[Sarge] New to Debian - installed on ancient laptop, no graphical interface

[serg.kr]

Hello everyone!

I recently acquired an ancient laptop. The best spec sheet I could find on the web is here: http://developer.novell.com/yes/53596.htm. The only correction I can make for sure is that it has a 4 GB hard drive, not 2.1 GB. It originally had Windows ME installed on it. However, since 1) the laptop is used, so it had a lot of junk on it, 2) Windows ME is an ungodly horrible operating system, and 3) I've heard really good things about Linux, I decided to make the move to Debian. I've had great difficulty selecting the right distro; in the end, the choice was actually quite random. However, I hope it will ultimately turn out well.

That concludes my introduction. So here's the problem: I just installed Debian, and the graphical interface did not load. I am currently staring at the bash prompt. I have programmed on Windows before, so I know a bit about computers; however, I never used Linux, so treat me as Uber Newb.

To aid the diagnosis, here's a report of several significant things that happened during the installation:

* The first time around, I accidentally pressed Enter instead of Space Bar when asked if I want to install a Desktop system. However, I completely started over and did the entire installation process again. I cleared the entire disk during the installation. The second time around, I did make sure to select that I want a desktop system.

* The installer never asked me what video card I have or what video driver to use! When looking around on the web, I found out that it should have! Thus, I never made any choices such as "vesa" or "ati" or anything. There's a good probability that this is the problem, but I don't know how to fix it.

* The laptop randomly turned off during the second installation. I simply turned it back on. I have no clue what sort of effect this may have had.

* The installation media that I used was the 15 CD set, which I downloaded and burned myself from here. I verified the checksums using a program, so the downloaded CD images were not corrupt. I only had to use the first three disks.

* The entire installation process took place after midnight yesterday. Anything I may have done was done in a state of subconsciousness.

* I set up a user account for myself, but I cannot use "sudo" with it. What little I know about Linux already suggests that I will not be able to live without sudo for any significant period of time. How can I add my user account to the sudoers list?

* I should note that my laptop is not connected to the Internet. It is not on any sort of network.

I would appreciate any help with the matter. It just may be that my laptop is too old for Debian. However, I would like to give it a try. If it involves learning to use the terminal, so be it (which brings me to a side topic: do many Linux users actually use the terminal? Or is it a GUI world out there?).

Remember, this is the first time that I've ever used Linux on my own. So be gentle!

[antidrugue]

I've heard really good things about Linux, I decided to make the move to Debian. I've had great difficulty selecting the right distro; in the end, the choice was actually quite random. However, I hope it will ultimately turn out well.

It's a good choice if you want to learn.

* The first time around, I accidentally pressed Enter instead of Space Bar when asked if I want to install a Desktop system. However, I completely started over and did the entire installation process again. I cleared the entire disk during the installation. The second time around, I did make sure to select that I want a desktop system.

Yep, very common mistake.

* The installer never asked me what video card I have or what video driver to use! When looking around on the web, I found out that it should have! Thus, I never made any choices such as "vesa" or "ati" or anything. There's a good probability that this is the problem, but I don't know how to fix it.

This command will help you configure your video card :

dpkg-reconfigure xfree86-xserver

* The installation media that I used was the 15 CD set, which I downloaded and burned myself from here. I verified the checksums using a program, so the downloaded CD images were not corrupt. I only had to use the first three disks.

You really don't need anything more than the first CD, perhaps even less (the netinstaller is the prefered way if you have a good internet connection).

* I set up a user account for myself, but I cannot use "sudo" with it. What little I know about Linux already suggests that I will not be able to live without sudo for any significant period of time. How can I add my user account to the sudoers list?

That's normal, sudo is not configured by default. You can search the forum for the answer to that, or you can try this small tutorial I wrote a while ago :
http://technowizah.com/2005/12/debian-how-to-sudo.html

* I should note that my laptop is not connected to the Internet. It is not on any sort of network.

Then forget the netinstaller.

It just may be that my laptop is too old for Debian. However, I would like to give it a try.

I don't believe it is. It has 128 mb of RAM, which is enough.

[serg.kr]

Thanks for the help so far:

That's normal, sudo is not configured by default. You can search the forum for the answer to that, or you can try this small tutorial I wrote a while ago :
http://wizah.blogspot.com/2005/12/de...w-to-sudo.html

It works! I can use sudo now.

This command will help you configure your video card :

dpkg-reconfigure xfree86-xserver

This gave me:
Package 'xfree86-xserver' is not installed and no info is available.

I looked around on the web, and I found that I should try:
sudo apt-get intsall xserver-xfree86

Upon entering that, it ran me through the installation of whatever this thing is that I'm installing. It actually asked me for some info about my video card (though it auto-detected which driver to use). I answered everything as best I could, though I have to admit I wasn't always sure what I was doing:
* For supported resolutions, I picked 1024x768, 800x600, and 640x480.
* For number of bits (?), I picked 24 (default).
* I had little idea about what I should have entered for the mouse because all I have is the touchpad. I just left the default option.

Further searching told me that the magic command to get the GUI working is "startx". However, this gave me several errors; the odd thing is, it doesn't let me scroll! All I can see is the lowermost portion, which complains about missing symbols ("Skipping "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/libGLcore.a:m_debug_vertex.o": No symbols found, among other similar messages). Next, it says it cannot detect the mouse (No core pointer). Finally, it tells me "Fatal server error: failed to initialize core devices".

At this point, I'm really not sure what to do. But the goal feels closer...

