Debian fluxbox
 

Hey guys,

I have been Windows user for a long time and finally i had courage to step on the right side. I have been using Ubuntu for 4 months now and i want more.

I have got myself a second laptop in order to mess things around on a proper playground instead of destroying my work setup.

I have browsed a lot and i think i will install 3 distros to deepen my knowledge.

1) Debian kde --> http://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/de...ybrid/?C=S;O=A

2) Korora (also kde)

3) I m not sure :-(


please comment. Also i m not sure if the link i mentioned for debian installation is right or not.


Please reply.

Thanks

I think that having a Debian and a Red Hat version give you a good view of different ways of doing things. Korora certainly speeds up the installation of Fedora, but personally I'd use SolydK rather than the original Debian — it's less likely to break when updating. For the third distro, I'd suggest Salix. That's a user-friendly version of Slackware, so different from the others. That way you'd have representatives of the three oldest streams of Linux development.

Hey there David,

thanks for your reply.

I am confused. What's the difference between actual Debian and a Linux distro based on it. I have put Debian on 1st spot coz i need to learn it. There's a chance that will have to use it in an Office.

Thanks again.

Guys please do reply.

He has had Debian break when it was updating,.. so now he is using a derivative that is run and maintained by different people with different viewpoints on how things are to be done. Generally this is done to improve something that is seen as faulty. Derivatives can range from minor differences to major overhauls, you would have to read the project page to find the exact differences.

If you are getting ready to roll a distribution out, IMO it is safer to go with a top level distro (Red Hat, Debian, etc) because of the support. You will not find much support for a small derivative, but you will find plenty of support for a primary distro.

This is what i found on http://solydxk.com/about/solydxk/



there's not much there on the website regarding differences or rather changes to Debian base that they did. :rolleyes:

M lost. http://distrowatch.com/search.php?basedon=Debian

okay.... after reading this: If the user wants to get a base system and build it up and learn a bit about Linux on the way without getting tied up in knots then Debian is a great base to start learning from. Debian also provides a stable branch, testing branch and unstable branch so it is up to each user whether they want cutting edge software that is untested or a stable system that is relatively bug free.

There are so many distributions out there that have a Debian base and therefore that definitely makes Debian the daddy of distros but for ease of use there are better alternatives such as Mint, Zorin and SolusOS.

on http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/201...l-distros.html

i am firm on Debian KDE. Please suggest me distros for 2nd and 3rd spots.

Please reply folks.

SolusOS died a while ago when the developer threw in the towel. Sad as I used it and it was a really good system.

All the Buntu's (and derivatives) have a Debian base but I don't see them as Debian systems as they are quite removed from the "father". Mint has a Debian edition as well as a Buntu based edition and SolydXK is also a very polished system based on Debian testing. At the end of the day a system with the KDE interface will operate much the same regardless of the family tree - the big difference will be in package management. A very nice KDE system that hasn't been mentioned is PCLinuxOS which has it's roots in the Mandrake system...

Multiple distro setup
 

slack. freebsd. arch and gentoo(funtoo)

That's what VMs are for, no second laptop required.

I agree with suicidaleggroll. If the second laptop is capable of it (that means, have enough RAM and HDD space), put one distro on it, then set up a virtualizer such as VirtualBox. You can have a number of different VMs and experiment with them in turn without having to set up dual or triple boot.

I have four or five VMs on that other computer over there ----->, though I generally don't run more than one at a time. When I want to take a look at a new distro, I generally just fire up VirtualBox and test it out.

I agree with the others here, use virtualbox to give a distro a try. There are so many, distrowatch is a good place to look at a bunch.

I have been going with the Ubuntu variants for years, and have settled on Ubuntu Studio. But, I like XFCE as my de. Ubuntu has tons of online support, pretty much anything you can think of to do, someone has wrote about it somewhere for Ubuntu. And, most of those carry over to Debian and Debian how to's normally carry over to Ubuntu, but it can depend on what it is. If it is adding a ppa to install some piece of software, some of them can even be tweaked to work on Debian (some will break things).

