New user help...

[Kevin Krumwiede <kjkrum@comcast.net>]

I feel like RedHat has sold out on me as a paying customer, so I'm looking at Debian.  I've run into a few problems, though...

First, the framebuffer console looks hideous on my laptop.  I searched the list archives, but the only solutions I found were using the kernel parameter 'vga=normal' (no effect) or recompiling the kernel (something I prefer to avoid).

Second, I tried 'apt-get install kernel-image-2.4.18-586'.  I got the new kernel installed and running (which nicely took care of the above problem), but it didn't come with pcmcia modules so now I have no network.  Are those in another package?

Third, to see if apt-get is as easy as everyone says, I did 'apt-get install xfce'.  It downloaded all the dependencies, or so it says... but when I run startxfce, it bombs because it can't find 'xinit'.  What am I missing?

Thanks for helping out a newbie.

Krum