OT: Happy Debian Day!

[Attila]

As an Evil Scientist Nerd (ESN) I am often asked by total strangers what OS
would the Saviour use. As you all know the correct answer is "Microsoft
Windows". Less frequent is the request for information on what OS and Distro
Darwin would have used. Today, 16 August, seemed appropriate to remind
everyone that Darwin used Gnu/Linux and Debian was his favourite distro.

HAPPY DEBIAN DAY to one and all!

[*Hemidactylus*]

Actually Darwin would have used Mac OS X, since it is the Darwin OS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_%28operating_system%29

[J. J. Lodder]

Attila <jdka...@gmail.com> wrote:

> As an Evil Scientist Nerd (ESN) I am often asked by total strangers what OS
> would the Saviour use. As you all know the correct answer is "Microsoft
> Windows".

Why the need to ask?

The guy is Evil, isn't he?

Jan

[Slow Vehicle]

...not "Peppermint X"?

[Attila]

No all the Peppermint was eaten by Shuttleworth's Voracious Velociraptor (or
what that Villainous Velocipede?)

[Attila]

Wasn't that simply to curry favour? or was it to vindaloo a chicken? (sorry
I get silly on Debian day).

[Slow Vehicle]

I though it was for his tan dhurrie (f1 mutant from brown Persian
stock)...

[Attila]

Did you taste it? That should tell you. You can't mistake tan dhurrie.

[Slow Vehicle]

I looked for scorchmarks, but I could find naan. (Iv'e never seen a
tan dhurrie with steak...we usaally hold'em down with double-sided
tape...)

[Slow Vehicle]

On Aug 16, 9:49 am, Attila <jdkay...@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, I looked for scorch marks, but I could find naan. I've never
had tan dhurrie with steak (we usually hold 'em down with double sided
tape...)

[Paul J Gans]

My first distro was SLS. My second was Slackware. Both predate
Debian by a number of years. I've never used Debian directly.

--
--- Paul J. Gans

[Attila]

In fact not so, Paul. Slackware and Debian appeared in the same year: 1993.
Today is Debian's 19 birthday. I'm not sure on what day in 1993 Slackware
was first released. SLS was released in 1992 so only one year before Debian
and Slackware.

[Paul J Gans]

I stand corrected. Or rather, I'm sitting corrected.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Ouch! Unity my brother. Unity.

I have messed around with Debian in the past. The Debian version of
Linux Mint ain't too bad.

I also tried Slackware for kicks and giggles.

One up and coming distro worth trying is Bodhi.

[Attila]

But *respect* for SLS. That was definitely hard core.

[Walter Bushell]

In article <k0i8ih$ff1$1...@dont-email.me>, Attila <jdka...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Darwin would use Darwin, of course. Perhaps topped by a Born Again
Shell.

--
This space unintentionally left blank.

[Attila]

Only while looking for some other jobs and the mispelling of the name of a
CLI is an evil that must be bourne yet again.

[*Hemidactylus*]

On 08/16/2012 12:26 PM, nmp wrote:
> Attila:

> Hurray!
>
> (another - mostly - happy user here)

I downloaded the Live DVD and booted, then realized it's 6.0.4. I like
live images. I downloaded 6.0.5 as DVD (the first DVD). Damn there's
lots of DVDs and even more CDs in the ISO set. Allegedly only the
magical 1st disc is sufficient for most users. Yet in a distro like
Debian is having the newest version all that critical?

I could install from live 6.0.4 and upgrade somehow or just install from
the 1st DVD of 6.0.5. One thing about Debian is that, unlike Fedora, it
seems to be extremely conservative. It takes a while for new concepts,
like GNOME 3 to pollute the distro. This can be a good thing. But it's
good to have more recent versions of some software and you really gotta
know what you're doing to deal with that stuff yourself. Debian doesn't
spoonfeed. The spoonfed distros are good at keeping software included
with their install up to date. Canonical used to lag behind Microsoft
on Firefox and still you gotta wait for them to set it up and push it
through the update manager, where using Windows you can update Firefox
within Firefox. Spoonfed Linux uses a different paradigm. And going off
the reservation and installing newer software outside Synaptic or other
distro specific channels is harrowing for the newbie. Tar!