I would say. Take that extra computer and play away. Install a distro, tweak, play, break, and fix it, then install another distro and do it again!

@boog321: Yo! :cool:


I have read about multiple booting setup, how to do it and stuff. What will be the ideal sequence to go for it considering Debian KDE 7.5.0, Korora 20, and something may be salix.

Please reply!

You don't need Debian unofficial KDE liveCD to install KDE, you can do it right from an official DVD or Netinstall disk.

Why Korora and not Fedora? Korora is just Fedora with everything already done for you, there is nothing you can learn from that. Also CentOS 7 has been released just few days ago, it's IMHO even better option if you want to 'deepen your knowledge'.

The same applies for Salix. Slackware is much better choice.

As for an ideal sequence, if you want to multiboot, i would say it doesn't matter much. But as you will most likely partition your harddrive in the first installed distro, so don't start with the Fedora family since their partitioner is widely recognized to be a piece of crap.

I multi-boot. I like to have Debian as the first distro. Your idea of having a second computer to mess around with, I think that's a great way to go.

Many people like VMs and will suggest that; I prefer hard drive installations. To each their own.

I don't think there is an ideal sequence, but I tend to prefer having the more long-term distros first and the ones I consider to be more "experimental" last.

Over time, I've found that I have a preference for distros that have been around for a long time, have larger development teams, and that have lots of good documentation available. I'm okay with messing around with "smaller" distros in some situations (CrunchBang is one that I'm running here right now), but I do end up using the "bigger" ones longer, over time.

I'm sure that SolydXK is a fine distro, but I have not had any problems with breakage while using Debian Stable (Debian user since Etch).

If I were to suggest other distros for you to add, Arch and openSUSE come to mind.

if i have to suggest a distro, i would suggest slackware and debian.

For what it's worth, here's my current set-up that I have on one of my computers, from first to last:

Debian Wheezy (GNOME Shell)
Ubuntu 14.04 (Unity and GNOME Shell)
Arch (Xfce)
openSUSE (KDE and Openbox)
Sabayon (KDE and Fluxbox)
Bridge Linux (Xfce)

Just one example, I guess.

I don't think the order should really matter, they could probably all share the swap, and possibly even the /home directory, or they could each have their own root, could be multiple options to play with. Like I said, break it and figure out what wont work lol

Worst that can happen is that you have to wipe partitions and install again, not a big issue on a play computer. :-)

Some comments on the discussion so far.

1. Solyd, like the Debian edition of Mint, is only semi-rolling-release. It delivers the updates in monthly bundles, after making sure that no-one is having serious trouble with them. That's why it's less likely to break.

2. The things that Korora does for you are installing the media codecs and flash. I don't think that wandering round the internet to find why your media files won't play and where the codecs are is "learning about Linux"!

3. To say that "Slackware is a better choice than Salix" invites the questions "why" and "have you used Salix". Salix is Slackware with the addition of dependency checking, several hundred extra programs, and some handy configuration tools. How that makes it worse is beyond me, but so are some of the posters in this forum!

1. Solyd is certainly not less likely to break when updating (did you mean dist-upgrading?) than original Debian. Than Debian testing, perhaps.

2. Adding these to Fedora is quite easy, requiring just few google searches, no wandering around. Learning how things work in Fedoraland, how to add repos and how to install software is, imho, 'learning about linux' (well, Fedora) enough.

3. Because Salix hides and automates things that are worth learning in Slackware (like dependencies or slackbuilds, for example). And those extra programs are actually just compiled slackbuilds in a repo, nothing really 'extra' you would miss in Slackware somehow.

Yes, i have used Salix with Xfce, back in the 13.37 days, when they released their version in an actually sensible manner, not 'one year after the Slackware we derived from was released, and maybe not at all'. Had problems with it. Gone to Slackware, problems went away.

If the OP didn't want to 'learn or break' but wished to use 'user-friendly versions of' instead, he could as well stay on Ubuntu.

SolydXK is based on Debian Testing! Perhaps you should do some internet searching before posting...

