Re: Is Squeeze right for me?
On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 03:28:31PM -0800, John Jason Jordan wrote:
>
> This was the fourth time I had attempted to install a version of
> Debian. In each case I had problems that I was unable to repair. The
> first two times with testing I lost the window manager and gnome-panel.
> I tried at least a dozen suggestions to fix the problem, but I could
> not get them to load automatically on login. I even set up a new user,
> where metacity and gnome panel worked fine. But after a day of working
> as the new user, suddenly I lost metacity and gnome-panel again. The
> only way to sleuth down exactly what was causing the problem would be
> to log out and back in again after every single little configuration
> change or app install, which would take a week at least.
>
> After the mess with an unbootable Unstable yesterday (which takes
> nearly two hours to install over the internet), I was so bummed at
> Debian that last night I installed Fedora 12. As I expected, package
> management sucks compared to the Debian world. But it connected to my
> bluetooth mouse right off (which worked fine in Jaunty as well) but
> which I could never get working in Debian. And so far there have been
> no problems.
>
> I'm going to stick with Fedora for a while and see how it goes. I still
> love Debian. But the problem is that every version of Debian, including
> the derivatives like Ubuntu, have problems that render them unsuitable
> for me.
>
If you want to experiment w/ Debian Stable (and use backports are
apt-pinning to get more recent versions of Scribus, etc), you could try
running it from a USB flash drive.
Instructions:
1) Download
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current-live/i386/usb-hdd/debian-live-502-i386-gnome-desktop.img
2) Insert USB drive and make sure it's unmounted (your desktop
environment may automatically mount it. If so, unmount it).
3) As root or sudo:
dd if=debian-live-502-i386-gnome-desktop.img of=/dev/sdX ...... Where
sdX is the device name for your usb drive.
4) Create a partition for persistence
As root or sudo:
fdisk /dev/sdX
p (print the existing partition table)
n (create a new partition)
p (primary partition)
2 (partion #2)
enter (accept default)
enter (accept default to use the entire remaining space for this partition)
w (write the partition table)
5) Create the filesystem for persistence
As root or sudo:
mkfs.ext2 -L live-rw /dev/sdX2 (note the "2" which is for the second partition on your USB drive)
Now you can boot off of the USB device. At the boot menu, hit Tab (I
think) to edit the boot parameters. Add the word "persistent" (no
quotes). Hit enter to boot.
-Rob
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