Hello Craig, On Sat, 2013-08-10 at 17:21 +1000, Craig Sanders wrote:
On Fri, Aug 09, 2013 at 09:23:50PM +1000, Mark Trickett wrote:
I have managed to install Debian 7.1.0 on an Acer Travelmate 3230, even coping with the binary blobs during the install. It is generally working well, standalone, but now I am looking to sorting out and using now and then networked.
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.
if you want it to be similar to the old Gnome 2.0, your best option is to install xfce4, and configure debian to use it as the default (as root, run "update-alternatives --config x-session-manager" and then choose xfce4-session from the menu).
That is what I was looking for. I was considering lightweight graphical desktops, and not sure of quite which. Comments from the experience of others is what I value in this situation.
all of your gnome applications will still work - for best results, install a theme that has good support for both GTK2 and GTK3 (I use clearlooks-phenix-theme)
Again, thanks for the detail of the experience.
i spent about 8 months trying to get gnome 3 to a usable/useful state and ended up just giving up and switching to xfce. it does everything i want in a window manager, without fuss and without forcing an "experience" or, worse, a glorious vision on me.
there are a few minor differences between the "look-and-feel" of xfce4 and gnome 2, but they're trivial and easy to get used to. slight differences and evolutionary changes/improvements rather than radical, revolutionary change.
While I can get by a lot with the command line, a good graphical interface has a place. With the experience of living with, I can know what I am suggesting when I try to persuade others to change from Microsoft based software. I have every reason to not go back that way, despite some good applications. I was a WordPerfect user, and might install one of the copies I have under Wine, but the alternatives are effective, and for some things, raw postscript is really the only effective solution.
I may need to remove a great deal and install a lighter desktop, the Notebook is maxed out with 1.5Gig of RAM.
IMO, that's definitely not enough for gnome3. IME it's barely enough for normal casual use if you're going to use a web browser. my little asus x401u laptop only has 2GB RAM and even running xfce, swapping delays are quite noticable if i'm running iceweasel or chromium.
Up against hardware limits. I am also up against income limits. I have work as a Traffic Controller on road works sites and there is no work with the current weather. I have to try to minimise outgoings until work picks up, perhaps four weeks, and my reserves are already diminished. The total lack of work was not expected. I do expect utility bills in the meantime. I can later buy a RPi and start playing, including practical networking, but not enough machines at the moment, primarily two limited notebooks. This is on the A20m Thinkpad, PIII at 700Mhz with 256Mb of RAM, so the Acer is a large step up.
I strongly recommend use zram as a swap device. a compressed swap device works very nicely in low-ram machines, and makes a really noticable performance difference.
as long as you've running a new enough kernel (3.6 or later, IIRC). it's easy to do, but here's a useful howto on setting up zram in debian:
http://linuxvillage.net/index.php?topic=92.0
apart from bloated web browsers, it runs fine (although I still hate touchpads - one of the most annoying input device ever invented)
Similar feelings, much prefer to plug in a USB mouse. Will consider the zram, but wait for budget.
(i've actually got a 2nd 2GB SODIMM to install in the laptop but I got as far as opening it up and pulling the keyboard and case off it before realising i'd have to completely disassemble it to pull out the motherboard to get at the bottom of it where the RAM sockets are. designed to be a PITA to upgrade)
And the Thinkpad has some damaged keys I live with. Dropped a bit of timber when chasing mice in the walls. Have mostly eliminated critters, but still more needs doing.
Next, comment appreciated about Net-Manager. As I expect to use it on
whenever anyone says "Net-Manager" my initial reaction is "purge, purge, purge! kill it with fire!"
however, as long as you don't want to do anything even remotely fancy or unusual, it should just work for you. it can cope with handling an ethernet and/or ppp connection as well as uncomplicated wifi connections. it is very limited and inflexible, however, so don't be surprised if it is incapable of being configured to do what you want - if that happens, don't fight it and try to figure out how to get it to do something it is designed NOT to do - just purge it and configure your networks manually. your sanity will thank you for that.
Not certain about the ppp, at least from my experience on this Thinkpad. Using Wvdial, "Net-Manager" fails to see, but it all works. I am going looking at files like resolv.conf, and seeing what route returns and the like. Practical networking. Playing with several PC's will help, but I did find that this Notebook would set the default route via the other end of a ethernet link, which was another (now dead) stand alone PC, as did that one. Duh! invoking wvdial connected, but did not set the modem as the default route. I am learning, by poking around, but I would like to be playing at the workshops. The drive of four hours each way, and fuel costs, even with an economical car, is a significant deterrent.
The other thing is that CUPS (V 1.5?) will not let me set up a printer
sorry, can't help with cups.
The significant "annoyance" is that previous versions were dead easy to set up, even with no attached printer. The new one (1.5.3) greys out the add printer when there is no attached printer. Not necessarily a problem on upgrade, the printers are already configured, or when there is a printer on a cable, but when setting up the notebook away from said printers, it resembles sitting on a cactus. I did see the Apple copyright plastered liberally, maybe that explains the "expectations".
I will need to poke around further as IceApe (FireFox) could not find
iceape isn't firefox, it's seamonkey (and obsolete). it still works (i use it myself as a secondary browser) but the debian package is old and pops up a warning about how terribly ancient and unsupported it is every time i launch it.
iceweasel is firefox.
Mistake, was getting a bit late. It would be good to have access to FF as FF, not rebranded, in a separate repository.
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.
it's never a good idea to login as root on X.
instead, if you want to run several root commands without typing "sudo" in front of every one of them (a tedious practice that i blame ubuntu for popularising :), run "sudo -i" in a terminal to get a root shell, run whatever commands you need as root, and then "exit" or Ctrl-D to exit the root shell and return to your login user's shell.
"su -" would work just as well (except you'll need to type in root's password rather than your own password as you would for sudo)
you can also "ssh root@localhost" if root ssh logins are enabled.
I have organised such that I can log in as root, or su to root as needed, or use sudo. Which I use will depend on the appropriateness at the time. It is a matter of having the diversity, and learning.
Overall 7.1 is reasonably impressive, but I would still appreciate a lighter version. I am inclined to do a base install as a command line only box on something with perhaps a PIII or PII and 256 Mb of RAM, or even less. There are other distros, but there are reasons I am looking at Debian, primarily the apt toolset.
for a minimal debian install, you have to be careful to install nothing but the base system (and maybe ssh) from the installer CD/USB/PXE/whatever.
de-select *everything* when d-i gets to the Task Selection stage.
then when you've booted into the new system, use apt-get to install only the things you know you'll need. you'll end up with a system that's still significantly larger than a tiny-distro like Damn Small Linux, but you'll have access to apt-get and the enormous library of packaged software.
it's been a very long time since i tried to install debian on a system with only 256M...i'm not entirely sure it will work. it should *run* OK-is once it's installed but the installer may require more than 256M (the debian package list is *huge*)
IMO, though, if 256MB isn't enough then a tiny-distro is still not the right solution, apt-get and friends are far too useful to discard - you can get P3s and better with 512M or 1GB or more for free without looking too hard. they're disposable "rubbish" that most people/businesses don't want (but still make perfectly good routers/firewalls and even desktop systems)
Noted, it might be possible to do an install to a disk in a better PC, then transfer. If I can get some specs, would you, or Russell Coker be able to source old RAM and post for a payment. I do not wish to impose, and I did "haunt" the Swap Meets, but being four hours from Melbourne makes it a bit difficult. I am also now a bit out of touch with most things post Pentium Classic, not entirely, but certainly not so familiar.
craig
With thanks, Mark Trickett