[antidrugue]

sudo apt-get install xfree86-xserver

is not enough.

You need the larger package x-window-system-core :

sudo apt-get install x-window-system-core

Then

startx

will work.

Also, choosing 16 for color depth will give you better performance.

[serg.kr]

Yay! It worked! After installing x-window-system-core, and after another round of dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 (Note: you wrote it backwards: it's xserver, and then xfree86), I got a graphical operating system! I actually had to play around with the options in the reconfigure application for the mouse. It appears that the graphics do not load if the mouse is not properly configured.

The only problem is: it looks kind of barren. Maybe this is how it's supposed to look, but it looks severely primitive. There is not much of a background, and absolutely no start menu of any sort. In other words, everything's quite monochrome.

Am I missing something? Or is Debain really lightweight in terms of graphical interface?

====

Another question: the trackpad on the laptop does not seem to work. The only way I could use a mouse is if I connect one. Is there a way to enable the trackpad?

[antidrugue]

The only problem is: it looks kind of barren. Maybe this is how it's supposed to look, but it looks severely primitive. There is not much of a background, and absolutely no start menu of any sort. In other words, everything's quite monochrome.

For the moment, you don't have any desktop environment installed. There is a list here (or check out wikipedia) :
http://xwinman.org/

Am I missing something? Or is Debain really lightweight in terms of graphical interface?

You can choose any graphical environment you like. Since this is a fairly old computer, I suggest you stay away from Gnome or KDE.

Other choices are XFCE, Fluxbox, JWM, RatPoison, or anything you like.

Personally I like [ur=http://joewing.net/programs/jwm/]JWM[/url], but there is not package for it in Debian. It is certainly the lightest desktop environment out there.

But for now don't try to compile anything, just rely on apt-get.

So :

sudo apt-get install xfce4

will install xfce4.

Another question: the trackpad on the laptop does not seem to work. The only way I could use a mouse is if I connect one. Is there a way to enable the trackpad?

For the trackpad, you'll probaly need to install xfree86-driver-synaptics and to load evdev module at startup (in /etc/modules).

So, in /etc/modules you can specify which modules you want to load at startup.

Or you can load modules manually like that :

sudo modprobe evdev

[serg.kr]

Debian can find neither the xfce4 package, nor the xfree86-driver-synaptics package. A quick search online, however, reveals that both should exist. Is it because I need an Internet connection? Other reason? How can I get around this?

[dravenloft]

Debian can find neither the xfce4 package, nor the xfree86-driver-synaptics package. A quick search online, however, reveals that both should exist. Is it because I need an Internet connection? Other reason? How can I get around this?

Probably on one of th other debian CDs. I didn't notice which one, but it is part of sarge so you'll have it if you have a copy of all the CDs.

mount /dev/cdrom
cd /media/cdrom/pool/main/x
ls xfce4

is how I'd find out which disc. There are probably a few hundred other ways, just that's a relatively straightforward way from the command line that comes to mind.

once you find the disc, you either add it to /etc/apt/sources.list with a txt editor (I recommend either midnight command (command is mc) or nano (command is nano)) and then

apt-get install xfce4

or you can just use dpkg to install it

cd /media/cdrom/pool/main/x/xfce4
dpkg -i xfce4*i386.deb

you actually can leave the * in or you can type out the file name... the same goes for any package. The CD should contain /pool/main and /pool/contrib and some may also have /pool/non-free from there it's usually just going to be the first letter then the package name. the exceptions are libs. they're liba - libz then the package name.

[Haxx0rm4ster]

Why isn't this done by default?!?!

I just installed Debian's 3.1r4 DVD, made sure to select to install a Desktop Environment and when the installation finished I had no GUI!
It doesn't even install X!!

Though it seems like it IS supposed to install everything by itself as I haven't seen FLOODS of newbies complaining they see a "black screen" in these forums.... (haven't checked any Debian-onl forums yet though).

[serg.kr]

Hi,

I'm really sorry that I dropped this thread. I had an ungodly amount of school work lately, so no time to play around with Linux.

So I played around with apt and the Debian CD collection. After experiencing some problems, I found out that the proper way to add CDs to apt is not by editing sources.list, but rather to use the command apt-cdrom add. But thanks for pointing me in the right direction; I would not have been able to figure this out. And I got to learn about the joys of editing text files from the terminal.

So, after adding the CDs using the aforementioned commands, installing xfce was pretty straightforward using the help you gave. I have a working desktop now! Thanks immensely for the help!

Now I'm just trying to learn how to maneuver with Linux and how to perform some common, necessary tasks. The first of which is this:

I wanted to use a jump drive to transfer files to and from my laptop. I searched around for this, and stumbled upon this helpful thread:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=333659

I'm happy to announce that it works! I simply created a folder (mkdir /home/serg/jumpdrive), put the jump drive in, and called sudo mount /dev/sda1 /home/serg/jumpdrive. Then, opening the /home/serg/jumpdrive directory showed the contents of my jump drive.

What's bothering me is that I don't quite know why it works.

1. Firstly, the thread I gave above says that calling fdisk -l should list all my drives and some info about them. However, when I called it, it simply showed nothing. The command is recognized, but there are no drives, even when the USB jump drive is inside. Why?

2. What bothers me even more is that I called the command mount /dev/sda1. When I opened the /dev directory and asked it to list the files it contains, it does now show that the sda1 folder exists. Why not? Why does this command work?

Thanks for all the help so far, and again, sorry for dropping the thread.