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

[Shawn Wallbridge]

On 6-Nov-03, at 10:29 PM, Scott Balneaves wrote:

> 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?

You can sometimes find Testing ISO's out there, I have used them a few 
times.

I haven't had any luck with jigdo, but YMMV.

Well, I hope you like Debian, it really is a nice system.

shawn

>
>
>> 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
>
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