Mark Trickett <marktrickett@bigpond.com> writes:
First, I am finding the Gnome 3 series different, and not certain that I either appreciate or like. Any comments about making it behave more "traditionally" appreciated.
Try a different DE.
Next, comment appreciated about Network-Manager. As I expect to use it on varying networks, the way that it flexibly reconfigures is attractive in places
Try wicd or wifi-radar. I do http://cyber.com.au/~twb/snarf/wifi.txt
If I do remove Network-Manager, I would appreciate comment about whether the one package is enough, or what else to purge.
Purging nm should be sufficient.
The other thing is that CUPS (V 1.5?) will not let me set up a printer at the moment. It searches for printers, and when it does not find any, will not let me install for later use via the administrative interface, either web browser or the printer icon.
Not sure. Possibly you have only cups-client and not cups installed. You require cups (daemon) to set up local print queues. If you have a single always-on server, you can run cups on that and have only cups-client on other hosts. Cups is not fun. If your needs are simple and the LJ4 has a network port, consider just using lpr to inject PostScript directly into the printer's lpd service. (Overall, I think this is probably worse.)
further as IceApe (FireFox) could not find the network while Synaptic
iceape is the mozilla suite. iceweasel is firefox.
The initial install left my user account without sudo access. I have rectified that so I have both full root access, and sudo. They give me ways of doing different things. For a single command that need not be run from a root login, sudo can be much better than an unguarded root login left sitting vulnerable, while some tasks are where I want full root login, at least at this time.
Recommend you lock the root account (so it has no password), and use "sudo -i" when you want a root shell.