[Tfug] Debian Squeeze

[Charles R. Kiss]

Dear TFUG Members,

Hope everything is okay down there in Tucson, haven't seen much on the list 
lately.

So, I installed Debian Squeeze 2.6.32-5-amd64 KDE.  Apparently, the kernel has 
been in development for two years, and just came out in February -with an 
update a couple days ago, but I've had this kernel since early March.  

Of course I recommend it!

Anyway, I tried the kFreeBSD because I downloaded and copied it onto a CD 
without realizing it wasn't the usual net install CD.  Well, my hardware 
didn't like it, or X didn't like my hardware, because I got a pretty blank 
screen with a mouse cursor. So, I abandoned it.  

If I had a server, I would probably use it, but I'm running a desktop PC.

The Debian kernel install had one glitch.  The install requested firmware, 
rtl8169-1.fw. (sp?) .  Apparently, this firmware is something of an ethernet 
driver.  Well, I tried different combinations of firmware uploads (from a thumb 
drive) at different stages of the installation process, with free and non-free 
apt sources,... probably four or five different installations: conclusion: the 
hardware preferred the firmware packed with the kernel.  NOT uploading the 
firmware was the only way to get past the "net configuration" stage.  

I still wonder if there would be any benefit to loading the firmware; my guess 
is probably not since the internet seems fast enough, though sometimes may 
hang for 2-3 seconds -that could be google-chrome, or a combination, I also 
guess.

The first time, in a long time, I tried Guided Partitioning -resulting in a 
tiny 1MB partition at the beginning of the drive for boot stuff, I guess.  So, 
I let that be. And a little be worried about the relatively small / partition 
(350MB), I tried the LVM manager (for fun), but that really slowed my computer 
down, so I reinstalled with ext3 everywhere, ran more firmware exercises, 
keeping the same size / partition -just to see what might happen in the 
future: if I run out of space there.  I separated, /home 1TB /var (30GB) 
separate, /usr, /tmp similar huge sizes and huge swap (10G) with huge 
harddrives, to eventually set up a UNISON, not RAID.

Hard drives are so cheap!

Installation successful!!

Running the machine is fun. 

I symlinked the /opt to /var/opt because the google-chrome size consumes half 
the / partition.

I'm trying to get used to Plasma, with the window behavior settings, the panel 
widgets, folder view vs. containment, the acorn, etc. and the dreaded 
nepomukservices/virtuoso-t memory consumption issue (oink, oink); but it seems 
the packages are really really great, especially KMail (which is awesome).  

I Had some trouble loading contacts because I didn't "migrate" from the old 
KMail.  Once I figured it out, I simply copied the old vcf.# files into the new 
"contacts" directory.

Dolphin, Gwenview, and Konqueror work awesomely. I mostly use Dolphin for a 
file manager because I like the name. 

I'm having trouble with scaling on mplayer; with Kplayer it "works", only 
there is black Kplayer screen in the background.  Dragon player is the new 
player that ships, which is fine; but I'm used to mplayer.

What else?

Alsa, great.  Great with a little master volume widget on the panel. There is 
no kicker anymore.

No Xorg.conf file, use cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log.

Oh, and the login screen resolution is giant, giant username, giant password: 
I think the screen size is set at 1024x768 which is the default desktop 
setting; should be 1280x1024 -does anyone know how to change that? It's not 
part of the desktop settings configuration, the desktop looks great once I get 
there.

I still have to go through the VirtualBox installation; I had it on the old 
machine running XP.  

Java install was a piece of cake.

In summary, EXCELLENT!  One might have to change some arbitrary habits, but 
well worth it! 

Probably missed mentioning some things.  Still tweakin'.

Thanks for all the help over the years Tucson!

Charles