I feel really smert... oh yes i do..

[quote]deb also, often gets criticised for being a techi distro. Well, that is completely incorrect. It's just that it will do the UNIX like thing, and treat you as though you do have a degree of competence ( of soughts Smile ) [/qupte] and if you go in with a lot of confidence... and screw it up... you can always swear alot!

but debian isnt that hard... yes i dont know how to do much! but i am learning... customizing... and trial and error... so far, no error... but knowing i just said that i know something will go wrong...

i'll still come here, because it was knoppix that got me into linux, no one else... knoppix!! KNOPPIX!!! and APC! *shakes fist*

Quote:

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Pure Debian? Hmmm I am thinking of doing that one day too. Any bad experiences yet that you wouldn't face with Knoppix? Glad you got it working anyway.

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yes one bad experiance... gnome... its an ok GUI, but i just dont like its layout... thats me opinion... and the bad thing about it is that i havent figured out how to get rid of it at the loggin screen...

its not too much different from knoppix... a few differences here and there... but its still alot like knoppix... i dont think i could of gone strait to debian without knoppix... knoppix is like that medium that eases you into a different situations...

anyway... anyone like me new picture??? i made it meself, its in 3D! i did it all by meself.. i feel so proud! i still have to do a few things to it, but i am so proud of it...

http://img101.echo.cx/img101/8449/tazanbig9iv.jpg here is an inlarged image... i created this picture with blender...

Howdy knewbix,

All the way up in Cairns, it must be nice and warm there. It is really cold down south at the moment. But, not as it has been in other years at least. I always kinda wish i was up north at this time of year :).

>>
Isn't there just the one main Debian distro, and offshoots like Knoppix are based on that?
>>

Yep, in a nut shell. deb has developed into more of a "de-facto" distro. Rather than having set out with an intention to do so. Just as a result of its' on going development, it's organised to such a degree that it can provide a distribution of the sw collection that makes it up. But a distro as such isn't its' actual focus. It's more of a service they provide, due to deb being at a development stage were they can do so. They welcome people downloading their pakages/iso images to be used as a working OS. It helps to confirm the "proff of concept" and provides feed back from people using the system in a day to day context.

But ... where as an organisation such as RH or SuSE provide a distribution along with associated support, for a fee or other wise ... along with an attempt to make all the sw current. deb dosen't.

debs basic attitude is ... well ... your very welcome, and we don't mind putting to gether an iso snap shot, and actually releasing an expression (distro). But our focus is putting together a collection of usable sw that is both stable and GNU FSF compliant.

The releases like Woody represent the end of a development branch. They get to a stage where they basically can't go much further with that particular branch with out risking disturbing the over-all integrity of the collection as a whole.

So they flag it as an official release, archieve it, then continue with a new one.

Thats basically why Woody was at libc6_2.2.5 and "sarge" is based around the v2.3.2 libc6. With "sid" being the current "unstable" branch. When they have gone as far as they can with Sarge ... it to will be released as a deb concept.

The distinction is subtle, as for all effective purposes it can be thought of as a distro if people so like. As it will function as one.

A person can download or start with any particular snapshot from any of the three main branches ... stable (sarge), testing (pre-sarge) or unstable (sid, might become sarge, might not). hmmmm, hope i got that right :), and then just refresh it on a regular or not so regular basis. Which makes the whole idea of distro version schemes irrelevant. A debian collection can be alsmost anything as a result :).


>>
I probably just got the wrong idea from your post (and emoticon).
>>

hmmm, not sure there. Sorry if i was harsh or anything like that. It surly wasn't my intention :)


>>
But I can just download "pure" Debian right?
>>

Of course :D, way to go ... :) Especially if you have the net facilities. Iv'e been very limited in that regard. I used a 7 cd set from a Linux sw shop in Sydney "everythinglinux.co.au", not sure if their still around, and did incremental upgrading, a few packages ata time ... more due to having no other real choice than as a preference :). But i am glad it worked out that way. It turned into a great adventure :).

>>
I picture it as being like Knoppix but without the missing stuff ...
>>

Similar ... but all Linux distros are similar. The differences basically boil down to the system maintence facilities used, and the package management system. And you also get differences in the way directories are utilised. That is, a rpm system will commonly put "qmake" (from qtutils, kde) in /usr/lib/qt/bin/qmake, where deb will place it in /usr/share/qt/bin/qmake, it being a symlink to /usr/bin. Which makes sense as it is an executable file. But thats just deb being deb :), Being compliant to the File-Sytem-Heirarchy-System (grin). I prefer the later. Not sure hoe knoppix does that but being deb based ... probably the same.

Oh yes .. your quote (grin). Up to date depends on what image your downloading. Knoppix has recent releases and so would be quite upto date. And i believe you can safely point your,

/etc/apt/sources.list

list file to debs' ftp site, or any mirror.

"ftp.debian.org"

As i said, the only complete image i got of deb was woody, and that is out of date. But i think the currently available iso imagaes are quite recent. I believe they will be making a 64 bit collection available soon as well. In deb speak "soon" can have various meanings though :).

