it has taken me over a week to install configure debian...I started with the live cd of knoppix it seemed good...I had tried linux over a year ago mandrake 8 i think and it was inmho crap nothing worked dependancy hell.. gave up up on linux till now I decided to give it a try agian..found knoppix somehow ran it for a day from cd decided to do hd install next day..that went well although i didnt like certian things..so decide to try pure deb with the 30mb biz card iso..damn this was almost as bad as mndrke except icould sense that somehow it could work..
first could not get display right xf86cfg would not save so i was stuck @800x600 bleh reinstall
cant get printer to work reinstall.dvd wont mount after reboot reinstall..apt-get hoses kde lose all menu and program associations this happened 4-5x bleh reinstall..stay up for 40 hrs no joke trying to get it to run..no luck..back to knoppix..changed apt-get source to unstable and debian .org instead of ftp2.debian.org allis running but there are rogue aps that apt-get dont see and others that have no menu entry..update-menus does not find them example dillo...its on the system but no menu entry..also eyes and tea cooker are on the system but apt-get remove nor kpkg acknowledge their presence..there must be other things that are not quite right although I have no idea what or how to find them..is there an app like windows task manager or sysedit so i can see what is going on?? thanx for any help!!!!
I have no clue what Im doing in linux at all

First of all, please apply some semblance of formatting so your individual questions may be clearly viewed.

Problem 1. XF86Config(-4). First, tell us your monitor and video card's specs. You'll need these. Secondly, you can use

to alter the conf. with the debconf way. It works very well.

Problem 2. What sort of printer? Serial? USB? Model number? Did you install CUPS?

Problem 3. DVD player. How are you mounting it? How _did_ you get it to mount? What commands? What kernel are you booting with (`uname -a`) and are you using any kernel parameters? IF you aren't sure, copy these two files into your post: /etc/lilo.conf and /etc/fstab.

Problem 4. apt-get install menu. man menu. IT works wonderfully.

Problem 5. or As I mentioned your post was a chore to read. Clean up your follow-ups and we can help you help yourself much, much quicker.

You should by now know how to install Woody (you have had quite a lot of practice) . Some things you should do though before you do the install ; at the first screen enter bf24 (this will give you the 2.4.18 kernel). Boot Knoppix and get into /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and make notes of the Screen section specifically dealing with hsync and vsync and how it setup your mouse. Having done the base install decide whether you want to upgrade to Sarge. If you do, then edit your /etc/apt/sources.list and change all references to stable to testing. Then do apt-get update and then apt-get dist-upgrade. Now whether or not you decided to go with the upgrade or not to get a gui do apt-get install xserver-xfree86 kde. When this sets up it will take you through the peripherals and you will need the info with regard to the screen and mouse that you got earlier from Knoppix. After this I suggest getting synaptic which is a gui form of apt. To get into synaptic open a consol and as root do synaptic. This will tell you what you have installed and what is available in various sections. You can then install and remove stuff at will.

I applaud your effor to install debian as your first go round, but why note start/learn on a somewhat simpler distro like Fedora or Mandrake? Granted, you won't learn as much as Debian, but maybe you are setting your learning curve just a little too steep for an initial forway into Linux. Dependancy problems have been reduced with urpmi in Mandrake and yum, I think, in Fedora. Anway, you might like Mandrake, but go with 9.2 unless you have an LG CDROM. 10.0 Community failed miserably for me, Official (not available to general public yet) performs flawlessly for me. Just a thought?

http://www.distrowatch.org/

RO

sorry for the rambling ....
problem 1: applications on the system with no menu entry,example dillo if I launch a terminal and type dillo it launches HOWEVER there is no menu entry for it and using update-menus did not work..I am sure there are more but I dont know what or where to find them
Problem 2: applications that I want to remove that neither apt-get nor synaptic nor kpkg acknowledge,Example: tea cooker and eyes,they are both on the menu and will launch but I dont want them,if I try to remove via above mentioned apps they dont acknowledge thier presence
Problem 3: unneeded services running..Example brltty..using top it is on the list of running processes I dont need it and wish it to be gone along with other services I dont need bind9, cron, apache, isa pnp (no isa cards in my system,) isdn, mysql, pcmcia,squid and ssh
this is from a knoppix hd install upgraded to unstable with apt-get