[Chixla] Yup ... just installed Debian :)

[SMichelle]

> > Since the demise of the consumer version of RH I've been distro
> > hunting. Wasn't interested in Fedora and the 2-3 release cycles per
> > year. Tried Mandrake, didn't like it. Had no success with the
> > installation of Debian Woody. Then tried Suse 9.1, didn't like it.
> > So finally got a net install of Debian Sarge. It works, it's up and
> > I'm in the Debian learning curve.
> 
> If you have any questions, let me know :) I love Debian, and it's my 
> preferred distro.

You're in for it now :)
> How did you like the installer? The old installer is a major turnoff
> to most folks. The thing I like about Debian is "install once, upgrade
> always." This is VERY different that most OSs or linux distros.

I tried three different installs ... Two were attempts at a Woody
install -- one from CD and the other a net install. I failed to get X
going with the the CD install adn there were other hardware problems,
and the net install failed to reconized the NIC so the the net install
didn't :)
This time I used the net install for the Sarge ... using the jingo
(jigdo?). It went very smoothly overall ... way way less questions. They
did a nice job with the new installer. Tho, again, I couldn't get X
running. I had a Knoppix disk which I popped in and then used the
Knoppix Xconfig file. X runs ... with issues.
The default desktop is KDE ... and I'm a Gnome girl. I've gone all over
the startx scripts, xsessions, and xinit and I just can't find where it
defines KDE as the default desktop. I'd like to be able to use Gnome as
the default (and sometimes just Blackbox), but so far no success.
And I know that this laptop will do 1024 x 768, but I can't set X to
recognize anything higher than 800x600 ... an unworkable resolution.
> > I'm now trying to work through the rc-update service management.
> > Hints, tips welcome :)
> 
> Is that something particular to Sarge? I'm unfamiliar with that :(

I don't know if particular to Sarge ... but it's the equivalent of
'chkconfig' in RH. The script which controls the symlinks in the
init.d/rcX.d relationships. With RH and 'chkconfig' the syntax was
'chkconfig [--level levels] servicename <on|off>' I could control which
scripts started and stopped depending on the runlevel.
Debian seems to use the 'update-rc.d' to do the same things ... but the
syntax is different, and so far I can't get AppleNetTalk to not start :(
I'd also like to get iptables to start, but again, no go. I could hand
edit the rcX.d symlinks, but that doesn't seem very efficient.
But I must say that my first experience with apt-get is totally worth
the price of admission. After having been through my share of rpm
dependency hells, apt-get just ROCKS. But I'd like to install a few
packages with are 'contrib' ... so I need to change my apt-sources file?
Not quite sure how to handle non-packaged software packages.
/Sharon