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

Scott Balneaves sbalneav at legalaid.mb.ca
Thu Nov 6 10:49:59 CST 2003


So, I started out my GNU/Linux life with the old Yggdrasil LGX distro 
(way way back in '93), and then proceeded (quite happily) for several 
year with Slackware.  However, for the last 5 years or so, I've been a 
RH user.

However, with the end-of-line of RH, I'm doing my due-diligance,
and not only evaluating Fedora, but other distros as well.

I keep hearing all this wonderful stuff about Debian.  It seems every 
time you talk about rpm package woes on a list, some Debian afficionado 
immediately pipes up with "well, on Debian all you have to do is type 
apt-something install cokebottle, and nana nana boo boo everything 
works.  Redhat Sucks!".

So, deciding that, perhaps, I should check into this, I grabbed some 
woody ISO's from debian.org, read the install manual, and dived in.

So, I've completed the base install, things are fine, and I'm onto the 
tasksel program.  Gee, I'd like to be a desktop system, so that's what I 
pick.

Guess what?  No xfree86 servers.  No xterm.  Turns out (at least from 
what I saw) the only way to do this is to either

a) Somehow guess (it wasn't listed in the installation guide) that I 
have to go into dpkg after the tasksel, scroll through 8517 (or 
whatever) packages, and find xserver-xfree86 and xterm packages, or
b) Somehow guess I'm supposed to do an apt-get on these after the fact.

Am I missing something?  I checked the Installation guide 3 times, and 
they don't seem to talk about X at all, and I couldn't find a "Setting 
up your graphical desktop on Debian" help file.  I figured it out, but 
the answers didn't jump up and slap me in the face, either. :-)

Second issue:  I know Debian's focus is stability, but I'm willing to 
risk bugs in exchange for something a little more, errr, this millenium, 
lets say :-)  Is there an "apt-make-me-modern" command?  I've done both 
apt-get update and apt-get upgrade, and basically that just gets me to 
the latest release stuff.

C'mon, Debian buffs @ muug!  Here's your chance to show me up as the 
clueless Debian newb I am.  I *REALLY* want to give Debian an honest try 
  to see if it's worthwhile deploying here at Legal Aid.  So warm up 
your LART cluesticks and wail away: I can take it! ;-)

Scott

-- 
Scott Balneaves       | The aim of a joke is not to degrade
Systems Administrator | the human being but to remind him that
Legal Aid Manitoba    | he is already degraded. -- George Orwell




More information about the Roundtable mailing list