Debian install

[battalax]

i searched around and and couldnt find much about how debian is I am downloading the iso's as i type this i was wondering if debian will autodetect anything or will i have to do everything by myself and does anyone know what " boot flavors " ( linuxiso.org callled them that ) i will need sorry if this is a stupid question but right now im on an old harddrive on windows xp and i dislike it quite a bit so im pretty anxious to get linux back p.s right now im downloading debian 30 r2.iso number one and 2

[elderdays]

If memory serves you only really need that first disc. Use the 2.4 series kernel that comes with it. It is about as good as anything else at detecting devices unless you have something totally obscure or something that came out yesterday. BTW, you'll love apt-get.

[battalax]

ok thanks alot but one more thing does debian have to be installedwith a million commands like gentoo or is it somewhat easier ? and would you reccomend gnome or kde ?
or does it come with soething already i have reaserched this before so im sorry if i sound stupid with these questions i know how to use linux and stuff its just the install im curious about
thanks

[elderdays]

I think you'll find the install to be quite a bit easier than gentoo if you're new to linux. Not that installing gentoo is difficult...but for someone new there are some conceptual things that may be new to you. Debian has an installer that has recently been "improved" and should give you no trouble. It will mostly ask you what you want to do. Whereas gentoo does not ask, you have to tell.

As far as gnome or kde...if those are my only choices I would say gnome. KDE looks horrible to me. If I remember correctly gnome and kde are on that second disc, but I could be thinking of Slackware. Its a matter of preference though. I use neither. I prefer a window manager like fluxbox or windowmaker personally.

I do know that the discs offer packages in order of popularity/necessity starting from disc 1 being the most important stuff that everyone would want down to disc 7 which has the less popular/used programs.

[battalax]

ok thanks alot for your help im gonna try and install it later on this evening after i burn the iso's

[teeitup]

Do you have a high speed connection?

If you do download the Sarge net install iso.

It is very straight forword and has good hardware detection. It will give you a nice gnome desktop by default.

Link to installer (http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/)

Click on netinst CD image, with Debian base (i386)

Good Luck,

[battalax]

ok thats cool im going to try it its downloading fairly quickly right now i actually came back to the forum to see how to get gnome or kde on my debian install that i just did but im going to try that sarge thing thanks again everyone for your help

[battalax]

everything is alll installed and im pretty impresed right now im jus tlearing gnome i used to only run kde but my one problem is i got .deb gaim packages and how do i install it and isnt there supposed to be some way to install it without gettting the dependency problem ?

[TheSpeedoBeast]

Can't you just run "apt-get install gaim" from root? There is typically no need to download the .deb files to install software, unless the software is unsupported by debian...

[battalax]

oh wow i didnt htink it was that easy thanks for the help

[CoffeeMan]

Yeah, antoher thing about Debian that is pretty swift, is the ability in apt-get a new kernel image, and it will update your bootloader by adding the new kernel.
Just type apt-get install kernel-image-2.x.x-1-686, and you can get a 386 image if you want.

[TheSpeedoBeast]

Yeah, apt-get is generally considered to be one of Debian's most attractive features for many people; thats why I love it so much! And did the gaim install work ok for you?

[battalax]

the gaim install worked great thanks but for some reason debian came with quite a bit of KDE apps and some kde things for example on my debian menu thing theres a section that says debain and it goes into a bunch of different apps like even more then i had when i actually ran kde when i had suse and mandrake and redhat ..etc do i just manually delete these

[battalax]

its either me or GNOME is much less customizable then kde how would i go about edinting menus because i removed some things i dont want anymore and they are all still there anyway
after i restarted the computer and stuff

[TheSpeedoBeast]

Yeah, that customizability issue is the general consensus among gnome vs kde. When you first install kde (from a basic install), doing apt-get install kde-base will install the bare min; your install method probably put on EVERYTHING kde related, thus all of the apps. And about the menus, I can't help you there; I use lighter window managers than kde (xfce here, highly recommended on debian), so I dont really have to deal with those menus much. Any ideas from someone else?

[battalax]

ive never used xfce although when i used windows xp awhile back i had Xoblite ( a fork of blackbox ) and i liked that ok it was pretty neat i thouht it was better then blackbox ill look into xfce but i also like alot of eye candy when i had suse i had liquid weather with my other karambas and i loved having that is there anyway i can run superkaramba on GNOME or any of these other window managers

[TheSpeedoBeast]

I am not sure about superkaramba, but xfce is not a fork of the *boxes; it is a lot more like kde than the *boxes, is reasonably slick looking, but is still very light. Give it a try if you want, it is one of my favorites.

[battalax]

is there eyecandy ?

[sharth]

yes. install the xfce4-goodies package..

i think thats the name of it.

apt-cache search xfce4 goodies

[battalax]

i looked at XFCE screenshots and is it possible to change the colors of the task bars andchange the icons and things like that ? btw if i wanted to install XFCE do i just remove all of the gnome and the kde stuff in synaptic package mangager ?

[sharth]

both can co-exist.

but if you wanted to get rid of gnome, then yea, just remove it in synaptic.

[battalax]

i did the apt search and it came up with a whole bunch of stuff for xfce is there any order for what im supposed to do and then after i install all xfce and i decide i want to get rid of gnome and kde i just delete it using synaptic and restart and everyrhting is all good ?

[TheSpeedoBeast]

Any program installation order will probably work, because debian handles its dependencies pretty well... and a restart probably isn't even necessary after uninstalling with synaptic.