Ok... so far... i am still confused with the choices. However, i stumbled across this video and looks interesting would really like to do this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byW9ivpjDrU

What this guy does is, downloads small cd or tiny usb version of Debian and installs by non gui. then he does install xorg, fluxbox, xdm, xterm, thunar and so on... still i am not sure which other packages i would need to install stuff. I guess just after getting a Desktop i will install synaptics and then view what i need. Will it be helpful?

Further i have some questions:

1) WHile doing multiple installs, i know this is a noob question, How should i do the formatting?
WHat i have in my mind i would part my 320gig HDD into 30gb*3 (num of distros) and leave the remaining space divided into data drives. I won't opt for seperate Home drives and for swap. (I have 4 gigs of ram, won't it be sufficient?)

2) Also, if i am installing, say Atmel toolchain for linux and i want to use it in all distros, how should i go about it? I don't want to install each and everything in each distro! If you know what i mean.


Guys please do reply, your inputs are always helpful :) :D

If you don't have much experience installing Linux, you will probably have trouble using the method you refer to in your last post but it's up to you.

You can do it before beginning the install with GParted, create partitions and format them or you can do it during the install. Again, your choice.

Not sure what you mean by that, 3 30GB partitions for each distribution? Not sure what the purpose of that is. If you want a separate /home partition in addifiton to the root filesystem partition that's a choice frequently used. If you are creating a separate data partition, you can create one which can be shared by all the distros.

I have no idea what that is, maybe others do. You could post a link to a site with information on it.

Sorry, that's the only way. Everything you want to install, you'll have to install on every OS. The vast majority of programs you might want to install depend on shared libraries, and everything is version-matched for compatibility. When you switch to a different OS, you switch shared library versions, and you'll most likely break anything that was compiled to use the other one. Whether or not a program is actually able to work properly on all three OSs is going to be a matter of luck more than anything else.

I really don't understand the point of multi-booting different versions of Linux. In over 12 years of using Linux daily, I have NEVER needed or even wanted a setup like that.

Use one version. If you like it, keep it. If you don't, then experiment with a few others in VMs or live CDs until you find one you like better, and then switch. It's not like multi-booting Windows and Linux. There's nothing you can do in one modern Linux distro that you can't do in another (at least not that I can think of). Some distros might make certain things a bit easier, but are you really going to reboot your computer into a different distro every time you want to use wireless, and then reboot again when you want to listen to something, reboot again when you want to print? So what is the point of multi-booting?

It just sounds like a nightmare to me. If you want to play around with different distros temporarily, use a live CD. If you want to play around with different distros more long-term, use a VM.

Uhh, but i know that pretty well. That's why i wrote it's 'certainly not less likely to break' than original Debian (that is, Debian stable).

If you want to learn, i think this is an excellent idea.

I see nothing wrong with that. 30GB for each distro is large enough. Separate home is not recommended and i agree with you on not doing that, and yes, 4 gigs of ram should be enough, though some small (4GB) swap wouldn't hurt either.

Unfortunately you will have to install each and everything in each distro. These are separate systems, after all.

Really excited to install plain debian with fluxbox non gui
 

Hey guys,

i am all excited for the fluxbox lightweight plain debian... i found some more resources for the same. However, i am unable to loacate correct .iso for the same from debian website. Please tell me which one should i choose... i want just plain debian-base without desktop.

1) mini.iso (size around 25mb) from this link :http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dist...mages/netboot/

or

2)the iso (size around 222mb) that i would get after clicking on amd64 below small cd. http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst



the vast size difference is befuddling me. :newbie:

Did formating with gparted live
 

Hey guys,

please check out the pic. Tell me if i need to change anything? Also i read this file about how to do this. Still m not sure about bootloader and how to modify config file to add newly installed OS.

Please suggest me changes or implementation procedures regarding the same.


thanks again

Doesn't matter what image you pick, as long as you are able to initialize an installation from it. Just untick the 'desktop' during component selection screen.

