TeachingMachines's Journal: Debian 3.0 Notes

Linux Install

Information needed beforehand:
You'll need your monitor's vertical and horizontal hz. Look it up on the Internet.
Video card information. Hint: use Nvidia card; ATI has way problematic driver support for Linux.
Download latest NVidia drivers from http://nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp. Burn to disk.
Don't let Debian automatically handle your CDROM links. It doesn't work yet.

Hardware:
Configure one hard drive as the master and one as the slave with the jumper settings. (MA and SA settings) Set the Linux drive as the master disk so that it modifies the boot record on the Linux disk and not the Windows disk.

Shortcuts:
Use your mouse to select, copy, and paste to the terminal window.
Use your tab key on the command line to complete the names of files and directories.
'update-menus' is a good command to set links to programs in the graphical menu.

Begin by typing "linux26" at the prompt to get the 2.6 kernel. This is a must, because it gives you the 2.6 kernel.
Partition the HD. Best to let Debian automatically handle this if you have two hard drives.
Do the normal install process.
For video, start with Vesa drivers.

If you're using a second hard drive with Windows, or you have a dual boot partitioned disk, you'll need to configure Windows to work with the grub boot loader:

su
vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
root (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1 :w :q

Configure your DSL connection with pppoeconf:
su
pppoeconf

Update system with dselect
deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
Quit dselect when the files are updated (don't continue with dselect; quit afer the file lists are downloaded). I haven't figured out how to change the upgrade source with Synaptic.

Log into Gnome with your normal account.
Open Synaptic (Applications::System Tools::Synaptic Package Manager)
Install libgnome2-perl
Install all libgnomevfs libraries

Now do a system wide update:
1. Mark All Upgrades
2. Smart Upgrade
2. Apply Marked Changes

Here we go. This should take a while :)

Now we install NVidia drivers:

Use Synaptic to search for and install the following packages and their dependencies:
kernel-package
kernel-headers
kernel-source

Configure the source:
su
cd /usr/src
bunzip2 kernel-source-2.6.8.tar.bz2
tar -xvf kernel-source-2.6.8.tar
cd kernel-source-2.6.8
cp /boot/config-2.6.8-1-386 .config
make-kpkg --append-to-version "-386" --revision 2.6.8-2 --config old configure

Setup NVidia drivers:
1. copy Nvidia driver file to your Desktop. chmod a+rwx
2. su
3. vi /etc/X11/default-display-manager
4. comment out line /usr/bin/gdm by adding #
        1. press "i" key to go to insert mode
        2. place cursor at front of line, and type the # key
        3. press your "Esc" key to get out of edit mode
        4. type ":w" to write the file
        5. type ":q" to exit vi
5. reboot with "shutdown -r now" command

NVidia drivers: ./NV... --kernel-source-path=/usr/src/kernel-source-2.6.8

Answer yes to everything, and the drivers should be built for you.

Now, configure your xserver with the following command:
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

Answer yes to everything (just hit return) until you get to your monitor information (just double check these values). When you get to the driver section, scroll up from the vesa driver to find the "nvidia" driver, and select it. When the modules are listed, dselect glcore and dri modules. Leave the rest as is and continue with the defaults.

When you're done, open up /etc/X11/menu.lst and uncomment the /usr/bin/gdm line. Save (:w) and quit (:q). Now reboot. You might want to test your Windows installation at this point.

Sound/Audio
Generally, you want to move away from OSS to Alsa. The alsaconf utility seems to work good, so you may want to install and use it. Also, you want to reset gstreamer to use alsa instead of oss:
Install alsa-base alsa-oss
run gstreamer-properties (set to "custom" for audio settings, then reset)

File Browser::Edit::Preferences::Behaviour::
-> Single click to activate items
-> Always open in browser windows
-> Include a Delete command that bypases Wastebasket

Installed Packages:
Blender
ffmpeg
VLC
gsfonts-x11
flash
terminatorx
audacity
unzip
cupsys
apache
        configuration located at /etc/apache/httpd.conf
        startup /etc/init.d/apache

MySQL 4.1
PHP
phpmyadmin
webmin
xemacs
tcl8.4/tk8.4 (install dev files also) /usr/lib/tcl8.4 /usr/lib/tk8.4
tcllib
TkXext
-Modify "configure" file to include /usr/include/tcl8.4 and /usr/includ/tk8.4.
-install libxmuu-dev
-install xlibs-dev

Download Codecs:
MPlayer
ftp://ftp5.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/releases/codecs/essential-20050115.tar.bz2 /usr/lib/win32

VLC-mozilla
Tuxracer
foomatic-gui
lprng - for printing (currently broken; looking for lpadmin but can't find it)
Kino
Rosegarden (launch with rosegarden4)
sane
xsane
neverball
Quanta
        Kompare
        Cervisia
GIMP
        Help Browser
        Animation Package
        help-common
        help-en
mysql-navigator
mysql-server
gnucash
        libgnomeprint
        libbonobo
gnucash-hbci
dosbox (for games; see abandonia.com for games)
incrwidgets 4
itcl3
itk3
itcl3-docs
itk3-docs
libtk-img
tcltls

php4-gd (suggested by Zen-Cart)
php4-curl (suggested by Zen-Cart)
bittorrent
bittorrent-gui
cecilia
RealPlayer
Komodo
Yafray
nasm
softimage|xsi
        textutils
        fileutils
        xinetd

When configuring many packages with Tcl, probably will need to add the following options to the command line:
--with-tcl=/usr/lib/tcl8.4 --enable-threads
(it's looking for TclConfig.sh file)

tclxml ./configure --with-tcl=/usr/lib/tcl8.4 --with-tk=/usr/lib/tk8.4 --enable-threads
        make
        make install
glimmer (tcl ide)

Volume Control Panel
        Record through microphone
        Use red outlet in PC board
        Allow "Microphone Boost"
        Maximum "Capture" volume; set as recording device
        Maximum "Microphone" volume

CVS
cvs -d:pserver:[e-mail]:/cvsroot/myproject checkout modulename

PPP Configuration
After running pppoeconf, change /etc/network/interfaces to look like the following (notice the addition of the last line):

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto dsl-provider
iface dsl-provider inet ppp
          provider dsl-provider
          pre-up ifconfig eth0 up