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OneAndOneIs2

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Thu, Jun 25, 2009

[Icon][Icon]Finally!

• Post categories: Omni, FOSS, Rant, Technology

My laptop's dual-booted Vista (which it came with) and Ubuntu for a long time.

But I don't like Ubuntu all that much. It uses Gnome, and it's too user-friendly.

Yes, there IS such a thing. I hate software that tries to be helpful, and most people do if they're honest - remember the helpful paperclip is MS Office? :o)

More to the point, though, when it comes to Linux, I hate software that automates everything behind GUIs. It means that you don't know how to do anything WITHOUT the GUI.

So I used debootstrap to install a minimal Debian system tomy spare partition. I followed a couple of helpful guides on setting things up to get the non-free package repositories set up in /etc/apt/sources.list so that I could get the Broadcom wifi hardware working - courtesy of apt-getting b43-fwcutter and then running the shell script it came with. A minor mistake with the /etc/network/interfaces file cost me a reboot, as I configured the wifi as eth1 (As Ubuntu does) rather than wlan0. But that was an easy enough fix.

And now I have a computer that, currently, has no X11 installation and therefore is text-only. No GUIs at all. Command-line or nothing.

I love it :o)

I'm typing this from one of my all-time favourite browsers, links. It's text-only and I always have it installed because it makes life so much easier when you have a broken GUI or can only get to your machine via SSH. Apt is currently pulling down Xorg and FVWM so I'll get graphics sorted out soon. But I have to sort out a few things with the CLI access first. Couple of things people might like to know:

- To have a login prompt that clears the screen instead of appearing at the bottom, as root, type:

# clear >> /etc/issue

Then use a text editor to move the prompt text to BELOW the bottom line of weird characters. This will make the prompt sent the 'clear screen' command each time it appears

- The command line is much easier to use when it's spaced out a little. Go into .bashrc and find where it defines your PS1 variable. Put a \n in front of it. This will add an extra newline in front of the command prompt, giving you a blank line between each command. Much nicer.

Right. That's enough of that for now. Off to configure Xorg! :o)

3 comments

hari
Comment from: hari [Member] Email · http://harishankar.org/blog/
Personally I've been using Debian for around 6-7 years now. Debian is kind of midway between Ubuntu and Slackware. Neither is it a totally hand-holding distribution nor is it fully manual configuration driven which asks you to edit almost every config file out there to get your system up and running.
25/06/09 @ 12:56
sokuban
Comment from: sokuban [Member] Email
When you said "Off to configure Xorg", I was about to say something along the lines of "have fun with the new xorg", but then I remembered you used debian.

New Xorg is fairly different:

You don't have to have a xorg.conf file. You can if you want, but if you don't it'll autoconfigure everything.

There is a new way of handling devices, called "xorg hotplugging". The idea is that instead of having all your devices hardcoded in the xorg.conf, it is setup in a way that lets you change devices on the run. (Like plug in a USB mouse or something.) It sounds good, but if you decide to use it (it is optional), you need to configure your devices in random XML files around the system. These are often changing, so every now and then you need to look around the web to find the latest place you need to edit to get your device to work properly.

There is also pulseaudio, that while it isn't xorg, it is another new thing that causes similar madness. I've personally only heard of this one, I use OSS rather than ALSA so I don't have to deal with it.

There are a few other annoying little things like that too I think. (For example: Ctrl-Alt-Bksp is disabled by default, to enable it you need to add a new section to your xorg.conf, and if you use hotplugging you need to add another line to a random XML file somewhere on your computer.)

But don't worry, this is all irrelevant to you. By the time the next debian stable comes out they'll find a way to setup everything that makes sense.
27/06/09 @ 22:09
oneandoneis2
Comment from: oneandoneis2 [Member] · http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/
Hari: Yep, pretty much! I've used Slackware but found it such a pain to get stuff installed with no dependency checking. Ubuntu just annoys me. Debian so far has been a good choice

Sok: xorg has done a superb job of not needing me to mess around with it. Aside from fiddling with the keyboard map I haven't really had to do much. Because I have Intel graphics I didn't even have to do anything to get the 3D accelerated apps to work.

FVWM is the main thing I'm having to set up so far. I just finished putting icons into the menus I've set up and improving the fonts. Next I'll be looking at window decorations.

KDE-look has been very helpful in finding icons so far, I must say!
27/06/09 @ 22:30

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