Debian Squeeze

BigAl-sa

BigAl-sa

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I've been running it for about a week on my netbook (killed the win partition and shoved it in there). I think it's perfect for older folks because it's so stable, which means minimal hassles with updates. I'll definitely be looking to using it for folks I'm trying to wean off win (even if some of the apps are a bit dated). However, for myself, I find I can't use several things I like, so I'll prolly put Sid onto my new machine after I've built it later this week.

Three things which made me waste a lot of Google hours:
gthumb doesn't work (however, I've found geeqie);
there are no non-KDE GUI download managers;
wine is stuck on 1.01, so Kindle for PC (for one) doesn't work and it looks like a real pain in the butt to try and build a newer version from source (and keep Squeeze's stable bits stable).

I have got the Voria add-ons working, so at least I can use the netbook's special function keys. I must say I really do like being able to use su!
 
I tend to use Testing (not sure what it's called now) on desktops. As stable in my experience as stable, just not as dated.
 
koffiejunkie said:
I tend to use Testing (not sure what it's called now) on desktops. As stable in my experience as stable, just not as dated.
Click to expand...

may as well move to sid. despite its unstable name, it is actually as stable as other distros.

but stable has backports which often has close to recent versions of popular apps.
 
milomak said:
may as well move to sid. despite its unstable name, it is actually as stable as other distros.

but stable has backports which often has close to recent versions of popular apps.
Click to expand...

Will add the backports to see what else pops up, but from what I've read, I'm not hopeful.
 
I don't have a Testing box handy (had to move to Ubuntu at work to get some of the work software to work) but packages.debian.org says it's at 1.0.1-3.1 for Testing and Unstable, and 1.1.24-2 in Experimental.
 
koffiejunkie said:
I don't have a Testing box handy (had to move to Ubuntu at work to get some of the work software to work) but packages.debian.org says it's at 1.0.1-3.1 for Testing and Unstable, and 1.1.24-2 in Experimental.
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Tks. Same old version that's in Squeeze.

I've found with Squeeze I can't get USB to work in a virtualbox client. Works just fine on the Ubuntu partition next door :(
 
BigAl-sa said:
Tks. Same old version that's in Squeeze.

I've found with Squeeze I can't get USB to work in a virtualbox client. Works just fine on the Ubuntu partition next door :(
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I had that problem under 64bit squeeze and Ubuntu. It's not anything to do with the operating system, but something with permissions. Let me see if I made notes on it.
 
koffiejunkie said:
Yeah, that didn't take long. It was something along these lines:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-to-Fix-VirtualBox-USB-Support-111715.shtml
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Thanks Koffie, I had already added myself to vboxusers. However, I had read on a thread on the virtualbox forum that someone had to restart his machine twice to get it to work. I had restarted once (I couldn't see why a second boot would make a diff), then switched off in disgust. After reading one of the comments in your link I switched on the netbook to check something that I saw about allowing the machine to use a virtual machine and lo and behold, I could see the USB (including bluetooth and webcam). So I have a feeling you may have to do a shutdown for some machines to release the USB.

I must say though I can't remember such an issue with Ubuntu on the same machine, although I did set that up quite a while back.
 
koffiejunkie said:
I don't have a Testing box handy (had to move to Ubuntu at work to get some of the work software to work) but packages.debian.org says it's at 1.0.1-3.1 for Testing and Unstable, and 1.1.24-2 in Experimental.
Click to expand...

I read somewhere that the maintainer for wine "resigned", and as yet no-one has taken on that position, which is quite sad. It must have been quite a while back as I downloaded v1.1.16 in March 2009. The current stable version of wine is 1.2.3 and that, at least, should be the version in Testing. The development version is 1.3.23 and one would expect something like that in Sid (although with Sid you can compile your own). Evidently, the problem with compiling your own in Squeeze and Wheezy, is a set of libraries which have not been cleared to be included in the repos.

Maybe I should look into becoming the maintainer for wine :D
 
BigAl-sa said:
Thanks Koffie, I had already added myself to vboxusers. However, I had read on a thread on the virtualbox forum that someone had to restart his machine twice to get it to work. I had restarted once (I couldn't see why a second boot would make a diff)
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I only had to log out of my desktop and log back in. I can't imagine why you would have to reboot, unless you're logging into your desktop as root, perhaps (naughty)?
 
koffiejunkie said:
I only had to log out of my desktop and log back in. I can't imagine why you would have to reboot, unless you're logging into your desktop as root, perhaps (naughty)?
Click to expand...

Been around unix too long to do something that doff ;) Whatever it is, there's plenty of folks on the web talking about it. I have a feeling it may have something to do with the onboard webcam and bluetooth device on my netbook (both are seen as USB devices).
 
koffiejunkie said:
You're running Virtualbox on a netbook? Brave man! Mine can barely cope with it's own OS...
Click to expand...

I actually tested Squeeze, with Compiz & Cairo, in a Virtualbox (Ubuntu host) on the netbook before I installed Squeeze into its own partition. That's why I can't understand people running down the atom N270 as being useless ;)
 
BigAl-sa said:
I actually tested Squeeze, with Compiz & Cairo, in a Virtualbox (Ubuntu host) on the netbook before I installed Squeeze into its own partition. That's why I can't understand people running down the atom N270 as being useless ;)
Click to expand...

Well, I have a dual-core Atom 1.6 (D510 or something like that). It's fine for running an OS, checking mail, doing the usual desktoppy stuff. But the reason I bought it is so that I an have a lightweight travel laptop that I can use to backup my photos (CR2 files), geotag them, keyword them while the day's adventures are fresh in memory. I took it on one trip, and it was so dog slow, if I didn't end up being stranded in Switzerland because of the snow, I would never have gotten through all the images.

I have OSX on the laptop, with Aperture. The laptop (ASUS 1201N) has nVidia ION graphics, which OSX and Aperture both see, but just the act of importing paralyses it to the point where I can't even move the mouse pointer, let alone checking my mail while I wait. I thought it's probably down to the hackintosh drivers being inadequate, but I tried the same thing in Windows 7 with Lightroom and in Ubuntu with whatever the default app is (shameless copy of iPhoto), and the result was pretty similar.
 
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