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After getting Mint 8 back into my machine just fine, I took and look and discovered Min 9 ... but Mint 9's installer (partitioner) simply cannot deal with my drives for some reason. In any case, Debian had been recommended to me as "cutting edge" rather than "bleeding edge", so I presently have Debian's installer running ... but now for the second time. In the "manual" mode I need for dealing with my multi-boot system, Debian's installer presents options I had never before seen ... and I think my overall inexperience with any Linux is the biggest reason behind why my first installation of Debian did not boot.

Are you using Debian Stable or Debian Testing?

I'd recommend Testing, as Stable is pretty old (kernel 2.6.26 I think) and the current Testing is getting pretty close to its release date.

Oops.

Last edited by leejosepho on 12 Jul 2010, 8:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ah yes, but oh no ... not gonna bite on that one, my fellow! This "stable" version is quite impressive and will do just fine.

I have no idea why the Debian installer gave me an error even the second time through when I tried to put GRUB on Debian's "/boot", but everything works perfectly now that I have instead used LiLo (or however that should be written).

I can barely see these little-bitty characters here, but I had never even ever heard of Epiphany until just a few minutes ago so I have yet to have any idea about how to enlarge them.

Hey Fuzzy: I thank you! You are the one who first pointed me toward Linux and might have even mentioned Debian!

So overall, I now have a really neat setup here ...

My old IBM and Win95 are good-to-go here next to me whenever I might want to get another taste from where I began while my Commodore days were coming to an end, and now I have 98, 2k, XP, Win7 and this Debian all right here at my fingertips and on a single screen!

Sweet.

i started off with Ubuntu - intending to switch to Debian or something else (Ubuntu is, as you will know, based on Debian - perfect for a *Nix n00b like me lol).

3 years down the line i'm still on Ubuntu
and mac, but that's another story

There's an option somewhere in the preferences dialog to change the default fonts, but you'd probably be better off just using Iceweasel (Debian's Firefox) since the Epiphany in Lenny is a really outdated version, still running Gecko as opposed to Webkit like in the newer ones. The Gecko engine (and an old one at that) basically just makes it a worse version of Firefox.

If you want to stick with Debian Stable, that's fine too, but be sure to check your '/etc/apt/sources.list' file to make sure it says "lenny" instead of just "stable" or else you'll get a very unexpected large (and potentially disruptive) update in a few months when Squeeze becomes the new "stable." I would recommend adding the backports repository as well so you can get newer versions of some programs without upgrading your whole system. Running a hybrid stable/testing or stable/sid system becomes extremely dangerous, so backports is really your only option for new software.

GRUB needs to get installed to the MBR of the first drive to boot (in the bios). Ususally /dev/sda (for sata drives) or /dev/hda if you have an IDE hard drive. You have to edit the grub.cfg to set up your other operating systems. This is detailed in the manual.

I will check those things, Orwell, and I thank you.

... and that is exactly what I am specifically avoiding. At the moment I know virtually nothing at all about any Linux or GRUB command, but NeoSmart's "EasyBCD" has a GUI and does everything GRUB will do and even more, as far as I know. But beyond all of that, and during each of their respective installations, Win7 has already hijacked XP's hijacking of Win2k's hijacking of Win98's boot, and I would not want to have to sort all of that out even with EasyBCD! So, Debian is now "entry #3" in Win7's boot menu, with the first entry there being a link back to XP's hijacking of a hijacking and the second entry pointing to Win7 ... and I can easily get to and change any one or at least most of those without having to use anything more complex than a GUI text editor.

Multi-booting can be maddening, but it sure is a kick now that everything actually works!

If it works, why mess with it, eh?!

My first online experience was at 2mhz and 1200 baud, and I would still be there if that would still work.

I am fairly sure the download page said "lenny", and all I get there above is "Permission denied" ... and I also need to access at least one or two of my Win$ drives on this machine while in Debian. So, I have some learning and a bit of work to do concerning "permission" on a machine I happen to own!

You are welcome. I am enjoying reading about your adventures in computing.

Right, your sources.list file can only be edited with root privileges, though you should be able to view it with "less /etc/apt/sources.list" as a regular user. During installation, Debian should have asked you for a root password. To become root, type 'su' and then enter your password, after which you can use gedit or your preferred editor to open sources.list.

If you get permission errors when trying to access drives, try "sudo nautilus" to open a file manager as root. If it says you're not in the sudoers file, then you need to use su to become root, then type "nautilus" to get your file browser. You could also try PCManFM, an alternate file manager which includes a menu item to "open current folder as root" allowing you past the permissions issue.

Right now, "lenny" is "stable." Your sources.list file might say either one and it means the same thing. But once squeeze (the next version) goes stable, "stable" will no longer mean "lenny," so unless you want to upgrade you have to make sure it explicitly says "lenny" instead.

Thats a bit extreme Oh-well.

'gksu gedit' is the correct way to open gedit with admin permissions.

nautilus-open-terminal is an app I use that allows terminal to be opened with a right click on the current file window. nautilus-gksu adds open as administrator to the right click as well. Between the two it really cuts down on CLI typing.

Both can be found in synaptic.

Right, but I'm not sure if gksu requires you to be in the sudoers file. The default Debian configuration gives you a standard account and a root account, and the standard account can't use sudo unless you feel like using the arcane "visudo" command to adjust some stuff.


Nice, I'll have to check those out. Mint already gives me the terminal in the context menu by default, but opening current location as root is something that's really lacking in Nautilus.

I guess thats something worth knowing. leejosepho can you test it since you are running pure debian? It works just like sudo but its for anything that should open a gui. Thanks!

Same here, I am also glad that you are acquiescing to the second of my 'custom rank' entreatments, now for the first one, any chance of some action on that one?

BTW Lee I would dearly like to help you, but my level of knowledge re-linux is not much higher than your own. There are however some incredibly knowledgeable linux people on this forum and it would be really nice to see them offering you a little more assistance.