I'd just go for it, and stick with the "stable" branch. You may have to do singular updates from an unofficial site to get the latest cutting edge KDE or some other hottly developed project ... but thats incidental really. After all ... thats what googles for :)

>>
Would I be wasting my time getting Debian in the hope that I can apt-get most (more) programs?
>>

No i don't think so.

>>
About the "Murdocks", do you mean Rupert Murdock? Do you mean there's more than one?!!!! One is enough. Never giving that guy any more of my money! A genuinely evil person. He scares me! Thanks again anyway. Hope I make sense.
>>

hehehehe, he scares me too hehehe ... no ... not him.

Debian got its' name from two American college students Ian and Debra Murdock, who decided to see if they could put together a distro based wholly on GNU FSF concepts. They were inspired/influenced a lot by "Slackware" and decided to name their stable releases ater character from the movie "Toystory" ... And its' been going on ever since.

:)


c-h
>>
but knowing i just said that i know something will go wrong.
>>

(grin), one should always plan out their disasters well ... that way there arn't to many surprises :wink:

>>
i havent figured out how to get rid of it at the loggin screen.
>>

Iv'e got some vague memories on that.

Have a look in your .xsessions file, and in your /etc/X11 directory.

You can change the wm you invoke by editing the ~/.xsessions file.

Looking at /etc/inittab and changing the "runlevel" to allow you to boot straight into your "console" might be an idea, for a temp work around. Untill you have your "display manager" configured better.

Inn deb it's commonly Level 2 ...

# The default runlevel.
id:2:initdefault:

And making sure any reference to start xdm or gdm is prefixed with a "K" rather than a "S", or is removed. Iv'e got that configured in knoppix but it's on another partition at the moment. I'll have to look at that tomorrow and hope to get back on it. It's been so long iv'e forgotten :) ... damnnn. It can be niggling.

There are lots of things you can do. I'll have to extract this script iv'e got and post it. It allows a person to chose between a number of different window manages from a console menu invoked after booting into the console. Nothing that elaborate but iv'e found it really usefull for experimenting with.




jm

JM, well, once again, thank you. I think I am understanding the basics of it now, thanks to your explanations. Definitely gonna look into getting this. My only concern is that I'm limited to dialup and I have no credit card/paypal, and there's no stores around here that would even think of stocking Linux products (as far as I'm aware). So I guess I have a long wait ahead of me :lol:

The weather is pretty nice really. Very mild winter and today I was actually sweating! I'm guessing you're in Sydney or Melbourne? One of these days I'm gonna get my stuff together and move to Sydney. I don't even know anyone around here who even has a computer, apart from a friend (Mac) and my parents and sister/brother (Windows). I'll convert them one day. Anyways, thanks again!

edit: forgot to mention: chris, good work. I tried Blender when I was still a windows user and all I ended up with was a sphere coming out of the ground.

[qupte]I'm guessing you're in Sydney or Melbourne? One of these days I'm gonna get my stuff together and move to Sydney[/quote] I live in melbourn... DONT MOVE TO SYDNEY!! i went there once, and didnt like it... too much traffic (because the roads are real bad), and its smells funny...

Quote:

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edit: forgot to mention: chris, good work. I tried Blender when I was still a windows user and all I ended up with was a sphere coming out of the ground.

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yeah, i had to add the other side of him...

Haha! Well, I've only been to Melbourne when I was a kid and I only saw the insides of the airport en route to Tasmania, but friends have gone there, and I have some online friends there. But Sydney is quite appealing to me. Seems to me like Sydney is all intertwined and complex, and Melbourne is simple, laid out really well. Sydney = Windows, and Melbourne = Linux. I know that doesn't make sense but as someone who grew up in "outback" type places, I love the whole complexity of Sydney. :) I can get over the smell.

nah, i love the culture in melbour... it makes your stomach turn to steal after a few of those indian things... man, they are soo nice... i eat a little much of them, and well... their curry... and wow... yummy... *dribbles* aww, man, i need a new shirt

Chris, to get rid of the pita gnome login, apt-get remove gdm. gdm is gnome's login - just removing gnome desktop or switching to KDE doesn't budge that bugger (friend had me trying Fedora, icky, took me ages to remove that gnome login)

its not the best login... you like, have to move the mouse to do stuff...

>>
apt-get remove gdm
>>

Seems a bit extreme, all thats really needed is to edit the runlevel booted to in /etc/inittab, or to edit the /etc/rdx.d directory. By removing the symlink to the gdm or kdm or xdm script in /etc/init.d

The startup scripts, as invoked by 'startx', or 'startkde' will look in the HOME directory for local versions of xinitrc, xserverrc, xsessions files. deb will include the xsession file, but i believe other distros will differ there. So the global versions can be easily over-ridded. They just need to have a "dot" prefixed to them and be all lower case.

For the display-manager styled startup, the Xsessions file in the display-managers script directory, such as /etc/xdm/Xseesions can be treated similarly. It just needs to be edited to use the one in the HOME directory, if one is available. Something like ...

---------------------------------------------
if [ -f ~/.xsession ] ; then
. ~/.xsession
else
. /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession
fi
---------------------------------------------


jm