Debian etch is now perfect

[Tortanick]

A critical bug that prevented my favourit media player from streaming is now fixed, I'm pleased to say that Debian etch is now the perfect Linux distribution for genral use, just providing you or someone you know is willing to get the setup done for you.

[qldit]

Good Morning Tortanick, I seem to have visited that Debian site and it appears that Disks 1 and 2 have mysteriously been downloaded and somehow been burned onto CD's here.
I can't quite work out how this has happened! LOL!!!

What disks might you suggest that I should have as a naive button pusher!!!

Thanks for the steer!!

I have a fresh system that will receive this lovely stuff in the next day or so, I am kind of drooling at this point in time!!

Cheers, Lawrence.

[Tortanick]

I allways used a netinstall cd myself, have fun playing with etch.

What software would | suggest?
well firstly you'll need to edit you're /etc/apt/sources.list as root to enable a few extra repositories. firstly remove the CDs. for example here's mine


deb http://download.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb-src http://download.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.debian.org/debian/ testing main

deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main


deb http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/os/Linux/distributions/debian-multimedia testing main

I've put testing in varous places, its safer to put etch but I want KDE4 sooner rather than later, chose yourself but I can't say if testing will be safe.

The first 4 lines are official repositories, you want to add contrib and non-free to the end of the deb ones, not the deb-src (you can but I don't see the point unless you actually install source packages) the last line is debian multimedia you can get a mirror from here http://www.debian-multimedia.org/mirrors.html

and on to the programs

Desktop Envrionment - KDE: apt-get install kde kdm xorg

Email - kmail (part of KDE)

GUI install tool - synaptic: apt-get install synaptic

Web browser - Iceweasel (its really firefox, debian couldn't legally patch it and keep the name, ask if you want to change the icons) apt-get install iceweasel

Media Player - VLC: apt-get install vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc

Flash - flashplayer-mozilla: apt-get install flashplayer-mozilla

codecs - win32codecs: apt-get install w32codecs

office suit - koffice or open office apt-get install koffice or apt-get install openoffice.org

random cool stuff you can lookup includes rosegarden amarok kdmtheme ksplash-engine-moodin

Can you're sound card do hardware MIDI? if so I can try to get it setup for you.

[qldit]

Good Morning Tortanick, I am in awe, thankyou so much for your kind assistance, I think my computer may have made a mistake here, the name "sarge" seems to keep appearing, I have disks 1 & 2, 31R4.
I will chastise this machine, I think those are the wrong disks.

Thank you so much for the elaboration.

Of course it couldn't possibly be my error!! LOL!!

I have a machine here with 3 hard drives, and a DVDrom, the first two drives were Suse and some other system and I loaded Debian on the second IDE slave with the first two hidden, as you will imagine when Grub was installed it went on the first HDA MBR.
So I had to unhide the drives to reboot, that machine was purely for playing with systems and not online, so I have had to shelve the play temporarily, I might try it with a wireless card.

Gee the Debian load hasn't altered much from last time I ran it, that was a few years ago, but this "Sarge" that keeps getting mentioned is a worry, there is no "Etch" mentioned at all!! LOL!!

Cheers, Lawrence.
Sorry I can't send you some of our sweltering heat!!!
Looking forward to see the Poms beat the Kiwis in the next session here!!
They certainly deserve a win!!

[Tortanick]

Sarge is the version before etch, its possible to upgrade from sarge to etch, to do so edit the /etc/apt/sources.list and change any refrence of "stable" or "sarge" to "etch", then type

apt-get update
apt-get dist upgrade

That should do it. Or you can just download the etch CDs from here (http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/) If you download the etch CD make sure you don't install a desktop environment with it, that will give you Gnome. (unless you like Gnome)

[qldit]

Good Afternoon Tortanick, I think I need to watch my D/L so early in the month I have already gotten around 5 full CDs and I might leave it for a few weeks to avoid going back to dialup speed.

Thanks for all the gen, I have printed it out and put it in my toy-box with the CDs.
Is that "etch" the testing version?
the "sarge" appears to be the stable version.

Getting the prebuilt systems certainly makes it easier.

I must admit I do prefer the the "K" stuff, although the "X" in Puppy is phenomenal!

I had a look at that Pioneer that Pete mentioned but it was a hopeless D/L speed I might have to get some of these distros on CD's.
I will also make a point of revisiting XandROS and when resources permit, I was using it a year or two ago and couldn't believe how easily it installed, it certainly was the easiest installing system I had seen. (apart from my Puppy!)
It will be interesting to see what has happened with it, there were a lot of people here that went with it, it certainly had some good features.
Almost seamless transition for XP users,
I feel a break-out with some of these systems is iminent.

Cheers, Lawrence.

[Tortanick]

Most Linux GUIs are based on X, also known as X11, Xwindows and Xorg, Xorg is the refrence implimentation of X.

X is the program that draws windows and such on the screen, however no one uses X by itself, a window manager will run on top of X, puppy uses jwm by default, Debian can use most of them quite easily but I prefer KDE.

Note that KDE is not a window manager, its a Desktop Environment, that means it provides a lot of Desktop software thats designed to fit nicely togeather, including a window manager (Kwin), of course you're not limited to KDE software if you're useing KDE.

As for debian releases sarge is stable, witch means that there are no bugfixes or new features being added officially, unofficially there are backports, there still is security fixes though.

Etch is testing, its going to become stable, when its ready, shouldn't be too long now but the debian team are total perfectionists so who knows, its allready really stable