My naive impression is that Debian stable kinda drags its heels, unless
the end-user is adept at knowing how to maintain installed packages
without handholding. My experience with this sort of thing comes from
installing a more recent Firefox on my own when whatever distro I was
using was dragging its heels. I dealt with that with no problem, but
slammed headfirst into the roadblock of dealing with Firefox plugins
when I decided to go off the reservation. I fear what upgrading the
kernel on my own in Debian might be like.

[Attila]

*Hemidactylus* wrote:

> On 08/16/2012 12:26 PM, nmp wrote:
>> Attila:
>>
>>> As an Evil Scientist Nerd (ESN) I am often asked by total strangers what
>>> OS would the Saviour use. As you all know the correct answer is
>>> "Microsoft Windows". Less frequent is the request for information on
>>> what OS and Distro Darwin would have used. Today, 16 August, seemed
>>> appropriate to remind everyone that Darwin used Gnu/Linux and Debian was
>>> his favourite distro.
>>>
>>> HAPPY DEBIAN DAY to one and all!
>>
>> Hurray!
>>
>> (another - mostly - happy user here)
>
> I downloaded the Live DVD and booted, then realized it's 6.0.4. I like
> live images. I downloaded 6.0.5 as DVD (the first DVD). Damn there's
> lots of DVDs and even more CDs in the ISO set. Allegedly only the
> magical 1st disc is sufficient for most users. Yet in a distro like
> Debian is having the newest version all that critical?

The easiest way to install Debian is to use the netinst iso image of your
preferred release (unstable, testing or stable). If you are not setting up a
server for 160 clients but are setting up a machine for your own personal
use I's strongly recommend Testing (current code name Wheezy). It is a
"rolling release" (you can get updates every day or as frequently as you
wish). Even though it's called "testing" all Debian releases tend to be
rather conservative and you'll experience very few if any problems. The
Netinst methods involves you installing a base system from a CD (or memory
stick) that you burned containing a bootable ISO image of around 180MB. Then
the installer sets you up on a set of repositories that contain all the
additional software that you will ever need. You pick what you want and
Bazinga! you've got you're system running. Assuming a reasonable network
connection, it should take about 20-60 minutes for the whole thing. It's
quite easy and Debian steps you through it like a loving mother. Here's the
page you need:
<http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/>
BTW you can install Debian over another already existing OS on your disk and
create a dual boot system.

>
> I could install from live 6.0.4 and upgrade somehow or just install from
> the 1st DVD of 6.0.5.

You don't need to be messing about with all those DVD's unless you don't
have a network connection.

> One thing about Debian is that, unlike Fedora, it
> seems to be extremely conservative. It takes a while for new concepts,
> like GNOME 3 to pollute the distro.

Yes and no. It depends on which release you're using. If you want pretty
"cutting-edge" then use "Sid", the Unstable release.

> This can be a good thing. But it's
> good to have more recent versions of some software and you really gotta
> know what you're doing to deal with that stuff yourself.

You can actually mix and match your software. I use a system that is mid-way
between testing and unstable with most of my media software from the
"unstable" release. Don't be frightened by the word "unstable"; it is meant
for servers which require total and absolute stability. There is a method
called "pinning" or "alt-pinning" which allows you to like specific software
to a specific releatse so you can really fine-tune your system exactly the
way you want it.

> Debian doesn't
> spoonfeed. The spoonfed distros are good at keeping software included
> with their install up to date.

