently this new installation software they are using would be a highlight. In all these years I installed Debian, it never (or rarely) failed me. No, it’s not my hardware.

Owkay. Let me try the new GUI installation. I don’t trust it to much, but hey, I was screwing my Ubuntu anyway on my Dell. The GUI install only I really like is the one of Red Hat. Well, the one of Debian is just the curses wizard but then with basic GUI widgets. I don’t understand all the fuzz about it: sorry but it is just ugly!

No, I didn’t succeed either. I tried to keep my partitions like I set previously and ended up going into an endless loop of some kind. Before getting my self stressed again, I tried to get out of the installer: Ctrl+Alt+Del no go, Ctrl+Alt+Backspace no go but Ctrl+Alt+Fx works. Good I got on a console and could do a reboot there (needed the CD out of the machine).

Conclusion: lets hope for the best! I, for one, am sticking with my working sometimes crappy MacOSX anyway. I think some people will be successful, and I hope it will get better. The latest SuSE 10 had also.. weird stuff going on. Lets see if the release month of December 2006 will be met. If Debian is still Debian, they will postpone it for another year or two (just kidding!).