Advice on Debian installation?
 

I'm planning to install Debian on this machine, and would like to have these few questions cleared, before I do it, as I'm not very familiar with the distro...

Can someone answer it, or point me to some good online resource?

The releasing cycles are rather long, aren't they? What's the current Debian?
The unstable branch isn't that unstable, in the end?
I already have a set of three Debian install cds from a previous download. They are v3.0, I guess.
Is there any more updated version? What kernel does it run on? If I bother to download the newer one, will I benefit a big deal?
NVidia drivers will do ok?

I need the machine to run:

kde and window maker
image editing
general office, text
internet, email and stuff
tv viewing an radio listening
Routing internet to another win machine
Cd-recording
DVD playback
A few servers: ssh, ftp (sometimes)...

Machine is:

Athlon xp 1600 / 256MB mem
Mainboard: Abit KG7
Seagate 80GB barracuda
Samsung 40GB spinpoint
DVD & CDRW
PixelView PlayTV pro
SBLive!
2 Ethernet card (NAT to the win machine)
NVidia Geforce 64MB

Thanks!

if you have a high speed connection to the internet you only need the minimal install disc, or the first cd, and you can just download the most current stuff you want with apt-get during the installation.

The releasing cycles are rather long, aren't they? What's the current Debian?
Woody 3.0 r2 is the current stable version.

The unstable branch isn't that unstable, in the end?
The testing branch (Sarge) is not that unstable.
Unstable (Sid) can be, err, unstable.

I already have a set of three Debian install cds from a previous download. They are v3.0, I guess.
Is there any more updated version? What kernel does it run on? If I bother to download the newer one, will I benefit a big deal?
If your version is older it will take longer to do "apt-get update", "apt-get upgrade".

NVidia drivers will do ok?
I installed the drivers from some howto on a system that needed them using Woody.
A bit of trouble but they worked.

The only "I don't know" on your list is tv viewing an radio listening.

Ok, installed from that set of discs. No big deal, the installation went ok. But in the first reboot, I couldn't startx. It gives me:

Fatal server error:
No screens found

The video or X configs I remember being asked during install were about the kernel frame buffer and the graphic driver.
I answered yes, use the kernel frame buffer and the graphic driver I choose wasn't the default one. I picked the nv driver.

Did I do wrong?
If the problem was there, how do I rerun those scripts?


Also, I found out my release is 3.0rc0, to be exact.

If your /etc/apt/sources.list points to "stable" repositories, I'd suggest the first thing you do is to change "stable" into "testing", then do "apt-get update" && "apt-get dist-upgrade" to get the latest versions of installed software. You may also want to upgrade the kernel to 2.6. You can (re)configure X with "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86". In Nvidia problems, please use the search engine here at LinuxQuestions.org (remember to select "Debian" as the Search forum).

EDIT:

Uh, upgrading to testing doesn't necessarily get you the "latest versions" of installed packages. I should have said "relatively up-to-date versions".

Before I start, let me apologize for the long post.

I think the biggest misconception people have about Debian is that it is out-of-date. They misunderstand the logic behind Debian's release management. The Debian distribution has three branches: stable, testing, and unstable(also called sid). Debian 3.0 is old, but they are working on finalizing a new release.

Unstable contains the most up-to-date packages that have undergone only limited testing. Bugs may exist that may cause a package to fail to install or break other software packages; but this is true of other distributions as well. I have been using the unstable branch for my desktop system. I have not encountered many problems with the exception of KDE and GNOME. When there is a major revision (i.e. Gnome 2.4 to Gnome 2.6), it is best wait a while before upgrading those packages.

Testing contains packages that have gone through some degree of testing from the unstable branch.

Stable contains packages that have gone through extensive testing and have been found to contain minor/no bugs. Packages need to go through unstable and testing before they get into stable.

I liken Debian's stable branch to Red Hat Enterprise. It is geared toward users that want a stable and reliable system. The most common application for use in servers where stability and reliability is of utmost concern.

Let's take a look at other distributions. I'll use a Red Hat as an example. It has gone through many iterations. From Red Hat 7 up to Fedora Core 2. If I installed Red Hat 9, do I install packages designated for Red Hat 9 or do I choose newer ones made for Fedore Core 2? If I use packages for Fedora Core 2, is my system still a Red Hat 9 system or do I now have Fedora Core 2?

I think distribution releases are just monikers. Your system is as up-to-date as you want it to be. If you want a system that's reliable that has been well tested with most of the bugs worked out, then go with stable. If you want a system that has all the most recent and up-to-date software, then go with unstable. If you want something in-between, then go with testing. Plus, you can go from one branch to another. If you started out with stable, but feel it is out-of-date, you can upgrade to the testing or unstable branch. You could also conceivably go from the unstable to stable branch (although I don't think it would happen smoothly; it's always easier to upgrade than to downgrade). I don't know of any other distributions order their releases this way. FreeBSD organizes their releases with a New Technology Release and a Production Release; similar to Debian's stable and unstable. To have three branches with different purposes is a blessing.

