New system seems to have 'future shock' need advice on distro
 

Hi folks: A month ago, my power supply burned out my system so I went ahead and bought a totally new motherboard, CPU, and memory. All 64 bit (see below for details.)

Now it seem that Debian 7.2/64 bit cannot deal with this system. It installed with KDE but there's numerious problems that is keeping it from running fully.

The biggest problem. I tried 3x to install nVidia using the 1 click installer.


Worked just fine before, but everytime it installed on this new system, it said something about firmware and I never had that message before (The video card is still the same one as before. I didn't replace it.) Now if I use this exact same script, it totally destorys X and I have to bring the entire system back from an image.

Firstly; is it possible that this system IS too new for this current version of Debian? I had no problems with Debian 4 - 7.0 on my other system but it was nearly 8 when it finally died. (32 bit)

This should be a good burn of Debian' I purchased a 10 DVD set of Debian 7.2/64bit from OSDisc along with the new system so it's less than 1 month old.

Right now I have Debian 7.2/32 bit/XFCE on here, but still, using the nuveau driver so I have no dual monitor capibility, and even it's not fully running well. I cannot get any Mozilla product to install and run correctly as well. When I installed this, I made sure it was able to download from the net while installing as that seems to be a requirement for even the DVD installer.

Can you advise on what to do? I'm thinking just go for a debian distro that is more upto date than Debian 7.2 (I know Debian is always at least 6 months to a year behind).

I tried a couple or three a few years ago and at least 1 wouldn't even install on my older system, and others was having problem. So which do you finally recommend? I want a

*64bit version,
*The nVidia driver installiable without major, and dangerious surgary,
* Mozilla software running as well.
* Something lean, not bloated. Ubuntu seems so 'heavy' Also I prefer a pure debian, not like Ubuntu's tinkering so ubuntu based software isn't /quite debian/
* Debian .DEB based, not RPM.

GUI specific versions isn't necessary since I can put on Enlightment, or KDE after installing.

Thanks for your help.

--
New system:
Asus H87-Plus
Intel Pentium G3420 3.2ghz
4g memory
nVidia 7300 video

I can't offer specific help but what I will say is gennerally ignore "easy onle-click script I wrote" and install the NVIDIA drivers properly using the Debian way. It is very simple (I use the DKMS option) and means that things will update properly.
Having said that:
Do you really mean you have an NVIDIA 7300? Because that isn't new it's ancient:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_7_Series
If you mean a GT 730 then you will almost certainly need a newer driver than the stable version of Debian will provide until the next one. So, you will have to use the Unstable or Experimental repository for your driver. So you'll need to use apt pinning or use the NVIDIA binary driver (which may be easier as a newbie) in which case you need build-essential and linux-headers installed then to stop X server and run the NVIDIA installer as root, reboot and run nvidia-xconfig to create an xorg.conf. After that nvidia-settings run within your desktop environment as root can tune things.

I can go into more detail should you need it but this post is long already and I don't know how much you know about these things.

Thanks for the help. Tried two tutorals on installing the nVidia driver
via the DKMS and like the 1 click script, the same problem. It says
there's firmware missing, or not installed. Then when you reboot there's
no X. I have to bring my system back, from an image.

I even used Debian's own tutoral at:

If I had known that nvidia was going to be such a dick about linux support
I wouldn't have bought it 8 years ago (Yes it is a Gforce 7600GS. It works
fine, no sense buying a new one if it's working. I'll buy AMD next time I
need a video card I can assure you.

I'll post a message elsewhere about video installing now.

Thanks again for giving me some hope.

I think you going to find that the 7300 doesn't support 64bit..

Are you sure about that? I had no problems with the 7000 series on 64 bit Linux.

If all else fails try vesa maybe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_B...o_mode_numbers

No..

What I do know though is that that card has issues with 64bit in all other OS's.

I only asked whether you were sure it was a 7300 as you said new machine I had thought you meant all the parts were new also so I thought I'd better confirm it. For that card you should be using the driver from the Debian repositories as it's easier and the card doesn't need the latest driver.
I have successfully used that card under 64 bit Debian so I know it works.
There is no firmware missing. After you install the driver you should run nvidia-xconfig as I mentioned in my previous post -- I'm given to understand that this shouldn't always be necessary but given that X11 isn't starting it looks like it is in this case.
I've not used an AMD card under Linux but looking at the Debian page for them they're slightly more complicated to install because they lack the equivalent of nvidia-xconfig so you have to create your own xorg.conf.

Fixed the system
 

Ok gents. Thanks for all your help. I finally just downloaded and installed 64bit Linux Mint Debian Edition Cinnamon, and it's work /well enough/ Still some minor problems but I'm able to use the system.

Cinnamon has it's own video installer, which solved the problem as well.