[Tfug] Back to Debian again - Now What?

[Nicholas J. Bourg]

On the floppies try the "m" commands if you are reading MS files This is 
easier than  using mount.   selected .Do a man or info on mcopy or mdir. 
This will explain how to use them. They make  life a little easier and 
do the best they can to look like DOS commands, which makes some people 
more comfortable. If you don't have then on your installation you can 
get them from Debian with an appropriate apt-get command.

A neat trick, if you haven't discovered it, is to mount a Win drive to 
Linux, if this is possible on the system you are running. Read the man 
or info page on mount. This will explain how to do it, and what file 
system to select, as well as explaining the mount command generally. 
This is one of the Linux  features which is incomprehensible  to Windows 
users, that the OS can deal with more than its own file system.

These  were not specific questions  you asked but I thought the 
information might be helpful. You did ask a  specific question about a 
printer. I  finally configured by home system for proper printing, first 
with an Epson then with an HP LaserJet III,  but it was a prolonged 
learning process. Once you figure it out, the procedure will be obvious, 
but was not  to me at the time I was working through it.  You need to 
down load magicfilter and ghostscript from Debian  and have some 
assistance and advice.  The results are very satisfactory when you are 
done because you will be emulating a PostScript printer. When you are 
done, get the application a2ps from Debian . This is a conversion 
program which converts "anything to PS"  (hence the name). It is 
particularly useful for  doing "pretty printing" which is context 
sensitive printing of source files. The "C" files, at least, look very 
impressive when printed with this application.

For your use as an administrator, which I assume is your job, you 
probably would prefer a  window manager  instead of a desktop GUI, which 
just adds a level of complexity you might not need. Black box and 
Sawmill are popular. You will be surprised to find out that you can have 
multiple workspaces ( "desk tops") as part of the deal. Another feature 
that MS users aren't aware exists.


Linux/Unix are not hard to learn or "complicated".  That is propaganda 
from MS. If any thing they are easier to install and use than that other 
system, because you can look into the works and figure out what is going 
on. Working with that other OS is like trying to fix a car with the hood 
welded shut.



Craig Smith wrote:

>I have reinstalled Debian in lieu of Red Hat. Although
>I liked the ease of installing Red Hat it seemed
>difficult to update, I am sure it just of not being
>familiar it. If I had my choice I would rather not pay
>anything even at first. 
>
>I have several spare hard drives all on removable
>racks so it is just a matter of easily swapping out
>hard drives and rebooting so I will also have a Red
>Hat system to play  with along with Debian and Windows
>2000 (the only system I am familiar with at the
>moment). None of my three systems are dual bootable as
>I am a bit caution during the learning phase.
>
>What I want to do is move Pima County into open source
>systems because they are generally FREE of cost
>(discounting learning time), secure, and maintainable.
>
>IMHO the commands for Linux are esoteric for a MS
>Windows user and a bit overwhelming. Before I can
>convince anyone to go to Linux I have to become
>comfortable with it. I don't want to start flame wars,
>I just want information to do the job.
>
>Harry, you were right there was a bug in my Debian
>Network Installation CD as all references in
>/etc/apt/sources.list were to 'stable' rather than to
>'testing'. I edited the file with your suggested
>changes and it installed much more smoothly.
>
>Red Hat automatically configured my floppy drive and
>let me boot into X-Windows(Gnome and/or KDE). It also
>semi-automatically set my default printer to my
>Lexmark Z22 obviously I am going have to do this
>manually in Debian. This is no problem as long as I
>can set things up properly to my liking.
>
>1. To shutdown I use the command:
>   #shutdown now -h
>        Is this correct or is there a better way?
>2. To mount my floppy drive I use the command
>   #mount /dev/fd0 /floppy/ -t vfat
>       Is this correct? I may have mistyped it but I
>got an error (directory not found??) when I get out of
>Windows I will try it again so I can print out lspci
>3.  I downloaded and installed vim with
>   #apt-get install vim
>       What else would you suggest I get?
>4.  How do I set up my Lexmark Z22 as my default
>printer?
>5.  How do I get into a GUI environment?
>
>Appreciate all of your help.
> 
>
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