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Re: [LUG] A Debian Install



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On Monday 05 April 2004 12:12, Tony Atkin wrote:
So now to the famed "apt-get install" command.  I am not a veteran command
line hacker and prefer the comfort of a GUI. My weapon of choice in this
regard is KDE so "apt-get install kde" have a cup of tea and watch some TV
and it's done.  Debian veterans may have spotted the mistake already.

:-)

This got KDE ok but not all of the X windows system needed for it to work.
Looking around the package list with Aptitude (Aptitude appears to be a
successor to the awful dselect and not much better in my view!) I spotted
the "x-window-system" package.  Installing that and making a few good

Use apt-cache search instead.

configuration guesses I was up and running with a GUI.  The only thing I
needed to do was to raid XF86config from my SUSE installation for the
Horizontal and Vertical refresh values for the monitor.

After all that there was only one thing to do - go to the pub! There are
still plenty of things to sort out with this installation but I'm getting
the impression that most of them will be solvable.  For example, whilst
writing this message - with kmail - I wanted to spellcheck it but was told

KMail 1.6 I notice, have you tried kontact? It's the KDEPIM wrapper around 
KMail, KOrganizer, KNode, addressbook and KWeather. As-you-type spellchecking 
should already be available in 1.6 too.

The only major item to sort out now is the cdburner, but having had
success on everything else I am quite hopeful.

apt-get install cdrecord

chmod 4755 /usr/bin/cdrecord

cdrecord -scanbus

vi /etc/default/cdrecord
       set device default e.g. 0,0,0
       set speed default e.g. 20 (write speed)
       accept default buffer size of 4Mb.
(Or you can get all advanced again and use a label and then set burnfree on 
etc.)

cdrecord -v -tao your.iso

Debian does default to secure over usable in things like this, cdrecord is 
installed as for root only. Other things that I noticed were 'bare' 
installations of bash and vi. The config files were installed in a 
system-wide location but to get them to apply in your login, there's a little 
scanning of man pages and copying to dot files in your /home/ required. 
Little things like that can catch you out when moving from Mandrake. Overall, 
I much prefer the Debian method but little things can be improved. Just by 
posting here you help others with their Debian boxes.

The Debian developers seem to have been putting a lot of time into making
many aspects of the installation easier, although finding out what you

Effort that puts other distros to shame.

need to do is sometimes harder than it should be.  I'm very impressed with

Very true. apt-cache search is useful - that would have helped with your CUPS 
problem. My only remaining problems are PGP/MIME (waiting for KMail support) 
and MIDI. (Problematic sound card and not sure how to get the right config.)

this system, but, I suspect that having a permanent reliable internet
connection has a lot to do with it.  This perhaps is not a system for the

It has everything to do with the success of Debian. Once you get used to 
cron-apt you'll wonder how you managed without it - I haven't had to update 
anything, it's all done overnight. Over dial-up it isn't much fun.

beginner but then it does not make the demands  that previous incarnations
of this distro might have done.

X configuration is still a potential problem - sync rates don't make a whole 
lot of sense to the first-timer.

- -- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk/
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.isbn.org.uk/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/

http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3
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