Tips from our Members

[mechanic]

You might be shocked once you've stuck around a bit longer.

I see from the joining dates that I've been around for longer than you - but so what?

[Raffles10]

I would rather tell beginners that, since the graphical side of Linux is an add-on to the basic system, they can choose what kind of desktop they want. The fundamental choice is between desktop environments (big, tightly integrated, resource-hungry, and coming with a full suite of applications with a common look and feel) or window managers (lean, mean, fast, but requiring you (or more positively encouraging you) to assemble your own personal collection of favourite apps). I think that corresponds to a basic temperamental difference in users.

If they decide to go the DE route, then there are big DEs (gnome, KDE), medium-size (xfce) and small ones (lxde). But even the smallest requires more resources than a simple window manager on its own. Only those who definitely want a big modern desktop environment with plenty of eye-candy need to choose between gnome and KDE.

I'm currently using KDE 4.3.4 on a Tesing/Sid install, previously I had an Openbox set up with no DE installed. I've found that the demands on system resources at start up differs by approx' 5%. KDE with compositing enabled boots with about 20% RAM usage (of 2Gb) whereas Openbox used to start with 15% with xcompmgr running. I think the differences between the "resource hog" DE's and the "lean mean" WM's are much overplayed.

Tip:
Try things for yourself, don't use other people's experiences as a basis for your own decision making.

[dbbolton]

You might be shocked once you've stuck around a bit longer.

I see from the joining dates that I've been around for longer than you - but so what?

Assuming your implication that join date is connected with reading forum posts regularly, then you must have seen how many migrants come to this forum and are shocked to find out that Debian isn't exactly like Ubuntu. But since you didn't see that, per your earlier post, my assumption must be false.

Probably the most common thing is sudo-- "It wasn't installed/set up automatically for me like it was in Ubuntu". Of course this could go for any number of things.

There are also a lot of people who actually join #debian to ask questions about Ubuntu, and are appalled when someone refers them to #ubuntu. I've seen this happen several times.

[mechanic]

Ah, I think I see the source of our little disagreement, you missed the ironic nature of my initial post. Perhaps you are a US citizen?

[dbbolton]

Ah, I think I see the source of our little disagreement, you missed the ironic nature of my initial post. Perhaps you are a US citizen?

I was actually being sarcastic until you called my integrity into question.


Disclaimer: This post is not a serious post.

[jstnice]

I am not the most knowledgeable when it comes to linux but when i try to convince people to try a linux distro , i tell them that if they like mac then they would be more comfortable with gnome and if you are a windows familiar person you would be more comfortable with kde3 (xp like) and kde4 ( vista or windows 7 like).

I would rather tell beginners that, since the graphical side of Linux is an add-on to the basic system, they can choose what kind of desktop they want. The fundamental choice is between desktop environments (big, tightly integrated, resource-hungry, and coming with a full suite of applications with a common look and feel) or window managers (lean, mean, fast, but requiring you (or more positively encouraging you) to assemble your own personal collection of favourite apps). I think that corresponds to a basic temperamental difference in users.

If they decide to go the DE route, then there are big DEs (gnome, KDE), medium-size (xfce) and small ones (lxde). But even the smallest requires more resources than a simple window manager on its own. Only those who definitely want a big modern desktop environment with plenty of eye-candy need to choose between gnome and KDE.

thanks for you to share your mind.

[weedeater64]

I see it often said to "search the forum" for the answer your looking for, before posting a new thread. Fine, but I've found the forum search utility to be less than useful. Usually you'll get either no results or a whole bunch of irrelevant results *IMO*. I once did a search on this very forum for something, I can't recall exactly what at the moment, but the first result was a thread where someone had posted try using the search function, true story.

Anyway, I learned a while back one way to make better use of google, and (in my opinion a better way to search the forums).

You can search a single domain in google like this,

Code: Select all

site:forums.debian.net  put search terms here


Doing this, I've had much greater success than by using this or other forums built in search.

[debil]

You can search a single domain in google like this,

Code: Select all

site:forums.debian.net  put search terms here


There's also a yubnub command that performs the same thing: go to YubNub and type the following into search entry:

Code: Select all

duf put search terms here

[Lou]

Sometimes the installation does not go ok, the network, dns, partition, etc. This was the case of my paper boy and his old PIII/256mb ram/intel integrated tower.

We decided to clean the old hard drive, i introduced a copy of the SLAX live cd, it entered X fine, went to the terminal (it's already on root) and filled the hd with zeros:

Code: Select all

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda

or hda if it's an ide drive.


I left it running for an hour (the screen won't show nothing) then i stopped with Ctrl-c, rebooted, got the slax cd out, inserted the Lenny netinstall cd and this time everything worked. We did a minimal install and installed LXDE, he's happy as a pig in manure.

Just a tip...

[Lou]

I just wrote a couple of howtos in the Docs, Howtos, Tips, and Tricks subforum.
They are basic Lenny instalation and configuration.

It might answer some questions...

[Lou]

Great howto, comes with screenshots of the installation, best one i've seen:

The Perfect Desktop - Debian Lenny - by Falko Timme
http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-d ... bian-lenny

[leema]

Hi I am new to this site....................

[Lou]

Welcome!

[AMLJ]

I just want to suggest new users, not to mess with things too much unless they understand how Debian works.
And another tip, Google your questions before asking here...

That's it! Have fun!

[bmc5311]

tip for openbox users -

volumeicon -http://www.softwarebakery.com/maato/volumeicon.html

works well from the tint2 system tray, better and lighter weight then kmix.

best volume control thing-a-ma-bob i've found so far.