If you are planning to install Debian on sda3 and some other Linux distributions on sda5 it should work fine. You will need to decide which systems bootloader you want. If you want the Debian bootloader, when you install the second Linux, select to install its bootloader to the root partition on which you are installing it rather than the master boot record. If you are planning to install more than two Linux distributions, you will need to shrink sda5 or sda6 and create another partition.

What's the purpose of the ntfs partition if you are only installing Linux? Will you be using this as a backup for some windows install?

Hey guys,

As per previous discussion, i have following partition table:

bootloader 500mb
swap 4.0gb
debflux 40gb
linux2 60gb
data 193.60gb (rest)


so i installed the debian on debflux partition. While doing the installation i selected bootloader partition as /boot and swap as swap. All went partially well and as i wanted to do, i installed everything manually. fluxbox xorg xdm alsa-utils wicd wicd-gtk bbmail bbtime alltray fbdesk arandr thunar conky vim and so on...

still i have a few problems.

1) Deb doesn't boot correctly. At a point the installer says remove installation media (cd/dvd/usb) and i did. so now it should boot from the ATA hdd. however, it didn't and i got no os found. When i did put usb back in the port and boot the machine. It went straight to grub. Same is happening again and again. It won't boot up without my usb.

2) Audio doesn't work with alsa-utils

3) wicd can't find wifi networks to connect to. (i have already installed firmware-realtek from non-free repos)

please please reply. I am this close to a fun sexy distro.

:(

check out my cool desktop :D
 

hey there tuxbuddies,

i am back with this cool and uncool snaps.

see the second snap. Before this installation i did install Ubuntu thrice and i have no experience about debian. However, I don't know what happened but this is the error i am getting. I just want to mount this empty drive which will be like a Data drive for the debian.


Please give me a reply what may be the cause and what solution i can implement?


thanks. please reply your inputs are important to me.

6 distros, 1 HD ? wtf !

:p

Okey. I see your problem. I had it too. Try this. It's safe and worked for me.

Open the terminal and type

Press S and select the HD-Audio Generic option. Scroll to automute and disable it now turn up all the volume options Press Esc to exit

Done!

************************************************************************

use https://wiki.debian.org/NetworkManager !!!

Well you're not authorized. Who owns the filesystem?

I guess you formatted it with mkfs (or left it on the installer) and now it has root:root privileges. In that case read up on chown ('man chown'. You did want to learn, did you? :P ), then mount it as root (preferably using terminal) and change the privileges to the user.

You could try to reinstall grub (with no usb attached). Try
as root.

The first command installs grub to MBR (actually wherever you tell it to, but you should install it to MBR). The sdX is the physical disk you want grub on (not a partition, so no numbers, like 'sda1').
The second command updates the grub.cfg file.

You put the bootloader on the usb. Note that the bootloader (grub) is NOT the same thing as the /boot partition.

hey friends,

i didn't understand a thing about the bootloader or grub. First i can tell you guys, while doing the installation i selected the partition of 500mb size as the /boot and rest of the stuff. Then at the end it couldn't boot without usb. After reading from several webpages forums i knew one thing that i have to repair the grub and that i did using a grub-repair-disk. I downloaded the iso file and put it in a usb using unetbootin and ran recommended repair option. Afterwards, debian could boot up own it's own. I have no idea how to manipulate grub to do provide options at the grub menu of several distros.

About file system, i think i might have left the two drives to : do not use option.
any idea how i can modify this without doing reinstallation?

Now, wifi, audio, video works. Still in thunar i can't see icons.


Please reply, i l be waiting.

Ok, but again, the bootloader is not the same thing as /boot. You put /boot on its own partition, and that's fine, but where to put the bootloader is a completely separate question. It usually asks after the partitioning is done, before it starts the installation. You don't pick a mount point or a partition, you pick a drive, and apparently you picked the usb drive.

As Captain Pinkeye said in his post, you can fix this with grub-install and update-grub.

Is it still necessary? i used grub-repair. If yes please elaborate a bit.

I didn't understand it really. What do u mean by /dev/sdX what is sdX if not denoting a partition. should i write sd0 if i have only one hard disk?

