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The Well-Tempered Debian desktop

Posted by timothy on from the warms-the-cockles dept.

An anonymous reader writes "What happens when the editor of a popular Linux website attempts to install a Debian Etch desktop on an old ThinkPad? How does it turn out? Surprisingly well! The article comprises an entertaining account of the entire process, complete with lots of informative screenshots, from downloading the net-install to tangling with Wi-Fi and modem PCMCIA cards as the last step — and everything in between. A great primer for Debian newbies... Go Debian!"

10 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. I just did that! by EvanED · · Score: 3, Informative

    I just did the exact same thing myself. I don't know what type of computer this guy had, but I installed Etch on a Thinkpad 390X this past Friday. (That's like a 5 year old at least model I got for $40 used...) It went suprisingly simply actually. It even detected my wireless card no problems, which really surprised me.

    The only hitch in the procedure that is even sorta the fault of Linux is that I don't know how to get it so that the computer will hibernate/resume.

    1. Re:I just did that! by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Informative

      The only hitch in the procedure that is even sorta the fault of Linux is that I don't know how to get it so that the computer will hibernate/resume.

      Check out swsusp.

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    2. Re:I just did that! by walt-sjc · · Score: 2, Informative

      Whenever you have difficulty installing Linux, the general solution is to use google.

      Oh my, look at that... The first result provides some clues...

    3. Re:I just did that! by massysett · · Score: 2, Informative

      Check out swsusp

      You linked to suspend2. Actually swsusp and suspend2 are different. swsusp is in the main sources from kernel.org. It suspends to disk. suspend2 also suspends to disk, but also has additional features like compression and eye candy. It is not in the main sources from kernel.org so you have to patch your kernel or see if your distro offers a kernel already patched with suspend2 sources (Gentoo does, for example.)

      On another note, suspend to ram is built in to the main sources. There's only one implementation of that.

      Configuring suspend can be time consuming trial and error. What I think we need is a laptop distro, or at least some sort of app that sees what kind of laptop you have and automatically configures suspend, multimedia buttons, wireless, and other things that are peculiar to laptops.

      --
      Penny - plain text accounting
  2. Re:Any idea...? by ninjazach · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm not sure if I am correct here, but I believe that this particular user had customized KDE with the Redmond KWin window border theme that ships with KDE.

  3. Etch and Thinkpads by spidas · · Score: 2, Informative

    The "dear editor" should try installing Etch on a LENOVO-built T60p, and then maybe, just maybe I'll be impressed!! (Writing this on an IBM-built T42p while my brand new LENOVO-built T60p languishes!!!)

  4. Re:Any idea...? by tacocat · · Score: 2, Informative

    That's why they include WindowMaker. No START button and simple interface.

  5. Re:for Dell Inspiron 1150 by krmt · · Score: 3, Informative
    1. 915resolution needed, as mentioned above
    This is an issue with the Xorg i810 driver, and it's being remedied there. A beta version of the driver (xserver-xorg-video-i810-modesetting) is already available in the Debian unstable branch, and it'll be ready by the next Debian release.
    --

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."

  6. Re:Not really that old... by Orange+Crush · · Score: 1, Informative

    My handy laptop is an old thinkpad as well--P3 @ 800mhz & 512 ram. The only reason it runs XP is because I could never get power management to work properly under any distros I tried. (a bit of a deal breaker on a laptop.)

  7. Re:Fine and all but by MostAwesomeDude · · Score: 2, Informative

    Huh. I'm not sure if you should be Informative or Troll. Anyway, I'll bite.

    So, Nvidia drivers aren't all that bad. There's a nice installer for them nowadays that you can download from their site. Same for ATI. Not really that big of a deal; you have to do it on Windows, too.

    DVDs are a bit of a pain, but it's not as bad as you make it out to be. You can add sources to your APT list from within most package managers (in a GUI), and you only have to add one source to make it work.

    If your 5.1 actually works magically in Windows XP, then I congratulate you, because my nice SB card never bothered to correctly work in Windows. Only the ALSA drivers could make it go into surround or digital mode.

    My steps for DVDs on Etch:

    * Go to ATI's site, and get the ATI driver package.
    * Install ATI drivers.
    * Load the fglrx kernel module, and restart the X server. (You could reboot instead, but my BIOS is too slow to boot for my patience.)
    * Open up KPackage.
    * Add VLC's repository to APT sources from KPackage.
    * Download and install vlc and libdvdcss.
    * Insert DVD and open VLC.

    Not actually that bad of a process.

    Oh, also, it says on the download page for VLC that you cannot play DVDs in Linux without libdvdcss. I'm not really sure how you missed that the first time...

    --
    ~ C.