I'm installing linux the hard way - Debian and XFCE.

[cheesehead]

I'm a bit sick of Mepis' loco settings (why the frell don't things seem to work?), so I figure it's about time I move on a traditional, bread-and-butter, you'd-better-learn-the-command-line-and-fast distro - Debian.

My machine is as follows:

PIII-600
384mb RAM
10gb HDD
CD burner
ATI Rage 128
Soon to have a SCSI HDD to boost performance

I'm going to install XFCE - adding it to Mepis made it run much, much faster on this system. Synaptic ran mysteriously slow under Mepis, but hopefully running basic Debian will fix that.

What tips do you have? I'm learning the command line (from a big ol' dead-tree manual, no less), but I'd like to hear what tips people have.

 

[drag]

Do the Debian Etch netinstall image.

If the release candidate doesn't work for you then use the nightly builds.

Do the desktop install, which will give you Gnome, but then install the Xfce4 meta package and the packages it recommends. Then switch to Xfce4 desktop using the gdm session dialog.

For extra packages check out debian-multimedia.org

For good performance edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and use 16 bit colors instead of 24. Also go into your font management preferences and disable anti-aliasing.

 

[Nothinman]

so I figure it's about time I move on a traditional, bread-and-butter, you'd-better-learn-the-command-line-and-fast distro - Debian.

You'll probably be surprised then, Debian isn't as hardcore as it used to be. Boot the etch installer disc and type 'installgui'. The only bad part is that the partitioner in the installer is pretty confusing.

 

[cheesehead]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

so I figure it's about time I move on a traditional, bread-and-butter, you'd-better-learn-the-command-line-and-fast distro - Debian.

You'll probably be surprised then, Debian isn't as hardcore as it used to be. Boot the etch installer disc and type 'installgui'. The only bad part is that the partitioner in the installer is pretty confusing.

It's much more hardcore than Mepis/Ubuntu, and if I don't like it, I can always try Gentoo.

I'm not afraid to try the old-fashioned install-from-the-command line method, but I suppose that intalling with a GUI might be a little healthier for my sanity. I can deal with partition managers, too, and besides - this is going to be the only partition on the hard drive.

Can I download the metapackage from the command line? I know this sounds silly, but Synaptic under Gnome runs really, really annoyingly slowly.

 

[Nothinman]

It's much more hardcore than Mepis/Ubuntu, and if I don't like it, I can always try Gentoo.

Have you looked at Debian lately? IMO the only real difference between Debian sid and the latest Ubuntu release is the default packages and Ubuntu's new LiveCD installer. Virtually all of the same packages are in Debian since that's where Ubuntu gets them from.

I'm not afraid to try the old-fashioned install-from-the-command line method, but I suppose that intalling with a GUI might be a little healthier for my sanity. I can deal with partition managers, too, and besides - this is going to be the only partition on the hard drive.

In Debian they're both the same, the only difference is the renderer, one is ncurses and one is GTK2.

Can I download the metapackage from the command line? I know this sounds silly, but Synaptic under Gnome runs really, really annoyingly slowly.

Yea, apt-get and aptitude both work fine from the CLI.

 

[cheesehead]

Originally posted by: Nothinman


Have you looked at Debian lately? IMO the only real difference between Debian sid and the latest Ubuntu release is the default packages and Ubuntu's new LiveCD installer. Virtually all of the same packages are in Debian since that's where Ubuntu gets them from.

I'm really just trying to get all traces of KDE out of the system - XFCE uses some KDE stuff, it appears, under my XFCE/KDE dual-GUI system, and it bogs it down. (I'm not sure why - I just know that certian things, like Synaptic, run like molasses - just as they do under KDE.)

If I can get the hang of a distro-making tool, I'd like to make an easy-to-install Debian/XFCE combination for use on ancient PCs. It's a bit of a long shot, but I know a lot of folks who would benifit from it.

 

[Nothinman]

I'm really just trying to get all traces of KDE out of the system - XFCE uses some KDE stuff

XFCE shouldn't pull in any trace of KDE that I know of and it's all GTK2 based so it shouldn't pull in QT either.

(I'm not sure why - I just know that certian things, like Synaptic, run like molasses - just as they do under KDE.)

That doesn't make any sense either, having KDE installed will waste some disk space and maybe memory if the services are running but they shouldn't affect anything adversely.

If I can get the hang of a distro-making tool, I'd like to make an easy-to-install Debian/XFCE combination for use on ancient PCs. It's a bit of a long shot, but I know a lot of folks who would benifit from it.

I believe Etch will be released with an XFCE ISO, sort of like XUbuntu.

 

[drag]

Maybe one of the recommended packages installed some kde stuff.

That sort of thing can be safely ignored. Unless your actually using the software it won't take up any resources or use up anything more then some disk space.

Anyways KDE has some nice stuff you'd probably want. Amarok is nice, as is K3b. Koffice even with the KDE stuff starting up in the background would still be faster and use less resources then OpenOffice.org.

 

[cheesehead]

Originally posted by: drag
Maybe one of the recommended packages installed some kde stuff.

That sort of thing can be safely ignored. Unless your actually using the software it won't take up any resources or use up anything more then some disk space.