Also how can i solve my mounting problems which i showed in my second snapshot before and no icons.

I mis-read your post, I thought you said "Afterwards, debian couldn't boot up on it's own", implying that nothing had changed. It does appear that it fixed your problem.

For the record, Linux and Windows treat drives and partitions very differently. In Windows, you don't see anything until you have a drive, with a partition, with a filesystem, and it's mounted, at which point it shows up as C: or D: or whatever stupid name Windows decides to give it.

In Linux, you can see everything. You can see and manipulate bare drives, or bare partitions, or filesystems, or you can mount them, and you can mount them wherever you want in the common directory structure (instead of each drive having its own, separate directory structure). In Linux, drives are called sdX, where X can be a, b, c, d, and so on. So one drive would be sda, another would be sdb, etc. Within each drive, you have partitions. These are called sdX#, so the first partition on sda would be sda1, the second partition on sda would be sda2, and so on.

What he was saying is that when you go to install grub, you do it on the drive itself, not the partition. So if you wanted it on sda, you would choose /dev/sda, rather than, say, /dev/sda3 which might contain your /boot partition.

You should write sda.
There and there is a quick overview you could find useful. Basically, sda denotes your first harddrive, sda1 first partition on that harddrive.

What exactly do you want to modify? Do you want to format them (you can use Gparted) or add them as existing partitions to the system (you can do that by editing fstab)?

Best to use a less mechanical distro!

try this:

http://www.linuxmint.com/

http://www.salixos.org/

http://www.opensuse.org/en/

http://aptosid.com/

http://fedoraproject.org/

@Captain Pinkeye

I just want to access the two other empty drives as data partitions. RIght now i am getting error as No Authority in THunar when i click on them.

If you want to access data on an additional drive you need to first create a mount point, then create a filesystem, then mount the filesystem. If you want the partitions to be mounted on boot, you need to put a proper entry in the /etc/fstab file. If you are not familiar with these actions, you need to post back with what you do and do not know.

hello everyone..
i am trying to install NS2 i followed the instructions and installed NS2 correctly. Checked its correctness via typing ns after its complete installation but when i tried to check whether nam is installed correctly but i am unable to see the animator window. i always get segmentation fault.please help me and tell whats the problem and how to resolve it..
thank you.

jyotipandey:

Please start a new thread as your questions is unrelated to the topic of this thread.

@yancek: dude thanks for your help appreciate it big time!

now back to mounting. I used Ub previously. So while using it a user can just click on the partition which is visible at left part of the file manager and then it gets mounted. This is what i want. When i click on partition i just get not authorized error.

this theory part that u talked about is perfect. How do i do this?

editing fstab will mount everything directly which is not problematic but i would like to go the UB way as i mentioned before.

Run: fdisk -l(Lower case Letter L in the command) and post the output here. We don't know how many drives/partitions you have. Identify which one has your Debian or whatever operating system you are using and also which drive you want to create a partition on for data. You would first need to create a partition or partitions, you would then need to format them, then create the mount point and after that mount each partition. Not knowing what partitions you have, we would end up with a lot of confusing examples so posting the fdisk output would be a good first step.

While you are waiting for a response, you could use the Search function here at LQ to look for posts on how to create a mount point and how to manually mount a partition.

output 1:
output 2: mount
output 3:

Your posts are confusing. In an earlier post, you indicated you wanted to access data on two additional drives yet the fdisk output you posted only shows one hard drive. Did you not have the other hard drives attached? or are you using the term drive when you mean partition? To add to the confusion, your fstab output shows a reference to a boot partition on sda1 as well as sdb1 and it shows your root partition as being on sdb3. You don't show a second drive which would be sdb??

Yeah, only six. I cut back this year. :cool:

From fdisk -l

/dev/sda5 93302784 219131903 62914560 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 219133952 625141759 203003904 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

I want to just mount as and when needed when i click on them in File manager (thunar)

That's all.

Regarding sdb confusion, it refers to the pendrive that was connected during installation only.