The ultimate Debian solution?

Debian, whose motto is "the Universal Operating System" truly is a distribution of superlatives: the most maintainers (over 1000), the most packages (over 18000), the most architectures (eleven), the most advanced bugtracking system, the most community oriented and most 'democratically run' disto, etc. According to Distrowatch, Debian also spawned 129 derivatives and some of these derived ditros have given birth to even more distros (Knoppix alone counts for another 50 or so distributions). Such numbers can end up being intimidating, if not off-putting.

Over the years I have seen many people asking themselves whether Debian was for them or not, which Debian-based live-CD they should choose (think Knoppix vs Ubuntu vs Mepis vs Kanotix), whether a distro known to run on huge powerful servers was adequate for home/desktop use, or even whether Debian could be used on old hardware. Last, but not least, Debian still has the reputation of being very hard to install.

My own experience with Debian and many of its derived distros has lead me to believe that there is a 'perfect way' to use all the potential that Debian has to offer without going through too many headaches. There are, of course, many other equally 'perfect' solutions out there, but this is the one which worked best for me. I call it the '3 Step Debian' way.

Step one: the main machine - Debian Sarge.

On one of my computers, the most powerful one, stability and security are paramount. I do not care for the latest versions of the applications I use on this machine, but I want them to be as bug-free as possible. I also want the largest possible choice of software. On this computer I installed the latest 'stable' version of Debian (currently version 3.1 also known as 'Sarge'). It should be immediately clarifying here that the so-called 'unstable' version of Debian is not unstable at all; in fact, I have consistently found the unstable version of Debian much more stable than the 'stable' versions of other distros. The difference between the stable and the unstable versions of Debian is that in the unstable version packages are still being worked on until the decision is made to move them to the "testing" category which in turn will be later upgraded to 'stable' if it passes the highly stringent Debian quality control requirements. But if bleeding-edge is not a priority and stability is, the stable version is the way to go.

The complete Debian-Sarge distro now includes 14 CDs or 2 DVDs. Since that is potentially a lot of downloading and since I want to have instant access to everything I usually order the 2 DVDs with each new version of 'stable' from one of the many Internet vendors offering them at minimal cost. This way I can locally install any of the 18000 packages Debian offers without the need for any connection or downloads.

I should mention here that Debian-Sarge now features a new installer which, while being still text based, is really easy to use and does a decent job autoconfiguring everything. Any installation problems are usually easy to fix with the alsaconf package for sound and by getting a better configured XF86Config-4/Xorg.conf file elsewhere (more about that later).

Step two: other computers and live-CD use - Kanotix.

When stability is not critical, or when a live-CD is the way to go, I have found Kanotix to be by far the best Debian-based distro out there. First, Kanotix is really close to original Debian 'unstable' and that means bleeding-edge software. Unlike other Debian based distros such as Ubuntu or Mepis, Kanotix actually uses current Debian repositories. Also - unlike Ubuntu - Kanotix is not dependent on the financial backing of anyone and - unlike Mepis - Kanotix is truly free not only in the sense of "gratis" but also in the licensing of all the Kanotix-specific scripts.

Kanotix comes on only one CD with about 2GBs of compressed software. Everything a desktop user might want is included from the full OpenOffice suite to multimedia and graphics applications, to various editors to the full KDE desktop. The Kanotix hard-disk installer is a no-brainer (although the partitioning application - QTParted - is a little buggy) and make it possible for the total newbie to install Debian on his/her machine in a couple of clicks. Kanotix also has the best hardware detection and configuration scripts I have ever seen and they can be used to supplement any residual failings of the Debian-Sarge installer (in particular for the configuration of X).

Another great feature of Kanotix is that it provides not only a hard-disk installer, but also a hard-disk upgrader: each new version of Kanotix can be used to upgrade a previous version installed on a hard disk while saving all the user and software configurations.

As any other good Debian-based distro, Kanotix uses the fantastic APT Debian package manger which allows you to install any of the 18000+ applications in the Debian repositories with one simple command: 'apt-get install foo' where 'foo' is the name of the application you want to install. By regularly updating your package sources (with the simple command 'apt-get update') you can always have access to the very latest version of any package. APT handles any dependencies issue seamlessly and transparently and you will always know what is needed or recommended and if you agree to the installation it will be done fully automatically.

One thing I particularly appreciate in Kanotix is that the job of selecting the best among the 18000+ Debian package has already been made for me and while I can, of course, remove or add anything I want, all I need in 99 percent of the cases is immediately there 'out of the box'. Kanotix is truly Debian made simple, very simple.

Step three: 'Debian in my wallet' and really old hardware - Damn Small Linux.

Kanotix is officially 'designed to run with modern hardware (i586 and above)' and while it is possible to run Kanotix on old hardware, it is cleary not an optimal solution. For this I use the awesome 50MB mini-distro Damn Small Linux (DSL) which can officially run on an old 486DX with as little as 16MB of RAM. How much can such a small mini-distro running on truly antiquated hardware offer? A lot!

Out of the box, DSL comes with an almost complete desktop, SSH/FTP/HTTPD servers, basic but good data recovery tools and the Firefox browser (DSL also features the very fast Dillo browser). DSL has excellent hardware recognition scripts (taken from Knoppix), is very safe and stable and runs on a super-tested 2.4 series Linux kernel which is ideal for older hardware. All this already makes DSL a fantastic little distro, but where DSL truly shines is its unique myDSL extensions system which makes it possible to install additional software with a couple of mouse clicks including, for example, AbiWord, the OpenOffice suite, or nmap. While the list of such myDSL extensions is already very large and covers most imaginable 'mainstream' software needs, extensions are being further added regularly. So while the basic credit-card 50MB mini-CD earns DSL the name of 'mini-distro' this should not be seen as a limiting factor as DSL can grow into a full-sized distro in a couple of clicks, DSL even supports the APT Debian package manager (although the sources only include old repositories).

Like Kanotix, DSL can be used as a live-CD or installed on a hard drive in a couple of simple steps.

I believe that the combination of Debian-Sarge, Kanotix and DSL makes it possible for me to fully use the potential of Debian while making use of one set of skills on very different machines and for totally different circumstances. For me this '3 Step Debian' is my 'ultimate Debian' solution.