Re: newbie questions
On Sun, Aug 19, 2001 at 09:30:32PM -0700, James A. Hilsenteger wrote:
| I made the plunge and completely turned my Dell Inspiron 3000 into a Debian
| box. I installed using the CD's (that is installed multiple times).
Welcome to a software world of stability, configurability, and
operability :-).
| After a few false starts I have a working Debian computer using the
| Enlightened desktop. I'm unfortunately less than complete in my
| installation. Under the main desktop menu, I cannot get some of the
| programs to respond. Specifically I cannot get Netscape to run as well as I
| cannot get any games to show up.
You probably don't have netscape or the games installed. They
shouldn't show up in the menu then (I assume you're using the GNOME
"foot" menu), but sometimes they do. I recommend galeon as a better
web browser than netscape. It too uses mozilla as the rendering
engine. Simply 'apt-get install galeon' from the command line (click
the monitor-like icon on the panel that says "Terminal emulation
program"). The 'gnome-games' package depends on all the various game
packages for gnome so you should install that too.
I just checked on galeon and it is only available in sid right now
(aka unstable -- it won't be on your cds). If you want to try it, you
have a few choices :
a) download it and any dependencies and install them "manually"
using dpkg
b) adjust apt's configuration so it can download and install it
(and dependencies) for you, then switch apt back to "stable".
To do (b), edit /etc/apt/sources.list and put the following lines at
the top :
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian sid main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US sid/non-US main contrib non-free
Then run 'apt-get update' followed by 'apt-get install galeon'. Once
galeon (and dependencies) have downloaded and installed you should
remove those lines from the sources.list file. The risk with doing
this is some of the packages in 'sid' may be broken and could mess up
your system. That is the tradeoff for getting the latest-and-greatest
stuff.
If this is a bit overwhelming, don't worry about it too much right
now. If you really want to try galeon, email me off list and I'll
work through the dependencies and send you the packages you need. FYI
there is also "real-time" help via IRC on irc.debian.org (the channel
is #debian). apt-get install xchat-gnome for a fairly easy to use IRC
client.
| Also I need some suggestions on a word processor and user-friendly database
I think LaTeX works out as the best "word processor" tool. (It is
really a typesetting system, but it makes really nice looking
documents). There is a GUI frontend called LyX, but you still need to
understand the LaTeX philosphy of formatting to get the results you
want (you just don't need to know how to write the LaTeX yourself).
Abiword, KWord, and StarOffice are some of the GUI "WYSIWYG" tools
that behave similar to MS Word.
For databases there are PostgreSQL and MySQL, but I don't know if that
is what you are looking for.
| program. I have one week before I start classes and I'd really prefer to
| get this box running under Debian. I'm going into the belly of the beast
| called Law School in the hopes of pursuing my idealistic interests in
| intellectual property. I'm mostly technically savvy,but not completely
| (read: I'm a mechanical engineering by schooling and previous job).
Does this mean you'll give us advice regarding licensing issues <wink>?
-D
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