X not installed by default (Was: Re: debian-user-digest Digest V2003 #185)

[Seneca <seneca-cunningham@rogers.com>]

If you are starting a new thread, please start one and not have it as a
reply to another message.  Especially not a reply to the digest, quoting
the entire thing.

On Sat, Jan 18, 2003 at 03:39:59PM -0800, anthony baldwin wrote:
> I'm a new Debian user with only about 9 months of redhat use for Linux
> experience in general.  I have just installed a "a base system" on a
> machine I built, but could not mark packages on the package list, for
> some reason, and now have only a shell installed.  I would like to

Normal for a fresh Debian install.  A base system is quite simply a base
system: just enough enable you to install what you need.

> have a gui, like kde, and be able to install more packages, but in the

So, you want X, and with KDE it seems.  You should look in
/usr/share/doc/apt or /usr/share/doc/dpkg for information about
installing packages.

> shell I do have, when I cd to /mnt/ nothing is recognized there, with

By default, on a Debian system, /mnt is an empty mountpoint.

> the cd in the drive, so I am not even able to see what is on the cds
> to install anything.  Tried to $cd /mnt/cdrom (with deb cd in drive)
> and got no such directory message.

Debian does not do any auto-mounting by default.  Also, the cdrom's
mount point is /cdrom, not /mnt/cdrom (unless you edit /etc/fstab and
add the mount point).  To read a cdrom, mount the cdrom with "mount
/cdrom" and then cd into /cdrom.  You should also add your non-root user
to the group cdrom, if you want to be able to mount/umount and use it
fully as non-root.

> I'm lost, but this system is useless to me if all I get is a terminal/shell.

Debian, by default, does not install X.  You can easily install X by
apt-get installing the following packages (I think that's all of them):

  1) xlibs
  2) xbase-clients
  3) xfonts-base
  4) xfonts-scalable
  5) xfonts-75dpi or xfonts-100dpi
  6) xserver-common
  7) xserver-xfree86
  8) xterm
  9) twm (or any other window manager)
 10) xfree86-common

Since you mentioned KDE earlier,

 11) kde

apt-get will probably want to pull in some other packages to satisfy
depenancies, let it.  You will then have to configure X.  You may also
want to use a frontend such as aptitude for package management.  Once
you have aptitude running, take a look in the doc section; you might
want to install some of the contents, such as man-db and manpages if
they aren't yet installed.

-- 
Seneca
seneca-cunningham@rogers.com