Hello,

I have just completed a fresh install of Debian 6.0.5, installed from CD (debian-6.0.5-i386-CD-1.iso) onto an HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop. The installation process went quite smoothly, other than a brief notice regarding restricted firmware being required for my system; I skipped over it, as I did not have the firmware ready on any kind of removable media.

Other than this brief notice, the installation was successful. I have encountered a few issues with the new system, though, which I would like to raise here.

1. System > Administration menu is not populated. This is a problem I have encountered before on several different machines, all of which were running some version of Debian (all i386 - 6.0, 6.0.4 and 6.0.5). Specifically, the issue is that the only item under System > Administration is "Login Screen" - nothing else. I assume that this is not normal, as every other (Debian-based) distro I have used contains more options. Is this something to do with my installation methods? I didn't do anything unusual, only a basic graphical install of 6.0.5. There was a notice that some restricted (non-free) firmware was needed, but I skipped over it as I did not have said firmware available on removable media at the time of installation.

2. /home/lawrence contains only Desktop subfolder. My username on this machine is "lawrence". Upon navigating to /home/lawrence, only the Desktop subfolder is present - no Pictures, Music, Videos, etc. I am perfectly capable of manually creating these subfolders, but I assumed that they would be created during the installation process and was slightly surprised to see that they were not. Is this normal?

3. Connecting to Linksys WRT300N wireless router. Does connecting to my Linksys WRT300N router require some restricted drivers? Debian does not appear to be recognizing the network by default, and I am having trouble locating the option to connect to a wireless network. If I could figure out how to connect, then I would test whether I can connect to the network at all, but I am not finding any kind of obvious wireless network connection option in any of the menus I have looked in.

I have made a short video showing my issues, with a little bit of explanation. The video is located at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeYSYDDFqwY

Perhaps viewing it will help you to understand the issues in better detail.

Thank you for any help you can provide, kind strangers.

Lawrence

A brief update.

I've been doing a little bit of tinkering with Debian, and some new problems have emerged in addition to the ones referenced in my earlier post.

4. Files on an external hard drive can not be deleted. Before installing Debian, I made a backup of the files from my previous system onto an external hard drive. Upon connecting this external drive to my laptop, which is now running Debian, and attempting to delete files from it, I am greeted with a permissions error - "Operation not permitted". I am unsure as to whether this carries over to modifying the files on the drive, but it certainly makes it impossible to delete them.

5. The sound of silence. There is no audio on this new system (everything is entirely muted), and System > Preferences > Sound is missing. Sounds like I was incorrect when I mentioned that the Preferences menu seemed to be OK.

Thanks in advance for any help and/or solutions you can provide.

Lawrence

I am going to attempt to reinstall 6.0.5 using the netinst disk. I will update this thread with relevant information as needed.

It is now 1:34 a.m. and I am about to collapse from lack of sleep - but I will collapse happy, because my newly installed (from netinst) Debian system is almost perfect!

I'm still running into issues with getting Debian to recognize my wireless network, but I am confident that they will be resolved soon. Ethernet is working well, at least