Even the Internet is way faster. The wireless mouse/keyboard is even way more responsive. I almost took it back to the store because of the lag. On debian it's very responsive.

Thank you,
Chris.

Nice to hear that things are working out great so far!

Probably Mint could be fixed up to perform properly, but I'm not even sure where to go next to try and troubleshoot it. At least now it would be possible to compare modules and config files with the Debian install...but where to even begin? The obvious things are things which we had already checked out (video driver, RAM usage, web browser...)

Have a look at http://http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=09189. 6.9.9.9 is the latest.

Amazing Puppy. Really worth losing time with it.

What a mistake this tuned out to be. I wiped the drive on my daily driver, installed debian. Last night I could only use 12x10 ratio. My monitor is 16x10.
Booted up this morning, all excited to work with it, only to find it boots up to a desktop, no panels. Guess debian has panel problems, according to the forums, this is a common thing.

In Mint and ubuntu, you can update your computer after install (to get updates so I can use the right monitor ratio). No graphical update in debian. Use the terminal? In fact, debian can't be updated out of the box. You have to mess around with it, just to make it so it will accept updates (not sure who thought up that winner).

Mint and ubuntu have installed without any problems so many times, each time debian installs for the past 20 years has problems. I guess I'll work on a new debian install the rest of the week before I give up and switch to a distro that's ready.

Chris.

Odd, all of my Debian installs have been ready to update after the first post-install reboot. I usually install a tool to find the fastest nearby repos, to make updates faster. My preference is to use the command-line tools for updates. Are you looking for GUI tools?

Sounds like it's just a video driver issue. If 3d graphics acceleration isn't working properly, you might not see the panels. XFCE4 on Debian 9 defaults to using 3d accelerated window compositing, which may be a mistake.

As for a graphical package manager, you could install synaptic with:

I personally don't use graphical package managers. I always just use "apt-get" because I can run it quickly and easily remotely over ssh, and it's dead easy and quick to install a bunch of programs. I just copy/paste the desired apt-get statement from a text file with my favorites. Doing that stuff graphically is so slow and tedious! Apt-get is one of the killer app reasons I prefer linux over other operating systems.

Anyways, you want to add " contrib non-free" to all of the source lines in /etc/apt/sources.list. Maybe synaptic lets you do this by clicking on something. I don't know. For me, it's faster and easier to do it with the command line. After doing this, do:

That will fix you up if you've got an AMD/ATI graphics chip that requires a non-free proprietary blob. If you've got nVidia, it may not be so simple.

What graphics chip does this computer have?

take care when post something . . .

Nothing works in debian. Doesn't even recognize my password. I read the debian site and it says you have to "set up" apt before it will work. I have never heard any other linux disto I've used in the last 19 years that you can't update by command line until you do other stuff to set up being able to update.
Please, don't hold your breath on having debian be the distro if the "year of the linux computer" ever comes true.

Debian-xfce starts and gives a warring that it can't load xfce. You can't update until you do something else, which is not explained, only has 12x10 display ratio, can't modify anything on the defualt panels, try to update but even if you could, it doesn't recognize your password, even if id did, can't find how to load the out side the debian word software that is needed.

Wonder if I should re-re-re-install it again for the third time?
Nice.
Chris. -

The biggest thing I can see that's different in debian then other linux distos is, in other distos, "sudo" password is the "root" password.
In debian, you have a sudo password, and a user password. Password for sudo in debian is not the "root" password, or the user password. I need to search the internet and try and figure out if the sudo password is not the root or the user password, in debian, what is it?

Another thing is, why did it not ask me for a third password while installing, but have a hidden third password after the install?


Chris.

I see one of the installs has the 1920x1080 without installing anything, just from the disc. My home computer doesn't. It's has amd video. I think I remember reading a year a go that debian doesn't work with my video.

Also, just read that apt-get is not set up in debian by default.

Chris.

Why would the puppy linux website have an old one as the main one on the site? Distrowatch has a different version then the puppy site itself?

just looked myself and listed on distrowatch is Puppy Linux 6.3 for slacko, and 6.0 for tahrpup. No 6.9.

Chris.

Sounds like you didn't install it fully. In debian the sudo password is the users password. To setup sudo, install sudo and put the user in the sudo group. Otherwise the default sources.list is freedom respecting, which probably isn't very useful for a lot of people. As in it only has "main", not "main contrib non-free".

# nano /etc/apt/sources.list

As far as default X setup, jessie defaults to the lowest common resolution of ALL attached monitors with all monitors as clones. You can adjust that with xrandr, and various other tools like arandr, nvidia-xconfig, amdcccle, or whatever features your window manager / desktop environment offers for you to use. If you use one of the more recent flavours like buster (testing) or sid, X will likely default more to your expectations. Current debian stable is stretch, which defaults for me with native resolutions, but screens side by side, the laptops LCD being the left most by default. So I tend to make them clones and turn off the laptops LCD.

$ xrandr --output HDMI-A-0 --mode 1920x1080 --panning 1920x1080 --primary --output eDP --mode 1366x768 --panning 1920x1080 --same-as HDMI-A-0

$ xrandr --output eDP --off

Stuff which I've had to do even in ubuntu when it didn't offer the desired options in the gui. It's a little cryptic to do things this way for many, but the distro CAN do things like this. Granted that the defaults are not everyone's cup of tea, but there's more distros out there to try that might suit. And a few other flavours of debian like testing, sid, or experimental.

Umm...no. apt is set up out-of-box. It is absolutely set up out-of-box.

You do, of course, have to log in as root to use it. You're just used to the weird Ubuntu way of doing things with sudo. By default, Debian does things the Unix way - you log in as root using "su". Either get used to this fact, or get confused with the majority of *nix operating systems out there. Ubuntu is and Ubuntu based linuxes are the ones doing it a weird way.

That said, if you really want to, you can install Debian with an Ubuntu style sudo out-of-box. The Debian 9, they have included an option to NOT enter a root password, which will set up things in the Ubuntu style. Of course, you will invalidate all Debian documentation out there, but that's your choice.

It is not a "sudo" password. It's just the root password. By default, Debian does not install sudo (unless you do an Ubuntu style install).

Try to chill out a bit before jumping to conclusions.

Back when Ubuntu first came out, we knew the weird Ubuntu way of using sudo instead of a normal root account would cause newbies confusion for years to come. We were right. This was easily the biggest and dumbest and most damaging mistake Ubuntu did. It's still causing confusion, for no good reason.

Starting with Debian 9, the installer can do an Ubuntu style install. If you specify an empty root password, it will do an Ubuntu style install with sudo set up to allow the first user to sudo everything (which is stupid, might as well just not use sudo if you're going to do that, but whatever).

I think that happydog500 is just confused from having never used a normal *nix OS where you d the normal thing by using "su" to log in as root.

Right. But it works great if you're using hardware that doesn't require non-free driver blobs.

The version of XFCE4 in Debian 9 (Stretch) is good enough that xrandr command lines are generally not necessary. You can use the GUI to set up multi-monitor well, and it's somewhat intelligent about when monitors are removed or plugged in. Yippee, XFCE4 finally catches up with GNOME2 circa 2007? The extremely limited XFCE4 GUI interface for configuring multimonitor has been very puzzling for a long time (it could only handle overlapping screens sharing the same top left corner).