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Installed Debian Wheezy on my laptop & desktop!


Guest LilBambi

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Guest LilBambi

I finally was able to take the time to install Debian Wheezy on my Sony Vaio laptop (details in specs on profile).

 

It was a jump believe it or not from Debian Lenny to Wheezy and I did a complete of my /, /home and swap partitions since there wasn't much I needed from the old install.

 

I really like Wheezy. I did connect via wired network to get my Intel Wireless 2200 card (ipw2200 firmware) Just got it from apt-get which was very easy:

 

apt-get install firmware-ipw2x00

 

I installed KDE Desktop and everything so far locally from the CD including mc, xfce, LXDE so far.

 

Customized it as well. I will post a screenshot later.

 

I am very much liking Wheezy. I have customzied KDE to my liking with transparency on the task bar and when I move windows, etc. I am still wanting to get more transparency as time goes on.

 

Still have updates to get and programs to install like Google Chrome which comes through their own servers after our monthly turnover in a few days. We are way close to our limit right now and can't do that till it rolls over.

 

Very nice job they did on Wheezy so far. Of course I have much to customize before it will be all I want it to be. (I'm picky). ;)

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I don't use the touchpad on my notebooks -- for me, just gets in the way when I'm typing. Finally found that in Debian Wheezy KDE, I could install kde-config-touchpad (it's already included in Kubuntu 12.04). Then I found synaptiks in the Utilities menu, opened that up to the "Touchpad management" tab, and put a check in the box to disable the touchpad whenever a mouse is plugged in. Yay!

 

I like Wheezy too, LilBambi. On my three notebooks, I have either Wheezy KDE, Wheezy Xfce, or Wheezy GNOME (yeah, three notebooks, but they're all cheap notebooks -- fine for Linux, though, and fine for the stuff I do). I can't even begin to decide which DE I like best in Wheezy, either.

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Guest LilBambi

Awesome! I have Xfce, KDE and LXDE installed on this laptop too - but as choices. That's great info about the touchpad too!

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Guest LilBambi

Well installed Debian Wheezy on my desktop dualboot computer. Wheezy running KDE with the same modifications I had on the laptop do not work as well. I have had to switch over to LXDE. And I have 2GB RAM on the Desktop. Doesn't make much sense. Also on the desktop, I am getting some [drm] nouveau errors. I read about putting 'quiet' and something else in grub but it wasn't clear that this was the same issue.

 

Seems to work well in LXDE so it has to be the settings in KDE. Amazing that the laptop with only 1GB RAM and the same settings doesn't do this. Of course I am using a higher resolution screen than on the laptop. Maybe that has something to do with it.

 

I will put my new Desktop screenshot in the screenshot topic.

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securitybreach

You probably already know but nouveau is the open source nvidia driver and is not yet on par with the closed driver. You may want to try out the closed nvidia driver.

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Guest LilBambi

OK, if I can't figure out what is causing the problem, I will try the nvidia driver.

 

I am not all that thrilled with pulseaudio either....but it's behaving now. - just on the Desktop.

Edited by LilBambi
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Guest LilBambi

Like the Wireless card on the laptop, I put off installing the RALink wireless card on the Desktop as well since I was not using any connection during the install. After I did the installation and then installed mc, LXDE, and Xfce, then I went back to install the RALink firmware for the wireless.

 

I used dpkg to install the .deb file as root (can put sudo in front of it if you use sudo):

 

dpkg -i firmware-ralink_0.36+wheezy.1_all.deb

 

It seemed to install fine. I don't really use the wireless on the Desktop, but sometime it might come in handy.

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I ran Wheezy for a while in a VBox machine and I liked the Debian minimal Installer. However naked Gnome 3.0 drove me bonkers. Maybe I should have tried Xfce.

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Guest LilBambi

Yes, I like the ascii installer and I chose KDE for the original install as the alternate Desktop choice. Then later installed LXDE and Xfce. And some Gnome apps so I would get Gnome libs. ;)

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I have never been able to "like" KDE and the latest 4.X version is also a bit strange if you ask me (who does?) Mainly I like the Gnome apps like Abiword, Gnumeric, Rhythmbox, Sound Juicer I guess. They work fine with Xfce.

