Hi Debian user,
I am red hat user. Now I have installed debian 3 with kde.
Appreciate if you can help me with the following.
1) in red hat 8, when I type 'setup' it would prompt me the configuration screen which I can select the item which I want to reconfigure. In debian, it doesn't reconize the 'setup' command. Is there any equivalent command in debian to redhat. what is the command which I can bring up the setup screen like red hat 8.

2) After I have installed software and packages like game, chat. in gui. how can I reinstall it ?

3) I need to bring up the 'authentication screen' so that I can change to md5. how can I bring that up ?

4) Is there a website or documentation which I can refer to the equivalent between red hat and debian ?

Regards,
x2000koh

1. There is a command called "debconf" which does a lot of that but I'd recommend against using it. It's a little dodgy. To be perfectly honest, there's no better way to change settings than editing text config files (with a few exceptions). It takes a little more work initially to work out where everything goes but once you know it, you REALLY know it.

2. My understanding is you want to reinstall software that is already currently installed, is that right? In command-line, you type "apt-get install <pacakge names> --reinstall". You asked for GUI, though so there's a front end for apt called synaptic. Type "apt-get install synaptic" and it should be installed and ready to run. From then on you can have a GUI for your apt-get commands.

3. Do you mean MD5 passwords? It's an option during the initial installation of debian. If you want to change it without reinstalling the system (as you probably will) type "base-config" at the command prompt and go through that. It will be one of the first options.

4. As for documentation, I'm not sure about that. I've never come across anything like that but google might come up with something. However, debian is a bit like slack in that it doesn't have that many GUIs to configure your system for you. So, editing text files is the best way (by far) to go. If you learn the text file method, then it translates to all distros of linux so you don't ever have to worry about switching distros because setting them up will be pretty much the same.

1) in red hat 8, when I type 'setup'

You want dpkg-reconfigure package_name . There's no actual program called debconf -- that's just the name of the whole debian package configuration scheme.

2) After I have installed software and packages like game, chat. in gui. how can I reinstall it ?

I don't think there is a "reinstall". You just run apt-get install package_name again. For more details, see the man page for apt-get.

You'll also probably want to start using apt-cache and dpkg. :)

Yeah you're right debconf is the scheme. But there was a utility that aimed to configure most of our system at one central location. I can't remember the name but it didn't work very well... But there most definetly IS a reinstall option in apt-get (refer to the above syntax). Definetly agree on the dpkg and apt-cache, though.

But there was a utility that aimed to configure most of our system at one central location. I can't remember the name but it didn't work very well...

Hmm... I've never been able to use these. I think there's something called webmin (maybe that's a redhat thing?) maybe...

But there most definetly IS a reinstall option in apt-get

Thanks. I'll have another look at the man page.

webmin is an installable option in Debian (at least in the unstable distro, dunno about the other two), I installed it on my router box through apt but I can't for the life of me get it to work remotely, it keeps saying 'Acess denied' even though I'm using https and added my IP to the list of allowed remote IPs.