Re: Questions about Debian
Lachlan Robinson wrote:
> To whom it may concern,
> I am considering using Debian on my computer, but I have a question, is
> Debian a GUI (Graphical User Interface)? I have installed and are using the
> 'basic' installation (from the 7 1.44 meg images), and it resembles an
> x-term or DOS environment, and I was wondering (before I download the rest)
> if the rest of the package has some GUI features.
> Thankyou for your time!
> Lachlan Robinson.
> ______________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
>
> --
> Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe debian-user-request@lists.debian.org < /dev/null
The base install of Debian is just a very minimal system. It doesn't even include the
man (manual/help) pages. All versions of Linux are at their core just text mode.
However, just as you could install Windows 3.1 on top of DOS, you can install the X
Window System on top of Linux. Use dselect and "Select" to install the package
"xserver-vga16". That should flag a bunch of other packages to be installed that
should get you pretty close to having a working GUI. After this package is installed,
run XF86Setup. If you have something better than just a generic VGA card and
14" monitor, you may also want to install "xserver-svga" or better yet,
"xserver-<whichever server is best matched for your hardware - you'll have to read
some documentation for more info>".
Just a very quick tutorial: the X Window System is made up of two components: 1) the
server (xserver-vga, etc), which provides the graphical screen, and 2) the clients
(such as Netscape and xterm, etc), one of the most important of which is your window
manager (kfm, icewm, window-maker, etc), which provides the "look-and-feel" for your
GUI environment.
Gnome and KDE are two popular "environments", which can be thought of as souped-up
window managers, but are really a collection of tools which include a default
window-manager and which add bells-and-whistles in addition to the default window
manager functions. For now, with Debian, you might want to go with something simple,
like icewm. Just use dselect to install it.
Hope this helps get you started.
Reply to: