Debian Sid

[lxskllr]

Well, I got Debian Sid installed on an 8gb thumb drive, and despite a few bumps along the way, it's working pretty well. Ubuntu is a little more user friendly, with fewer "what the hell just happened?!" moments, but I'm digging it, especially with the glorious Gnome 2.x desktop :^D

Anyway, what I'm considering, is keeping it updated and periodically running it, then copying it over to the primary hd after a year or so(for the Ubuntu 12.04 release if I decide I can't live with it). Does that sound like a workable plan? I figure that'll keep me from having 10,000 updates at the start, and I'll be going into a broken in system. Any caveats to expect? My flash drive I did the easy partitioning, with ~7gb / and ~1gb swap. My netbook is partitioned to ~7gb /, ~8gb /home, and 512mb swap.

Could it be as easy as drag/dropping the folders in place, and reinstalling grub?

 

[Nothinman]

As long as whatever you use to do the copy preserves symlinks, etc that should be fine.

 

[lxskllr]

Cool. I'm really liking it so far. If I can keep it alive for a year, I'm leaning towards keeping it. I may give enlightenment on top of Gnome another try. It'll be a bit of work up front, but if I back everything up, I should be able to make it portable. Gnome 2.x won't last forever. I'm hoping the fork takes off, but I'm not counting on anything. Xfce isn't bad, but it isn't Gnome. KDE is irritating, and Lxde is butt ugly :^D

People have to go and ruin everything. Gnome was simple, but elegant. It could look like 1999 or 2011 with just a few easy tweaks. Everything needed was right at the desktop, so you didn't have to go on a scavenger hunt looking for ways to change things(Unity), or realizing you can't change anything(Gnome3) :^/

 

[Nothinman]

I still run E16 at work and E17 at home (well I will again once they fix the package in sid) with really just gnome-settings-daemon or whatever in the background to set the GTK theme.

 

[lxskllr]

Not really looking for advice here, but posting for everyone's amusement, and perhaps a bit of education...

Yesterday I checked my updates, and as usual it gave me the option of not uninstalling any packages that already exist on my system. I've done it both ways using safe install, and the uninstall routine. Well, I picked the uninstall option, and it turns out it wanted to uninstall Gnome desktop. If this were my primary system I would have bailed, but I said screw it, let's see what happens. Well, what happened is it uninstalled Gnome desktop, and I rebooted to a wallpaper with no visible window manager :^D

After rebooting, I used the dropdown box at login to see what was available, and it listed "default", and "LVM" LVM? let's see what that is. Turns out it's the most stripped down window manager I've ever seen. It might be good for you minimalists out there :^D It's a PITA to use, but workable, so I was fooling around with that last night. Between that, and CLI, I was trying to get Gnome back on my system. Whenever I tried to install it, it kept coming back with unmet dependencies ??? After going over my sources list with a fine toothed comb, and adding MANY additional mirrors, I hit up Google. It turns out someone else was having the same issue in the last day or so. I guess the issue is in the repos, and not my setup.

Now I'm sitting at the cli, and trying to hook up to a network. No love so far, but I've got all the time in the world. I'd be pissed if this were my primary system, but as it is, I find it amusing, and educational. I'm enjoying the experience, and learning new things. It would be easy enough to wipe it, and start over, but I want to try putting it back together with the tools provided :^)

 

[Nothinman]

LVM is probably whatever's included with Xorg, the XFree86 twm equivalent. And that's one of the dangers of running sid, whenever a decent sized transition comes in it can have adverse affects on large groups of packages with lots of interdependencies like Gnome or KDE. I prefer to use aptitude because it shows me what it's going to do and let's me cycle through it's available fixes and I usually just find the one that doesn't remove things I use. =)

Also having apt-listbugs installed is highly recommended for sid.

 

[lxskllr]

We're making progress. I got XFCE installed :^D I don't know what the hell's going on with Gnome. Btw, I was wrong about the window manager. You were right, it's TWM. I'm getting lost in abbreviations here. Reading to much, and confusing items.

 

[lxskllr]

Well, here's my last update I think...

Looks like I'm gonna have to burn this install. Update Manager was insistent on removing some more Gnome packages, so I figured, "Why the hell not, what's there to lose?". Turns out I lost all access to wireless networking. I can't find any cli tools or anything :^D I'm really surprised Xfce doesn't come with anything stock. Seems to me that's a necessity, and should be included with the core desktop.

Oh well. My last step is to go through apt-cache, and try to get networking back manually. There's other, more intelligent ways I could handle it, but I want to try doing it with the tools/setup I have here. No hardwire, no cheating with other O/Ss, just with the stuff I have on this machine. If I can't rescue this install, I'll do some reading, and see how I'll proceed. I may drop down to testing, but I'd like to give unstable another chance. I also need to figure out what I'm gonna do about Gnome. After playing with Xfce the last couple days, I'm really taking a liking to it. It lacks the polish of Gnome, but it has some nifty features, and the core functionality is what I'm looking for.

Why am I telling you all this? Hell if I know :^D I guess it's to run through my thought processes publicly. I've been gung ho lately about running Debian, particularly sid, and this might clue some people thinking similarly into some of the pitfalls. The reason I want to get away from Ubuntu is it just isn't what I'm looking for anymore. I first tried Ubuntu at version 5.04, or 5.10(can't remember), and it was like magic at first boot. The Gnome setup was simple, and well laid out, and the brown color scheme was reserved, and elegant. I tried it every year, but couldn't run it until 2008 due to 56k compatibility. I then put it on all of my portables, and am now ready to run Linux on all of my systems. Now Ubuntu has become a problem. Intead of reserved elegance, it's turning into an OSX clone. "But you can change it!" Yea, yea. I can also change Debian. I liked Ubuntu because it was perfect from the start; I didn't have to change anything. Now that I'm making lots of adjustments, I'd just as soon go to the core of the system, and start from the roots. That's why I've been resistant to Mint, and all the other Ubuntu derivations. They're just getting farther and farther from the core, and lack the project stability you get from being close to the source. In other words, it's better to make your changes from the bedrock, rather than the second floor of the house on top :^)

Edit:
Said to hell with it. I reinstalled, and am currently upgrading to testing. We'll try it all again :^D

 

[lxskllr]

Things are looking up. I suspect my earlier problems were my own doing. I followed an old guide setting things up before, and I think I may have had repository issues. Currently running testing with Compiz going and it's silky smooth. After I'm sure everything is stable, I'll likely bump it up to sid. Pretty sweet. It's everything I'm looking for, except brown. I'll fix that soon :^D