Debian Etch has rocked my world
Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 10:04 am
I thought I would mention a project I've been working on recently. I don't have a Linux laptop, nor do I have the money to buy one, but I would like to have a Linux box that I can take to LUG meetings, and generally hack around on, and not worry about messing up configurations. I have a Ubuntu box at home that the family uses for all of their computer needs. I have a Windows laptop for work, and installing Linux on that is not an option. I have a Linux box at work that is a low powered machine, but runs Ubuntu and is used for web research, email, backups, file server, and basic document production. I don't want to mess up any of those machines.
So I had the parts to put together a Frankenstein box that I can haul to the LUG, to the office, and use at home when the family Ubuntu box is in use. It is a Celeron 500, with 192megs of ram, an old 10gig hard drive, an old 2x or 4x CDROM, and on board Intel 810e graphics. I thought with such low specs I would just install a CLI system or a real low resource GUI like Fluxbox, and use it to learn the powerful CLI programs tha Linux has to offer. I thought about distros, and DSL came to mind, but I've never been able to get DSL to work because of the unique xserver that it used did not like the Intel 810e graphics that I had. Puppy would have worked, because I believe they are using Xorg (maybe DSL is using Xorg too, I don't know). I thought about Ubuntu Server, which would have worked well, but I thought I would try something different than Ubuntu. GRML was tried because it is a CLI focused Debian Sid distro, but the install failed, perhaps because of the old CDROM or a udev issue. Elive 0.5 also failed to boot up, probably the old CDROM or the graphic chip was the problem there. Slackware was considered, but I wanted access to lots of different CLI programs, and fast installs to quickly try things out. So I thought I would give Debian Etch netinstall a try. I have had troubles with Distros based off of Debian Sid. Debian Sarge is rather old for some packages, and I believe it uses an older Kernel. Debian Etch or Testing seemed to hit the sweet spot for me.
Well, now that you know the background here is the meat of the post. I made a mistake when doing the install, I left "desktop" marked during the selection of packages instead of just marking "webserver", "file server", and "base system". So it started downloading and installing a bunch of stuff I really didn't want like Gnome Desktop, GDM, and other stuff. I figured I would just let it run anyway, since I was going for a walk and didn't care what it did for the next hour. When all was said and done, it booted up, and instead of dumping to the CLI I thought I would just try loading Gnome.
I was shocked. Gnome was usuable, not super fast, but usuable. I thought it was just as usuable as Ubuntu on a 500mhz PIII with 320megs of ram. It even played an AVI from a Samba share of an Ubuntu box. I had heard that straight Debian is kind of like Slackware, lots of manual configuration, and lacked of codecs like Ubuntu. Perhaps AVI's are just standard open formats, I don't know. I didn't try playing an mp3 yet. I was also surprised that Samba was set up ready to browse shares on other computers. It saw all of my Samba shares out of the box on my home network, and could access all of them. I was surprised that xorg was set up perfectly which means that the hardware detection worked great. I expected to have to run xorgconfig or something. Etch was also using Gnome 2.14 like my Ubuntu Dapper machines. If I had a better harddrive and more memory for this old machine, I believe Debian Etch using Gnome 2.14 might be faster and more responsive than my Ubuntu boxes.
I also have to plug the netinstall CD. It just worked. It was fantastic. First time I have ever tried a netinstall, and I really enjoyed it. I guess if you have heard some "misinformation" about straight Debian in the past like I had, I would encourage you to give it another college try. Debian Etch might rock your world too.
So I had the parts to put together a Frankenstein box that I can haul to the LUG, to the office, and use at home when the family Ubuntu box is in use. It is a Celeron 500, with 192megs of ram, an old 10gig hard drive, an old 2x or 4x CDROM, and on board Intel 810e graphics. I thought with such low specs I would just install a CLI system or a real low resource GUI like Fluxbox, and use it to learn the powerful CLI programs tha Linux has to offer. I thought about distros, and DSL came to mind, but I've never been able to get DSL to work because of the unique xserver that it used did not like the Intel 810e graphics that I had. Puppy would have worked, because I believe they are using Xorg (maybe DSL is using Xorg too, I don't know). I thought about Ubuntu Server, which would have worked well, but I thought I would try something different than Ubuntu. GRML was tried because it is a CLI focused Debian Sid distro, but the install failed, perhaps because of the old CDROM or a udev issue. Elive 0.5 also failed to boot up, probably the old CDROM or the graphic chip was the problem there. Slackware was considered, but I wanted access to lots of different CLI programs, and fast installs to quickly try things out. So I thought I would give Debian Etch netinstall a try. I have had troubles with Distros based off of Debian Sid. Debian Sarge is rather old for some packages, and I believe it uses an older Kernel. Debian Etch or Testing seemed to hit the sweet spot for me.
Well, now that you know the background here is the meat of the post. I made a mistake when doing the install, I left "desktop" marked during the selection of packages instead of just marking "webserver", "file server", and "base system". So it started downloading and installing a bunch of stuff I really didn't want like Gnome Desktop, GDM, and other stuff. I figured I would just let it run anyway, since I was going for a walk and didn't care what it did for the next hour. When all was said and done, it booted up, and instead of dumping to the CLI I thought I would just try loading Gnome.
I was shocked. Gnome was usuable, not super fast, but usuable. I thought it was just as usuable as Ubuntu on a 500mhz PIII with 320megs of ram. It even played an AVI from a Samba share of an Ubuntu box. I had heard that straight Debian is kind of like Slackware, lots of manual configuration, and lacked of codecs like Ubuntu. Perhaps AVI's are just standard open formats, I don't know. I didn't try playing an mp3 yet. I was also surprised that Samba was set up ready to browse shares on other computers. It saw all of my Samba shares out of the box on my home network, and could access all of them. I was surprised that xorg was set up perfectly which means that the hardware detection worked great. I expected to have to run xorgconfig or something. Etch was also using Gnome 2.14 like my Ubuntu Dapper machines. If I had a better harddrive and more memory for this old machine, I believe Debian Etch using Gnome 2.14 might be faster and more responsive than my Ubuntu boxes.
I also have to plug the netinstall CD. It just worked. It was fantastic. First time I have ever tried a netinstall, and I really enjoyed it. I guess if you have heard some "misinformation" about straight Debian in the past like I had, I would encourage you to give it another college try. Debian Etch might rock your world too.