(1) Debian is a lot more gentle than it used to be.
(2) It is extremely easy to keep your system up to date.
Each morning I type 2 commands into my console:
(1)sudo aptitude update
(2) sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
That's it. The whole thing takes from 2-5 minutes (you can do other things
in the meantime) as you system is totally upto date all the time.

> Canonical used to lag behind Microsoft
> on Firefox and still you gotta wait for them to set it up and push it
> through the update manager, where using Windows you can update Firefox
> within Firefox.

The whole point of using gnu/linux is "freedom" -- free as in beer, of
course but more importantly "free as in speech". Years ago I found the
updating of mozilla software to be a bit slow as you said. NO PROBLEM. I go
to the Mozilla site and download THE VERY LATEST version of what I want -- I
can even go hard-core and use pre-release beta versions of anything they've
got.

> Spoonfed Linux uses a different paradigm. And going off
> the reservation and installing newer software outside Synaptic or other
> distro specific channels is harrowing for the newbie. Tar!

Only if you're dimwitted. If you get a tarball, from say www.mozilla.org and
the file is called "firefox-14.0.1.tar.bz2". You've downloaded this tarball
to, say, the /tmp folder. So...whaddayado?
(1) Navigate to the /tmp folder by typing this command at a console
cd /tmp
(2) untar the tarball by typing this command at a console
tar jxvf firefox-14.0.1.tar.bz2
That will create a folder called "firefox" with all the relevant files in
all the right places in your /tmp folder. The final step is to move the
newly created firefox folder to a convenient place such as the /opt folder.
This command will do it (remember you're still in the /tmp folder):
(3) sudo mv firefox/ /opt
and you're done.

>
> My naive impression is that Debian stable kinda drags its heels, unless
> the end-user is adept at knowing how to maintain installed packages
> without handholding. My experience with this sort of thing comes from
> installing a more recent Firefox on my own when whatever distro I was
> using was dragging its heels. I dealt with that with no problem, but
> slammed headfirst into the roadblock of dealing with Firefox plugins
> when I decided to go off the reservation. I fear what upgrading the
> kernel on my own in Debian might be like.

Upgrading the kernel is no different from updating any other package. My
kernels get updated along with every other installed package having a newer
version available with the 2 commands given above. Linux kernels are called
"linux-image" in Debian and excuting the command:
aptitude search linux-image
will give you a list of all the available kernels. Updating them does not
involve any particular problems. Compiling them yourself is another story.

Above all, freedom is fun! So enjoy. :)

[*Hemidactylus*]

Thanks for the pointers. I did the wheezy netinst and it was a really
cool method. I wound up with a GNOME3 desktop environment on a netbook.
It's a little sluggish, but not bad. Maybe I could have skipped over
picking the desktop installation and wound up with a minimal install
bootprompt where I could have issued commands to install LXDE and went
from there. I can live with GNOME3 for now. It could be worse...KDE ;-)

[Attila]

Thanks for the tip about the David McRaney. I ...uh....obtained a copy and
am looking forward to reading it.

> I did the wheezy netinst and it was a really
> cool method. I wound up with a GNOME3 desktop environment on a netbook.

At the very first screen there is a menu item called "Advanced Options" or
something similar. Debian defaults to Gnome if you don't tell it otherwise.
The advanced options gives you a choice of desktops and you can select the
one you want at that point. I use KDE and my GF uses LXDE. It's extremely
easy to add new desktop environments/window managers at any time. If you're
using a netbook you might want a snappier window manager than Gnome, which
is indeed kind of clunky. You might want to try LXDE, Awesome, or Fluxbox
(to name just 3). These are lightweight and very fast.

> It's a little sluggish, but not bad. Maybe I could have skipped over
> picking the desktop installation and wound up with a minimal install
> bootprompt where I could have issued commands to install LXDE and went
> from there. I can live with GNOME3 for now. It could be worse...KDE ;-)

That's correct. See above. DE's or Window manager are like bands (Rolling
Stones, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd...). The debates on their
relative merits know no bounds.