Need a new distro?

[koffiejunkie]

Ubuntu is nowhere near as stable as squeeze.

Hence the quotes I don't think I've used anything that's more stable than Debian Stable (of any version from Slink through Squeeze). And yes, that includes the BSDs.

 

[BigAl-sa]

Hence the quotes I don't think I've used anything that's more stable than Debian Stable (of any version from Slink through Squeeze). And yes, that includes the BSDs.

I'm pretty happy with the last squeeze installs I've done (except for firefox) - going to move the missus soon, and that should be the real test...

 

[koffiejunkie]

Yeah, the Debian/Mozilla issue is silly and quite childish IMHO. But I just compile my own - I think I posted the instructions here before.

 

[ponder]

Check my squeeze thread on p2 of this sub forum. If you're sukkeling, use sgfxi to do the install for you. Works pretty much like the envy scripts for ubuntu.

Thanks, someone over at the cruncbang forums recommended the same thing.

Think I''l leave it for tomorrow, way to tired after chowing a dik rump steak

 

[ponder]

Check my squeeze thread on p2 of this sub forum. If you're sukkeling, use sgfxi to do the install for you. Works pretty much like the envy scripts for ubuntu.

Method 2 from http://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...l-nvidia-drivers-for-debian-gnu-linux-749929/ works like a bomb!

You have no idea how relieved my ears & mind are as the gpu fan stopped spinning at 10 000rpm as soon as I got the driver installed

 

[ponder]

With the nvidia driver installed things feel much better and I like xfce, feels like gnome2.

I need to go f around with apt pinning so I can upgrade xfce to 4.8, makes me nervous as I would hate to experience dependency issues.

Then I need to start tweaking things like fonts, themes etc etc.

 

[ponder]

Who hosts the most reliable (up to date & speed) local debian repos?

Edit: I tried changing my sources list to debian.mirror.ac.za but a few things like backports for example fails.

 

[Smiley_lauf]

ponder, have you considered MEPIS? It is through and through Debian, but runs on KDE4.x. Very stable and no time installing.

 

[ponder]

ponder, have you considered MEPIS? It is through and through Debian, but runs on KDE4.x. Very stable and no time installing.

I tried mepis once way back and did not like it so never gave it any thought.

I'm happy with crunchbang and my xfce was easily updated to 4.8. No changing or going back now.

I've decided not to do anything to the default font setup, I actually like the way they are (for now). They seem crisp & sharp compared to ubuntu's patched cairo package.

All that's left for me to do is install my commonly used apps and then theme xfce which will be a new experience for me.

 

[milomak]

My Ubuntu 10.04 is giving me endless schit, instead of fixing it I think I would rather install a distro based on debian proper (stable), 64bit.

are you prepared to stick with the same version numbers until debian next releases a stable version?

That's based on Testing.

Nothing wrong with testing. In fact I would almost always advise it for a desktop environment. Add apt-listbugs and you should be gold. In fact I use the same advise and I run all my systems on sid.

Hence the quotes I don't think I've used anything that's more stable than Debian Stable (of any version from Slink through Squeeze). And yes, that includes the BSDs.

i would 100% recommend stable for a server. when i switched to debian i ran it (think it was etch) for 6 months. Then moved on quickly through testing to sid. Never looked back. And despite how people may try to scare, unstable/sid is as stable as Ubuntu. Which shouldn't be very surprising that the starting point for an Ubuntu distro is infact a snapshot of unstable.

and if you run sid, it also helps to have the aptosid repo.

 

[koffiejunkie]

i would 100% recommend stable for a server.

Yes. And depending on what the application is, and who the the client is, I *might* consider testing on a server.

 

[ponder]

Nothing wrong with testing. In fact I would almost always advise it for a desktop environment. Add apt-listbugs and you should be gold. In fact I use the same advise and I run all my systems on sid.

How frequent and big are the current testing updates?
When do the freezes occur?

I've enabled apt-pinning for some stuff from testing like xfce4.8, gvs-fuse, chromium & iceweasel.


I discovered e4rat this morning and shaved 12sec off my boot time.
http://lifehacker.com/5790311/e4rat-cuts-your-linux-pcs-boot-time-in-half-with-a-few-simple-commands

When using plymouth with the above guide make sure you specify plymouth:force-splash kernel line in your grub config. Oh, it only works on ext4 fs.

 

[BigAl-sa]

How frequent and big are the current testing updates?

Check my first post in this thread. Currently (since 1 Sept) there are 16MB of updates for wheezy. That excludes the dist-upgrade for cups (rather fooz + cups).

 

[ponder]

Check my first post in this thread. Currently (since 1 Sept) there are 16MB of updates for wheezy. That excludes the dist-upgrade for cups (rather fooz + cups).

Ta, forgot about that. I'll stick to pinning for now.

EDIT: I can see that using some things from testing is gonna cause major schit for me. I just tried to install virtualbox from the VB repos and I'm getting dependency issues due to a newer version of qt that was pulled in by some other app I installed from testing. So now I'm installing VB from testing, eventually everything I install will probably be from testing

Beginning to think this is all a bad idea on my part...

 

[BigAl-sa]

EDIT: I can see that using some things from testing is gonna cause major schit for me. I just tried to install virtualbox from the VB repos and I'm getting dependency issues due to a newer version of qt that was pulled in by some other app I installed from testing. So now I'm installing VB from testing, eventually everything I install will probably be from testing

Beginning to think this is all a bad idea on my part...

Why don't you install VB from Oracle rather than the repos? Having the USB capabilities is a huge plus (the PUEL version works fine on the squeeze installs I've done recently).

http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/

 

[koffiejunkie]

Oracle has a VirtualBox apt repository. See http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

Make sure you install the expansion pack for USB2 and such nice goodies.

 

[ponder]

I just tried to install virtualbox from the VB repos...

Why don't you install VB from Oracle rather than the repos?

Oracle has a VirtualBox apt repository.

The problem occurred while trying to use the Oracle/VB repos.

The VB4.1 I installed from testing does not say -ose so I assumed it was the non ose version? This being debian I assume incorrectly I gather?

Nobody seems to be reading my posts, just assuming things. That or they think I'm an idiot


EDIT:
Something weird here. I just double checked the bash command I used to install VB and then compared it to all available versions in synaptic.
I specified it be installed from testing with sudo apt-get -t testing install virtualbox-4.1 but when I look at synaptic now it says it's installed from the VB repos.
Adding the VB repos and trying to install with sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.1 was met with dependency issues, hence trying testing.

I'm confused.

 

[koffiejunkie]

The problem occurred while trying to use the Oracle/VB repos.

Sorry, I haven't reloaded this page since before you made your edit. Sometimes using the ubuntu repos work better if there's no testing/unstable repo for Debian.

Nobody seems to be reading my posts, just assuming things. That or they think I'm an idiot

If you give me root to your box I'll fix it for you. Otherwise man up

 

[ponder]

If you give me root to your box I'll fix it for you. Otherwise man up

Nothing to fix, it ain't broke. Running fine.

I'm just confused about how the hell it installed from the VB repos while I specified testing and when I told it to use the vb repos it biatched about dependencies. Black magic I tell you.

 

[BigAl-sa]

I doubt very much whether you'll have a non-ose version of VB in the debian repositories. Debian's philosophy is strictly open source or no go.

I'm using the squeeze PUEL version from Oracle on my wheezy machine. I do vaguely recall having to install Qt stuffies when I first installed the Vbox though.