Re: Initial install question
(With apologies in advance if this comes through in HTML -- I have tried to turn HTML-based mailing off but am not sure if have been successful)
Mark -- Debian's "default" way of interacting with the user is through virtual terminals, which is what you're seeing. That said, of course almost no one routinely uses Linux that way, and you should be able to get the X Window system (the GUI) working without too much pain and suffering unless you have really old / very, very new hardware.
First of all you need to make sure you have the X Window System installed on your machine, easiest way to check would be to have a look in /etc and see if there's a directory called X11. If there is you have at least the basis of the X Window System installed.
In addition to that you need a display manager, of which there are 3 mainstream ones, XDM, GDM (Also known as GNOME) and KDM. Personally I use GDM -- was going to use KDM but due to some stupidity when I was installing my own system I couldn't get KDM to work and GDM worked pretty much out of the box. That comment will almost certainly draw fire from KDM fanatics out there -- apologies in advance.
Quickest way to take yourself forward from this point is probably to run 'apt-get install gdm' or 'apt-get install kdm' as root. You'll be asked some questions about your graphics hardware so make sure you know make, chipset etc (although if you're lucky the gory details will be autodetected, these days it does a pretty decent job on its own). This will install gdm plus any underlying bits and pieces you need and don't have installed. Come back to the list if you still have problems. If you don't have apt-get installed either, you can use the older dselect tool or fall back all the way to dpkg -- 'man dselect' or 'man dpkg' for info.
Hope that helps.
Mark
Mark Anderson <hijodespain@hotmail.com> wrote:
Greetings. I just installed Debian using the ISOs from your site. Everything went fine and then i got the "login" command. At this point I typed in my username and password and what i got was this:
name@debianhome: ~S: (the "name" being my username i made during install). I can't get beyond this to the GUI. I have little knowledge of command line use and none of Linux in general, which i imagine is obvious by now :) I would appreciate help in how to get beyond the point i've descibed above. Thank you.
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