Debian developers are currently working on implementing faster release cycles.

http://www.pctechtalk.com/view.php?id=3230

I had the same problem when I tried to run startx after I installed sarge. I found out that it was because the wrong driver was selected in my xfree86config file. Try the following:

1) Find the section titled "Device". Identifier should be the name of your video card, or something similar

2) Try changing the driver. I think you said you set 'nv' as your driver. My driver was something like 'amp' and I had to change it to 'radeon' to fix this problem. I was using an ATI Radeon 9500PRO video card.

3) Make sure in the section titled "Screen" the device field has the exact same name of the identifier under the Device section.

Then save your file and try to run 'startx' again. If it doesn't work, either try another driver (sorry I don't have a list handy), or try this:

4) Go back to the Screen section again and try changing the default resolution to something you know your monitor can support, like Depth 8 and 800 600 resoltuion. (The first resolution in the resolution list is the default).

The XF86Config-4 file is pretty easy to understand and mess with, so try playing around with that a little. Hope that helps.

Hi,

Note that the frame-buffer question in the X-configure script may give you a default that doesn't work - it didn't for me. I had to answer No at that point or I got the 'No screens found' etc.. messages.

The error messages aren't particularly helpful when it doesn't work - at least that's what I found.

Bob

Hi everybody,
The problem was the framebuffer in the end. I rerun the script and changed it to not use the fb, things worked ok. The nv driver was ok, also. I'm writing from kde 2.2.2 at the moment.

Hey, debian is faaast! Is it due to its ext2 fs? My suse system isn't that fast...

One more item: could you point me to a nice resource on how to have a good and current sources.list, so I can update my system? The commands "apt-get update" and "apt-get upgrade" didn't do anything useful. Then I discovered my sources.list only has cdrom sources.
Let's say, from comp12345's post (no problem with long posts), I want to update it to unstable. Where should I point my sources.list to?

Thanks again!

Are you on kernel 2.2 or 2.4? do a

uname -a

you need 2.4 for all things you want. You'll have to recompile, or re-install using cds 5 and 1, or just cd1 and net-install the kernel, or burn a cd and install Hilux, which is woody installation with kernel 2.4.26 from the developers at Debian.

http://debianplanet.com/

An Updated Woody Installer
Submitted by gcbirzan on Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - 03:19
With everyone around talking about how Woody has an outdated installer and lacks some new packages and hardware support some people felt the urge to get to work. The result? Hilux, a customized installer. It has a 2.4.26 version kernel, supports XFS, LVM, RAID and various hardware drivers, comes with vim & bash, you can even resize partitions using parted and you get postfix as the default MTA. Hilux has two flavours, a business card and a mini CD version which will help you install a minimal Debian system or even an X Window desktop.

http://oss-us.sns.ro/Hilux.html

i installed it last weekend to try it and it's great. Afterwards, i pointed the sources.list to Sid, did an apt-get update and then an apt-get dist-upgrade and
that was it. In order to get to the advancement of Kurumin you need to dist-upgrade to Sid.

boa sorte,

Hi friend!
This is kernel 2.2.20-idepci.

I built a sources.list using the netselect-apt utility. Then, I issued "apt-get upgrade".
Apt now is downloading 57MB packages.

"apt-get dist-upgrade" would be the correct?

"This is kernel 2.2.20-idepci."

Read my previous posting again, kernel 2.2 is not going to give you all the things you want as in Kurumin, re-install using Hilux (kernel 2.4.26), or with CD1 and download the kernel 2.4 before anything, at the prompt of the boot screen write: bf24

"I built a sources.list using the netselect-apt utility. Then, I issued "apt-get upgrade".Apt now is downloading 57MB packages."

Wrong. you should do an 'apt-get update' and then 'apt-get upgrade', if you installed woody, there should be nothing to upgrade.

"apt-get dist-upgrade" would be the correct?
only after you point the sources.list to Sid, as root:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

you have to do a lot of serious reading at www.debian.org
documentation > manuals > APT-HOWTO

if you get into the IRC, go into the #debian-br channel e fala com a galera.

The way you are doing it, it will surely fail.

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macondo : he doesn't have to re-install just to change kernels, lol

simply apt-get install kernel-image-<version> and re-run lilo (! make sure you edit your lilo conf first!). no need to re-install.
(to select which version you want, try apt-cache search 'kernel-image*' | less )

bruno buys : apt-get dist-upgrade takes you from stable to testing or testing to unstable... etc. And yes, by the look of your hardware you should run testing or unstable.

Ok, urz,
I choose the kernel image and asked apt-get to install it.
To rerun lilo I just need to issue lilo at the console?