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Guest LilBambi

Yep, all Gnome apps work great in all the Desktops. I use many Gnome apps, but don't like Gnome visually and as you know the reason there are so many distros and desktop GUIs is because Linux likes to provide us all with our desires in an OS!!! :yes:

Edited by LilBambi
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V.T. Eric Layton

You should borrow some of my custom KDE 4 graphics, Ray...

 

morpheus-meme-generator-blue-for-kde-red-for-xfce-bloat-or-freedom-the-choice-is-yours-491323.png

 

kde-demon.png

 

count-kde.png

 

hey-kde.png

 

kde4-not.png

 

I kill me! :hysterical:

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I guess the Trinity desktop does for KDE 3.X what MATE did for Gnome 2.X so that's the likely way to go if you like classic KDE. I've never been a huge fan of KDE in any form but that's because I started with Gnome 2 and always liked it.

MATE is a great desktop but the more I use Cinnamon, the better I like it. It just works for me - and the developers of Cinnamon seem more interested in getting a usable desktop than in making purty icons and obscure menus.

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Guest LilBambi

They did fix KDE's broken-ness in KDE 4.x now and it works well even in 1 GB RAM on my laptop, but it's not good on my HP Desktop with the built-in nVidia card for some reason with the open source nouveau driver. I may have to try installing the actual nVidia driver if I want to use KDE on the Desktop.

 

For now, I am using LXDE and it's working fine.

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For some reason I always manage to mess up the bottom panel in KDE and LXDE and can never get it back the right way. Just dumb I guess. The best version of KDE I've seen out of the box is Mageia's. The absolute worst is SuSE with that abominable Rosa panel. And don't get me started about that dam' bouncing cursor.

Edited by raymac46
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The best version of KDE I've seen out of the box is Mageia's. The absolute worst is SuSE with that abominable Rosa panel. And don't get me started about that dam' bouncing cursor.

 

Interesting. Typing this from KDE 4.10.5 in openSUSE 12.3. To me, it's quite nice. Hm, but then again you did say "out of the box." I can't even remember what it looked like out of the box.

 

Regarding the bouncing cursor, easy to change: System Settings > Application and System Notifications > Launch Feedback tab > Busy Cursor section. There, the drop-down list contains the following choices:

- No Busy Cursor

- Passive Busy Cursor

- Blinking Cursor

- Bouncing Cursor

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V.T. Eric Layton

I'm using KDE4 again, also. I had boycotted it since the initial 4.x offering. I decided to try it again when I did a fresh install of Slackware 14 on main and office laptop systems a few months back. I'm loving it! My only complaint is that it's TOO customizable. There are so many things you can tweak, turn on/off, adjust, etc. that it can be a bit overwhelming. ;)

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Guest LilBambi

Yes, it is awesome! I love the transparency on the task bar using the black transparent Desktop theme. And the Teal color on the top of the active box and item highlights. I love green. I love black. But best of all I love the transparency.

 

 

For Window decorations etc. I use a combo of Oxygen and Plastique.

 

In LXDE it already has the black bottom albeit not transparent, but that is likely what this video card is not liking, that and pulse audio is a pain ... KDE Mixer causes the CPUs to max out and the system to run out of memory and lock up. So I don't touch the KDE Mixer.

 

BTW: the KDE Mixer works fine on the Sony Vaio laptop....go figure.

 

Thankfully there is ps -A to kill errant KDE Mixer when you can't stop it any other way due to memory running low.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest LilBambi

Well the overheating HP Slimline is pretty much toast and unreliable. Now Wheezy is on an HP Media Center PC that has motherboard problems but so far is pretty stable as long as I am cautious on memory usage.

 

Jim did the hardware troubleshooting for me while I was at an appt yesterday and apparently not only the PS/2 slots are a gonner (no great loss there), but also two of the four RAM slots are bad. So went from 4GB to 2GB that quickly.

 

If I use fully configured KDE Plasma it gets flaky, but on KDE OpenBox it's working fine so far.

 

We shall see. It could be that this old one isn't a viable solution either. But we shall have to wait and see.

 

Same desktop image and colors as before so it really looks the same. It's just the cool fading and transparencies that had to go. Which I dearly love btw. But better to have a stable OS than all the cool bling on the desktop.

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