On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 08:09:16PM +0000, Nuno Magalh??es wrote: > I have an amd64 system that is still dualboot with XP. It has a 100GB > FAT32 that i use as my "/home" but since i barely use XP anymore and i > had some issues with FAT32 i'm gonna resize my 20GB XP partition (oh, > wait, i have game isos...) and change the fat to ext3. Also, my system > got infected with this virus called gnome, which is really hard to get > rid off. I hear KDE is the same and with so much X experimenting i'm > not sure anymore which session/display/window/file/___managers i have > and which are default. It's annoying. I also surely have some lost and > unused packages and i could use some tweaking as far as partition > sizes go, so, this implies repartition and reformat anyway. > > Before i do that, i want some advice. Here are the specs: > power supply: 400W > motherboard: Asus M2NPV-VM > processor: AMD Athlon64 3500+ (2.2GHZ PIB SOCKET AM2 512KB CACHE) > RAM: 2x Kingston 1G DDR2 800MHz CL5 (with two empty slots) > hard-drive: Maxtor 160GB SATA II 7200RPM 8Mb Cache > DVD: LG RW GSA-H10A (never used it in Debian yet actually) > > There are 3 other computers, two debians wired to the NAT router, > another wireless with Vista (i'm thiking printers and Samba later). > > Starting with general questions, one of my future projects will be to > fiddle around with Linux from Scratch. The thing is, if i compile > everything, will i be able to compile a package manager and use it to > manage everything i've already compiled? If not i'm stuck with a > system that's not easily upgradable (although that's not the point > with LFS).
You either do it all yourself, or you use a distribution with a package manager (although you can get the source packages and tweak and build the packages and install those if you want for the few things you might want tweaked). > Religious question #1: which PM to use? I mostly use APT and i'm quite > happy with it. Aptitude seemed ok. I want automatic removal of unused > packages and whatever else is there to make management easy. you can replace apt-get with aptitude and use exactly the same commands: aptitude update aptitude dist-upgrade aptitude install X aptitude remove X It just has better dependency resolution and auto removes unused packages that were installed automatically. > Religious question #2: Display Manager. XDM does the job and i guess > with some fiddling it could even become pretty. I have other machines, > only one monitor and i'm lazy. I can get away with openSSH but i'd > like to open a window on my desktop and connect to the other boxes. I > did it once!! So, i'd like to use the same DM in all machines, one > that will later allow me to remote session. I think SDM is > discontinued (used SSH - i don't need it on my local network but its > fun), i refuse to use GDM or KDM since i dislike the corresponding > desktop enviroments (although i'm now using gdm). So... unless(?) i go > for VNC i'd like a DM that can handle XDMCP. Honestly who cares what the login prompt looks like. You should care what your X session looks like after you login and mainly that it works in a way you like. kdm and gdm look prettier than xdm, and give you a menu to select the session type, while xdm just uses your .xsession or if you don't have one, whatever the default on the system is. > And the difference between a display manager and a session manager? Display manager handles the login prompt. The session manager deals with what programs and window manager and such to run. You can run X without a display manager by just using startx from the console when you want to start X. You can do without a session manager by just creating a .xsession file listing which programs you want to run and a window manager. > Languages and i18n. My mother tongue is NOT english. I'm ok with it > being the system language, i actually like the interface to be > english, since i don't really appreciate other translations, but i > want to be able to use the system (keyboard et al) for my own language > (portuguese), as well as others (esperanto and russian). I want to be > able to have filenames with portuguese accented letters, cyrillic or > hebrew characters if i freaking want to - and use them on the console. > Admitedly i ran into most problems with the FAT32 partition, but i > still get a lot of garble. > > How can i guarantee a default Unicode system? Which brings us to the > next question. Well you could install the system using en_US.UTF-8 or en_CA.UTF-8 or en_GB.UTF-8 as your locale. > Fonts. While fiddling with the default X meta-package (oh :(, i'd > forgotten about that) i ran into 3 different locations for fonts. > Apapretly Xfs is deprecated. I want my fonts to be central and > unicode, available to all programs, at least. I don't want fonts that > are not unicode - any tweaks? defoma tends to do a good job just making fonts work. Then you just install the fonts you want. unifont for example is a broad range unicode font. Of course for some things having the msttcorefonts installed is helpful too. > Short of compiling it how can i assure that my X server will be > adapted to my hardware? It often installs drivers for a bunch of cards > unnecessarily, for instance. And this motherboard has an onborad > nVidia chip which i'd like to use to the max (and how could i test > that?). Also i know this monitor (Samtron 55E) supports more than > 800x600 resolutions, but i can't really know if it's using something > above that. Also there doesn't seem to be a standard as fas as icons > (and its size/behaviour) go... Just install xserver-xorg-video-nv then. I think by default it may install xserver-xorg-video-all which depends on all the individual packages. > The installation: i want to be sure i'll only instal the most basic > packages, the "minimal" system. I could use the netinst CD i used last > time (May) but it would be interesting to use a USB pen-drive. I have > a 2GB Kingston, i assume that's feasable. It does install a minimal system unless you tell it you want a desktop task installed in which case you get gnome and crap as well. > As far as general questions go, that's it for now i guess. All > cronstructive criticism is welcome. Next wil be partitions :-) -- Len Sorensen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
