[RndTbl] Debian woes: Clueless newb? Or enemy action? You decide!

[Scott Balneaves]

On Thu, 6 Nov 2003, Shawn Wallbridge wrote:

> To move to the testing tree, all you have to do is edit your 
> /etc/apt/sources.list file. For the most part you can just 
> s/stable/testing/g, but you will have to remove the security.debian.org 
> line that is near the end.
> 
> Once you have done that,
> 
> apt-get update
> apt-get dist-upgrade


Ahhh, MUCH better.  That helps quite a bit.

OK, so, here's a dumb question:

Rather than:

a) install woody
b) upgrade to testing (which I'm assuming will become sarge?)

Can I make ISO's of "testing"?  After brief reading, I'm assuming "jigdo" 
would be envolved.  Am I on the right track?


> http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-desktop/

Helps, thx!

> Honestly, while I am a big fan of Debian, I don't run it on my desktop 
> (I run OS X). I am surprised that selecting a desktop system didn't 
> install X. It should be fairly simple, one command you will want to use 
> is apt-cache, it allows you to search for packages that are available. 
> So to find the exact name for X....
> 
> apt-cache search xfree
> 
> Which comes back with xfree86-common being what you want. 

That was the wierd part.  xfree86-common *WAS* installed, but not
servers-xfree86, which I found unusual.  Like I say, I figured it out 
after a half an hour of twiddling.

What struck me as odd was that they beat partitioning, and base install TO 
DEATH in the manual, but didn't even really mention X.

But, hey, learning is good, adventure is good, and new things are good.  
It's all good. 

After I'd upgraded to testing, and after a few deft apt-gets for some 
libraries I was missing (xft2, libxml2, etc) I was able to compile 
openbox-3.0-rc4 and get it installed and working, which I was pretty 
pleased with.

As well, I'm now running kernel 2.4.22, with a quick apt-get and fixup to 
the lilo.conf file.

I've still got some learning to do, but I can see that this might be 
pretty sweet.  My goal is to try running it on one of my boxen here at 
home for a solid three months before I even consider looking at something 
else.  I think once I get used to saying apt-get install instead of rpm 
-Fvh I'll be fine.

Now, my only other goal is to wean myself off of pine (I know, my bad, not 
really free, etc) and learn mutt...

I'll be up in The Pas on Tuesday, so I won't be at the next MUUG meeting.

Thanks to both Shawn and Tim for answering my questions.  Personally, I'm 
beginning to think that changing distros once every couple of years is a 
good thing for your ego.  It's nice to be reminded that, no matter how 
much you think you know about GNU/Linux, there's always something more to 
learn.

That is, at the very core of it, why we all run GNU/Linux/OpenBSD/FreeBSD, 
etc instead of Windows, isn't it?  Because it's interesting, challenging, 
and always evolving.

Scott

-- 
Scott L. Balneaves      |  "Nearly all men can stand adversity,
Unix Administrator      |   but if you want to test a man's character,
Legal Aid Manitoba      |   give him power."
sbalneav at legalaid.mb.ca |     -- Abraham Lincoln