Re: Brainless Debian Stable installation and usage?
Well, you know, I was fully expecting, since about ten years ago, to
"any day now" get my siblings (and my parents when they were still
around) moved to Linux and/or bsd systems.
The best I have been able to do is help my oldest sister get started
on an iBook, and she has maintained herself pretty well there. When
she had to move from the iBook to a Macbook, she did so with the help
of some friends there. Moving her to any Linux distro I can think of
would have required me to be there, and would require me to be there
regularly.
I'm across an ocean from my siblings, so that makes my case a bit more
extreme than with you and your friends, but, as others have said,
moving from MSWindows to Linux is not the no-brainer we used to think
it was. Not for people picked randomly from among our friends/family.
That said,
On Fri, Mar 7, 2014 at 10:16 AM, Steve Litt of Troubleshooters.Com
<littdom@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have several friends, with Windows XP, who are now considering moving
> to Linux because of XP's impending stoppage of support.
Have they had help coming to this conclusion? Have they had
experience? Do they have the motivation?
> Normally, I'd
> just tell them to install Xubuntu.
I was half-way to asking why, but I now realize you said "X"ubuntu.
> But some of these people have memory
> starved machines, and in my travels I've found that, using the Network
> Install, Debian installs in anything 128MB or above.
>From your responses to other posts, I see that you are planning to get
some of them started with second machines, so I assume that you mean
that there are some who aren't able to upgrade their hardware. Does
this mean that they will be forming a sort of support group for each
other with you?
I would consider that to be a very wise choice, particularly if they
can get together physically on occasion.
> Most other
> distros, even if they could somehow *run* in such memory starved
> machines, can't install in them due to the bloat of their GUI
> installers.
Even with the netinstall CD, you are going to have to walk some of
your friends through the process. Others, maybe you can get your
friends who pick it up easily to help with.
But recommending the non-graphical install for new users who plan to
go graphical is not necessarily a good idea, and, may not be necessary
even for memory starved machines.
BTW, if you and your friends live anywhere close to reasonably priced
supplies of RAM, even, say, USD 50 for pushing RAM up to 2G, or even
500M, however far the hardware supports, will make life so much
easier, failing to recommend upgrading RAM seems to me like a
disservice.
Similar for hard disk, since they need to start taking responsibility
for what goes onto there machines, and that means installing stuff,
playing around with it, and removing it.
The also need the room for the inevitable progression from stable to
stable. Or the inevitable dual-boot to play with Mint or Gentoo,
depending on how interesting they find the exercise.
VM is also something they should consider.
> What I'd like to do with my friends is:
>
> 1: Install them toward the *right* Wheezy network install image for
> their CPU. I've never been able to easily find the right network
> install image, and just sort of used whatever I could find.
You got the pointer for that already, I think?
> 2: Tell them how to use the network install CD to install Debian sans
> GUI.
If you are encouraging them, don't even suggest they do the first one
by themselves, with or without the GUI during install. Plan on walking
them through it in person. Urge them to do a re-install without your
help while you are there, or maybe a week or a month later when you
have time to come back.
An install party might be a good idea? If someone has the bandwidth,
or if you can take the time to set up a local mirror in advance, that
is.
> 3: Tell them to apt-get install xfce4 xfce4-goodies
apt-get is pretty straightforward there, if you don't choose to
install them during the install.
Any particular reason for holding off installing the graphical part
even if they are doing a non-graphical install?
> 4: Tell them how to make Xfce be what runs when they issue the startx
> command.
Heh. That one is a good question. But it was a lot easier than I
originally thought. The second easiest answer is that the last one
installed tends to be the default, and if multiple are installed, most
login screens allow you to choose before you type the password in;
> 5: Tell them how to make iceweasel play youtube videos (I think today I
> saw someone on this list say to go to youtube.com/html5 : Is that a
> good solution in general?)
Hard to say. It seems to me like the "solution" is being held for
ransom. Politics and market strategy.
> 6: Are you guys cool with my friends, who would all be raw newbies,
> joining this list?
Let them read one of the recent flame wars and decide how comfortable
they would be. It's not really a question for the list participants to
decide. (And you say you have already introduced them to other sources
more newbie oriented.)
--
Joel Rees
Be careful where you see conspiracy.
Look first in your own heart.
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