Venkatesh, PC wrote:
1. I'd like a console login prompt, and then start X on my own with startx
Several ways to do this. First is to determine which session manager is starting, KDM, WDM, XDM, GDM.
Look in /etc/init.d, and you'll see a script for one or more of these session managers. In /etc/rc2.d (the default run level unless you've changed it) you'll see a symbolic link to this/these script(s). They'll look something like S99wdm or S99gdm ("S" means use this script to "S"tart something; 99 means start it after doing S98 scripts which are started after doing S97 scripts, etc). Generally the wdm/etc script is one of the last scripts to run.
You can either uninstall xdm/gdm/wdm/kdm, or disable the script, or modify the script to exit before doing anything.
If you know you're not going to want the session manager more or less permanently, you can just "apt-get remove --purge xdm" (or kdm, etc). Later, if you want it back, just "apt-get install xdm".
Alternatively, you can rename the symlink (ie S99xdm ==> NoStartS99xd) or delete/move the symlink.
Or you can modify the script by adding a line that simply says "exit 0" just after the initial comments and before any other code.
You can also run "dpkg-reconfigure xdm" to reconfigure xdm, but I'm not sure what options that provides; whether it just allows you to choose another session manager of if it will allow you to turn it off altogether.
There are probably a couple of other methods as well, but these should suffice.
3. Netscape does not appear to get installed; on a previous install, I had to manually install it via dpkg and dselect. What are some reason(s) netscape might not automatically install?
Because it's not totally Free. Most folks find that Mozilla is better anyway; it's free of the commercial fluff, and IS Netscape, or I should say, Netscape IS Mozilla. It's not automatically installed because not everyone wants Mozilla, and it's a fairly hefty install (something like 13 MB I believe).
4. Of course,it took me a while to figure out the "correct" netscape package to install from the huge list in /var/lib/dpkg/available. But since that list appears to follow no particular organizational scheme, it was a problem. Is the debian.org/packages the best place to get "short"descriptions, collated in various ways?
I'm not entirely sure what you mean. You can use dselect (or aptitude, or gnome-apt, etc) to search/look for packages/descriptions. You can also do an "apt-cache search foo" to find info on foo.
5. Overall, what would help me are: (i) some notes on Debian's installation "rules", logic, etc; (ii) features unique to Debian vis-a-vis other Linux distros; (iii) following up on (ii), notes on configuration, startup scripts---location; whether they deviate from other Linux distros [as seems to be with xdm above], etc. E.g., the "User Guide" [under books] seemedpretty helpful, but was no help in my problem with the Potato release.
Potato is old, very old. Unless you have some reason not to, I'd recommend that you upgrade to Woody (or even Sid, if you don't mind getting bloody every once in a while). The rest of this question is pretty involved; think I'll leave it for someone else to tackle.
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