Re: Debian and X

[David Z Maze <dmaze@debian.org>]

"Valter G. Nogueira Jr." <valter@intersic.com.br> writes:

> Someone told me to never use tasksel. Use apt-get instead.

That sounds like silly advice; I think modern tasksel is just a
wrapper around APT anyways.  My personal recommendation for a good APT
front-end is aptitude, though.  (IMHO it's much easier to find what
you're looking for, track down dependency issues, etc. inside aptitude
than prodding from the command line.)

> Unless I install gdm, x-window don't even start as Kent West told me
> because there are no x-client running.

You can always start it with 'startx', assuming you have xbase-clients
installed (should fall out of x-window-system-core).

> if I install gdm, X starts at boot, but I run in following
>
> 1. I can't logon as root
> 2. I have no idea how-to configure shell prompt boot again
> 3. Gnome complains that I not running a compatible windowm manager - which I
> haven't even configured

These are extremely common questions; you might ask something like
Google or the list archives at http://lists.debian.org/.  But in
essence, (1) you don't want to log in via gdm as root, (2) Ctrl+Alt+F1
will get you a console login prompt, Ctrl+Alt+F7 will take you back,
and (3) you can mostly ignore that message but to shut GNOME up you'll
want something newer than twm.

> My question is:
>
> Is there any document that talks about Debian and X configuration?

Well, you've gotten through the hard part if you have a gdm login
screen.  You just need to figure out what software you want and
install it.  :-)

> A second question is: Debian doesn't use linuxconf?

If you *really* want it, it's there, but the "standard" way to do
administrative tasks under Debian is either to edit configuration
files directly or to use lightweight command-line tools
(e.g. 'adduser' to add a user).

-- 
David Maze         dmaze@debian.org      http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
	-- Abra Mitchell