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Posted on 06/23/2005 12:34:18 PM PDT by N3WBI3
Background Through Post-Install
Background: What is Debian?
Debian is a Linux distribution started by Ian Murdock in 1993. Debian is DEB from his wife Debra and IAN is from Ian Murdock. One thing that Debian has is rock solid stability and security. Its packages are thoroughly tested before becoming categorized as stable. That is also why it took so long before Debian 3.1 (Sarge) was released.
The Installation
So now I got the Background covered and now is the installation. I started by putting my CD 1 into my CD drive and setting my BIOS to boot from my CD drive. after the CD boot it gave me the boot prompt. there was nothing I really needed so I pressed enter. then after that I was taken through the language, country and key map selection all of these I choose the default. then the installer attempted to detect my CD drive and configure DHCP. So after it successfully detected my IP address and everything the installer asked for my host name and I choose Debian because I really didn't care and it was a Debian system. it asked for my domain name and I entered "localdomain". after that came the partitioning part. what I did was make my windows partition smaller before I started the installation so that I could use the largest continuous free space. I put everything in one partition because I didn't like so many partitions on my hard drive and I made a swap partition of about 512 MB. Once I finished that the installer made the ext3 and swap partitions and then installed the base system. so after it installed the base system it asked me if I wanted to install grub to the master boot record and also add a windows option so I can dual-boot,I choose yes. Then I rebooted.
Post-Install
After I selected Debian at the grub menu I was taken to the "Debian base system configuration". It asked me a few things like my time zone, root password and asked me to add a new user. Then it asked me where I wanted to get my Debian packages from .I choose ftp because it is less busier than http and I didn't have all 14 CDs. then I was asked what group of packages I wanted to install and I only choose Desktop environment. so after apt fetched all the packages needed I needed to configure X. I choose the vesa driver as I was going to install my nVidia drivers later on. I was then taken through the X server configuration.
The Desktop
After all that configuration I was finally taken to the GDM login screen. It was pretty ugly. I am sorry but if you use Debian for desktop use you will find it that without a little but of customization Debian is freaking ugly. So anyway I immediately changed the login screen to a more pleasant theme. When I logged in I saw the default theme for Gnome. I really didn't like this theme so i tried to change it by using the Theme program that comes with Gnome. None of the theme were really all that. So i tried to install Clearlooks by getting it from art.gnome.org. But when I did get it for some reason I couldn't install it to the Theme program. so what is did was apt-cache search clearlooks, just to see if there was .deb package. There was, so I installed the clearlooks package with a few other dependencies and then I had the beatiful Clearlooks theme.
Mozilla is the default browser and evolution is default email client. No offense to Mozilla but I like Firefox and Thunderbird better. So I Apted them! Also Debian comes with lots of games, if you don't find them in the games menu you can still apt them. By the way remeber to install your appropriate driver for you video card if you want to play any 3d games like TuxRacer or Americas Army. Another thing that comes standard is the Office suite: OpenOffice.org version 1.1.3 so that you can make all you documents and other things. Debian also the Gimp which the the program for all your graphic editing needs.
Apt
apt is Debian's package management tool. One can install almost any program or library with a simple apt-get install package. This is the most simple yet powerful tool in the Debian itself. There is one particular thing I really like about apt, lets say you install a package you got from the internet. If you didn't have one or more of the required dependencies, you can just do apt-get -f install and apt will get the required packages that are needed by any .deb that you tried to install on your system and it will install the dependencies and the main packages too. If you don't like working with command line, if you installed the Desktop Environment you get Synaptic. Synaptic is basically a frontend to apt. It allows you to search, upgrade, install packages graphically.
Internet and Networking
The Internet connection was detected automatically via DHCP as I've told you before. I don't really have a home network I am just on a router with one other work computer. So no Problems in networking.
Debian is an awesome Linux distribution. You just need to make some minor tweaks in order to use it for Desktop use because first of all it was meant to be a general purpose distro. Debian also make a wonderful server if you want to host anything from a personal blog to a corporate website. I would probably give Debian a 9/10 because it not perfect just yet. Thanks and have a great day.
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...my brain hurts...
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