Anyways KDE has some nice stuff you'd probably want. Amarok is nice, as is K3b. Koffice even with the KDE stuff starting up in the background would still be faster and use less resources then OpenOffice.org.

Having used Koffice under KDE and OpenOffice under XFCE, I can say that XFCE wins by a landslide in speed. I can't say how much RAM it uses, but 384mb is plenty for me.

 

[BurnItDwn]

XFCE with openoffice on my OpenBSD 4.0 Lapto works decently, and I don't run out of ram unless I multitask. (It has only 192MB of Ram.)

If you want a really light GUI, give Blackbox, Fluxbox, or fvwm a try. fvwm is ugly, but on this system (my laptop) I'm not even using 80MB of ram with Opera, X.org, fvwm, several aterms, my IRC client, x clock, and all the regular crap (sendmail, inetd, init, syslogd, ntpd, blablabla) running.

XFCE is a good comprimise between features and looks, but I like the speed of fvwm on this old box 🙂

 

[cheesehead]

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
XFCE with openoffice on my OpenBSD 4.0 Lapto works decently, and I don't run out of ram unless I multitask. (It has only 192MB of Ram.)

If you want a really light GUI, give Blackbox, Fluxbox, or fvwm a try. fvwm is ugly, but on this system (my laptop) I'm not even using 80MB of ram with Opera, X.org, fvwm, several aterms, my IRC client, x clock, and all the regular crap (sendmail, inetd, init, syslogd, ntpd, blablabla) running.

XFCE is a good comprimise between features and looks, but I like the speed of fvwm on this old box 🙂

XFCE with 192mb of RAM is good enough for me. Nixing some processes can keep the amount of RAM required for booting down to about 60mb; not using OpenOffice but a lighter word processor instead can also help.

Having used Ubuntu, I can say that the difference between Xubuntu and Ubuntu is night and day. On a 333mhz celeron (!) with 192mb of RAM and a crappy hard drive, it actually performs very well.

In fact, I think that Linux has recently become MORE efficient, not less. You used to have a choice between a fugly GUI and the system slowdown of KDE/Gnome - now, XFCE and Fluxbox variants allow an older PC to be used without making you want to gouge out your eyeballs.

 

[TonyRic]

Originally posted by: drag
Do the Debian Etch netinstall image.

If the release candidate doesn't work for you then use the nightly builds.

Do the desktop install, which will give you Gnome, but then install the Xfce4 meta package and the packages it recommends. Then switch to Xfce4 desktop using the gdm session dialog.

For extra packages check out debian-multimedia.org

For good performance edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and use 16 bit colors instead of 24. Also go into your font management preferences and disable anti-aliasing.

Drag, I would typically agree with you regarding 16 bit performance vs 24 bit. However, the Flash player has a bug in it that will cause the browser to crash at 16bit. It is well documented. Unfortunately that leaves 24bit as the only reasonable color depth.

Tony

 

[Noema]

Posting from XFCE (Xubuntu 6.10), 128MB RAM, P4 1.4GHz, runs well enough...not blazing fast but usable. With only FF with a couple of tabs open and GAIM I'm barely hitting swap.

 

[cheesehead]

I don't know if I like the idea of Xubuntu so much - I've yet to figure out how to install anything without downloading it from a repository, which is very, very annoying.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Cheesehead
I don't know if I like the idea of Xubuntu so much - I've yet to figure out how to install anything without downloading it from a repository, which is very, very annoying.

Wha-heh? The repositories are one of the best things about Debian/Ubuntu/etc. Just open Synaptic (I assume Xubuntu has Synaptic) tell it to install what you want, hit apply, and it takes care of the rest.

IF Xubuntu does not have Synaptic, then you can use apt-get from the command line. How else do you want to install software? If you want to compile from source, it's just like on any other linux distro. Or if you have a deb package, you use dpkg from the command line (not sure the gui-way of installing deb packages).

 

[OSX]

Doesn't synaptic have an option to install debs? I used it briefly, but I prefer aptitude for package management.

 

[Nothinman]

Doesn't synaptic have an option to install debs? I used it briefly, but I prefer aptitude for package management.

Not that I know of, 'yum localinstall' is the only feature worthwhile feature that yum has that apt doesn't. But I can count on one hand the times that it would have been handy so I'm not too concerned about it.

 

[xSauronx]

Originally posted by: Brazen

Originally posted by: Cheesehead
I don't know if I like the idea of Xubuntu so much - I've yet to figure out how to install anything without downloading it from a repository, which is very, very annoying.

Wha-heh? The repositories are one of the best things about Debian/Ubuntu/etc. Just open Synaptic (I assume Xubuntu has Synaptic) tell it to install what you want, hit apply, and it takes care of the rest.

IF Xubuntu does not have Synaptic, then you can use apt-get from the command line. How else do you want to install software? If you want to compile from source, it's just like on any other linux distro. Or if you have a deb package, you use dpkg from the command line (not sure the gui-way of installing deb packages).

Xubuntu does have synpatic, and installing software couldnt be easier. Ive been using Xubuntu for 2 weeks now and havent had the first problem.

With the gui, you just right-click the deb package and it gives the option to install it, iirc (only had to do it once or twice, really) and doesnt cause any troubles.

I dont know what cheesehead is really going on about if he finds installing anything annoying under Xubuntu. What would he prefer, i wonder?