rant, rant, rant (dselect)
 

rar.

dselect broke my computer... maybe I just don't know how to use it right... but. I installed stable on my computer a while back ... this must have been like, a year ago. Lately I got to thinking "you know, stable sucks as a desktop computer... I think I'll update everything and install testing via ftp".

It works okay... i have to tweak a couple of things such as my X config file. other than that everything goes smoothly.

I restarted it a couple of times and things worked great. After that, my computer was up for about 3 weeks, and I don't know what happened but it just decided to break. I was like 'okay...' I couldn't start X, my devices weren't being detected, blah blah.

I decided to update once again, thinking that perhaps it might fix the problem.

that was a terrible idea... dselect seems to have a nasty habit of uninstalling programs that are out of date/ no longer supported, without asking. That would include my favorite browser, galeon, some rather important gnome 2.4 stuff... (it seems to have opted for v2.6); eeyes was gone too. Now, I run fluxbox (which I'm going to keep on doing... just because it's faster) and I'm going to do a complete reinstall of my system.

dselect is a very good thing... but it needs improvement I think: first, it needs to be a lot more verbose about what it's doing (such as where it puts files and what it deletes) and second, you need to be able to tell it "no, leave my galeon alone!"

rar i guess that's my rant... sorry about the offtopicness of it.

I know you people don't like to hear this, but there is no substitute for reading.

debian.org >documentation >manuals > apt-howto

use Hilux to install woody, comes with kernel 2.4.26 and a bunch of upgraded stuff.

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

to install use the directions from:

The Very Verbose Debian 3.0 Installation Walkthrough
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=2016

forget about Tasksel, Deselect, Framebuffer, use only apt-get.

After you are done, installing, you'll have a lean machine, with Synaptic, x-window-system, fluxbox (if you want instead of wmaker)

apt-get install locales, vim or other favorite editor.

change stable for testing or unstable in the /etc/apt/sources.list with your favorite editor

as root:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

and then you are on Sarge or Sid. They both have Gnome 2.6, Do:

apt-get install gnome

now you have gnome and fluxbox.

I only use fluxbox or icewm; everything else imho, is a waste of resources, better allocate those resources to speed.

Once you are in Sarge or Sid:

apt-get install guarddog

in the protocols flap, choose what you need, 5 minutes later, you got your firewall running. If you don't know what to choose, post your questions.

how do you get to this point? reading!

Alternative to dselect (that doesnt suck) -> aptitude

apt-get install aptitude