Playing with straight Debian again

[Dapper Dan]

My father-in-law gave me an old GateWay he had stored with Windows 98 installed. In it's day, it was a decent machine. I installed more ram, a newer Nvidia PCI card, resized Windows and created an xfs partition on the six gig drive for Linux. My first thought was to install CRUX but decided to revisit Debian which I haven't used in years.

I downloaded just the first CD and did a very minimal install. After booting into my new installation I did:

apt-get install openssh xorg slim icewm

...then rebooted. Slim came right up, I signed in and there I was with an unconfigured IceWM desktop! Easy as pie! I've got more to do and configure on this machine but just wanted to pass along kudos to team Debian for making installation so very simple!

[cynwulf]

Yes, I think many are too quick to dismiss Debian, but I have found it to be one of the most versatile distributions there is. The solid package management and modular approach is one of it's many strengths.

[elija]

I've gone back to Debian but with XFCE. I've installed Compiz and am just about to compile Emerald. Then it's all my other software.

[MASONTX]

Dan, since you are familiar with debian, maybe you can answer a question for me. I have been thinking about trying debian, but distrowatch lists it as an 8 DVD download. Why such a large download when other distro's fit on 1 cd?

[rokytnji]

Dan, since you are familiar with debian, maybe you can answer a question for me. I have been thinking about trying debian, but distrowatch lists it as an 8 DVD download. Why such a large download when other distro's fit on 1 cd?

The 8 DVD set has all the current stuff for synaptic in it MASONTX for those who do not have any internet and wish to have a DVD repository so to speak.

[Dapper Dan]

Hi MASONTX, As rokytnji points out, this is good if you don't have access to apt repositories but you don't need the other seven if you just want a real basic O.S.. The base system was all on the first CD and I installed the other packages via apt-get from there though it begged for the CD to install addition dependencies. Runs really lean too! Just sitting there with an IceWM desktop and no apps running, she's using 35 processes which is about the same as what you'd expect from a similar CRUX setup.

My first attempt at installing Debian around eight years ago was a nightmare. I never could do it as it was so frustratingly complicated. A few years later, I tried their new "net install" and actually got a box up and going with it. This time, it's so easy it's almost no fun! As some of you may have read, my experience with Bodhi Linux was not exactly the scaled down Debian based distro experience I was expecting. This is! I have a whole new appreciation for straight Debian.

[MASONTX]

Thanks for the reply. I'm downloading the small cd now, and will try when I get some free time.

[oz]

I tried their new "net install" and actually got a box up and going with it.

Yeah, it's been quite a while since I last installed Debian, but the "netinstall" has worked every time that I've tried it. In fact, my last 2 or 3 Debian installs were done using the even smaller "business card" install and they worked perfectly as well. Debian is a really fun distro to involve yourself with once you gain some familiarity with it.

[elija]

Yeah start with the netinstall, and install the base system and maybe the utilities and ssh server. Then start building from there. You can get a very lean and tailored system. How lean depends on whay eye-candy you like.

[cynwulf]

For a minimal install use the netinst and do not select either "desktop environment" or "base system", then continue from there. You will also probably want to disable suggests and recommends.

For a typical install download CD1 and install from that. The rest of the CDs/DVDs are for offline installation.

When going for testing or unstable, I usually do a minimal install of stable and then just change sources and upgrade - rather than downloading the testing netinst image.