[Quantian-general] New to Quantian

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Welcome to Quantian then!  

On 22 December 2005 at 13:27, Robert Kopp wrote:
| I just downloaded the 0.7.9.1 version, and was able to
| boot it without any trouble. Would it be a good idea
| to install it to the hard disk, or would it be better

Possibly, yes. Allows you to modify, alter, keep, ...  May be faster than dvd
access.  Uses more space though. I am using it on one machine and quite like
it.  That uses 0.6.9.3, though, and I am not yet quite sure how I'll
upgrade. Probably back up my $HOME, and do a reinstall of 0.7.9.*.

| to supplement a regular Debian installation with all
| those other packages? I intend to use Quantian anyhow,

Not all of those are available to Debian, but you may of course define a more
"targeted" and focussed set of apps that matter to you and add those to
standard Debian. That way Quantian would be your test and evaluation
environment. Certainly a possible usage mode.

| with a USB key, when I am not in my usual environment.

That is a very very good option, and it is good to see that automated
detection and mounting of USB memory devices works so well (at least for the
ones I tried :).  

The one thing I would caution about is to "install to hd and then upgrade to
Debian".  That may risk some of the tricks that make Knoppix and Quantian
different from Debian by overwriting "customized" files with their Debian
defaults. I think this would concern mostly the boot process -- so for people
happy to debug potential gotchas this may be fine, but for casual users and
recent converts from other OSs it may not be an advisable route.

Cheers, Dirk

-- 
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. 
                                                  -- Thomas A. Edison