Re: reinstalling Debian - part I
On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 08:09:16PM +0000, Nuno Magalh??es wrote:
> I have an amd64 system that is still dualboot with XP. It has a 100GB
> FAT32 that i use as my "/home" but since i barely use XP anymore and i
> had some issues with FAT32 i'm gonna resize my 20GB XP partition (oh,
> wait, i have game isos...) and change the fat to ext3. Also, my system
> got infected with this virus called gnome, which is really hard to get
> rid off. I hear KDE is the same and with so much X experimenting i'm
> not sure anymore which session/display/window/file/___managers i have
> and which are default. It's annoying. I also surely have some lost and
> unused packages and i could use some tweaking as far as partition
> sizes go, so, this implies repartition and reformat anyway.
>
> Before i do that, i want some advice. Here are the specs:
> power supply: 400W
> motherboard: Asus M2NPV-VM
> processor: AMD Athlon64 3500+ (2.2GHZ PIB SOCKET AM2 512KB CACHE)
> RAM: 2x Kingston 1G DDR2 800MHz CL5 (with two empty slots)
> hard-drive: Maxtor 160GB SATA II 7200RPM 8Mb Cache
> DVD: LG RW GSA-H10A (never used it in Debian yet actually)
>
> There are 3 other computers, two debians wired to the NAT router,
> another wireless with Vista (i'm thiking printers and Samba later).
>
> Starting with general questions, one of my future projects will be to
> fiddle around with Linux from Scratch. The thing is, if i compile
> everything, will i be able to compile a package manager and use it to
> manage everything i've already compiled? If not i'm stuck with a
> system that's not easily upgradable (although that's not the point
> with LFS).
You either do it all yourself, or you use a distribution with a package
manager (although you can get the source packages and tweak and build
the packages and install those if you want for the few things you might
want tweaked).
> Religious question #1: which PM to use? I mostly use APT and i'm quite
> happy with it. Aptitude seemed ok. I want automatic removal of unused
> packages and whatever else is there to make management easy.
you can replace apt-get with aptitude and use exactly the same commands:
aptitude update
aptitude dist-upgrade
aptitude install X
aptitude remove X
It just has better dependency resolution and auto removes unused
packages that were installed automatically.
> Religious question #2: Display Manager. XDM does the job and i guess
> with some fiddling it could even become pretty. I have other machines,
> only one monitor and i'm lazy. I can get away with openSSH but i'd
> like to open a window on my desktop and connect to the other boxes. I
> did it once!! So, i'd like to use the same DM in all machines, one
> that will later allow me to remote session. I think SDM is
> discontinued (used SSH - i don't need it on my local network but its
> fun), i refuse to use GDM or KDM since i dislike the corresponding
> desktop enviroments (although i'm now using gdm). So... unless(?) i go
> for VNC i'd like a DM that can handle XDMCP.
Honestly who cares what the login prompt looks like. You should care
what your X session looks like after you login and mainly that it works
in a way you like. kdm and gdm look prettier than xdm, and give you a
menu to select the session type, while xdm just uses your .xsession or
if you don't have one, whatever the default on the system is.
> And the difference between a display manager and a session manager?
Display manager handles the login prompt. The session manager deals
with what programs and window manager and such to run. You can run X
without a display manager by just using startx from the console when you
want to start X. You can do without a session manager by just creating
a .xsession file listing which programs you want to run and a window
manager.
> Languages and i18n. My mother tongue is NOT english. I'm ok with it
> being the system language, i actually like the interface to be
> english, since i don't really appreciate other translations, but i
> want to be able to use the system (keyboard et al) for my own language
> (portuguese), as well as others (esperanto and russian). I want to be
> able to have filenames with portuguese accented letters, cyrillic or
> hebrew characters if i freaking want to - and use them on the console.
> Admitedly i ran into most problems with the FAT32 partition, but i
> still get a lot of garble.
>
> How can i guarantee a default Unicode system? Which brings us to the
> next question.
Well you could install the system using en_US.UTF-8 or en_CA.UTF-8 or
en_GB.UTF-8 as your locale.
> Fonts. While fiddling with the default X meta-package (oh :(, i'd
> forgotten about that) i ran into 3 different locations for fonts.
> Apapretly Xfs is deprecated. I want my fonts to be central and
> unicode, available to all programs, at least. I don't want fonts that
> are not unicode - any tweaks?
defoma tends to do a good job just making fonts work. Then you just
install the fonts you want. unifont for example is a broad range
unicode font. Of course for some things having the msttcorefonts
installed is helpful too.
> Short of compiling it how can i assure that my X server will be
> adapted to my hardware? It often installs drivers for a bunch of cards
> unnecessarily, for instance. And this motherboard has an onborad
> nVidia chip which i'd like to use to the max (and how could i test
> that?). Also i know this monitor (Samtron 55E) supports more than
> 800x600 resolutions, but i can't really know if it's using something
> above that. Also there doesn't seem to be a standard as fas as icons
> (and its size/behaviour) go...
Just install xserver-xorg-video-nv then. I think by default it may
install xserver-xorg-video-all which depends on all the individual
packages.
> The installation: i want to be sure i'll only instal the most basic
> packages, the "minimal" system. I could use the netinst CD i used last
> time (May) but it would be interesting to use a USB pen-drive. I have
> a 2GB Kingston, i assume that's feasable.
It does install a minimal system unless you tell it you want a desktop
task installed in which case you get gnome and crap as well.
> As far as general questions go, that's it for now i guess. All
> cronstructive criticism is welcome. Next wil be partitions :-)
--
Len Sorensen
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