Debian 7.0 ‘Wheezy’ Review

Quoting:I attempted to install Debian 7.0 on physical hardware but was quickly halted by the Debian Installer, advising me that wifi adapter was proprietary and required a non-free driver to function. If I had a little more time for my review...

It doesn't take that long to download the firmware and load it onto a USB stick.

Quoting:As mentioned, I only tested Debian 7.0 in a virtual environment so I was unable to try out GNOME Shell, due to the graphical limitations of a virtual system.

Gnome Shell runs on a virtual guest, I have it running on VirtualBox on two different systems. I just enabled 3D acceleration on the guest.

Quoting:...when you click on Applications and find there is next to nothing installed.

The basic install includes all of the basic desktop software, I'm not sure what qualifies as "next to nothing". Libre Office, Iceweasel, Transmission, Inkscape, Gimp, Brasero, Shotwell, games and several other applications are installed.

Quoting:It’s even up to the user to update the APT source file with the repositories of their choice. Otherwise, you will not be able to install anything as it ships with only the Debian updates repository enabled.

By default the main, contrib and update repositories were installed on my default install. The default repository has 36,000 packages, slightly more than "not be able to install anything".

I also made sure to mention in his comments that he only used Gnome CD#1, not KDE, not LXDE/XFCE, not the Net-Install or Bootable Business Card images, nor the DVD#1.

So as a "review" of Debian, it sucked.

As a "review" of the base default installer, eh.

Clearly someone who has never before actually used Debian.

Hmm. Ubuntu 10.04 reaches end of life on 5/9. Debain 7 is released on 5/4, I believe this is what is colloquially known as a clue. :) Time to back up my Dell Mini-9.

I didn't really make it all the way through. This seems a half-hearted review at best.

He didn't take the time to discover that Debian supports additional desktops.

He didn't take the time to do a full install. I know that the recent Debian policy of not including closed firmware is a bit of a pain in the butt. However, if you are going to do a review, then you need to actually go through the pain, then you can complain about it in the review.

He implies that he might have done a live cd review if there had been one available, which seems pointless to me.

Yes, Debian becomes much more practical after you enable non-free branches of the repositories, but there is still a lot of software in the free branches.

CF, agreed!

And the greatest absurdity of it is to blame Debian for the fact that the hardware vendors keep their drivers proprietary.

Talk about cranial-anal inversion!

There are Debian install images available with nonfree firmware included. You can find them lower down on this page:

http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/debian-installer/

I have a new laptop that is having a NIC issue, and I need the firmware.

Quoting:He implies that he might have done a live cd review if there had been one available, which seems pointless to me.

LiveCD versions available via the [Debian] Live Systems Project, general link found at http://live.debian.net/

Quoting:There are Debian install images available with nonfree firmware included.

LiveCD images specifically containing non-free firmware are currently available for a pair of common architectures via the Live Systems Project stable+nonfree link, http://live.debian.net/cdimage/release/stable+nonfree/.