[nmglug] Meeting and installs,

[Ted Pomeroy]

Hello Everyone, I am sorry I will miss the meeting tomorrow, 03-29-12.
I had a long install session with help from Mars D. to get a new
install of Debian testing with KDE on a laptop configured a few years
ago by Laclinux. Many thanks, Mars. I made some errors, despite having
clear instructions, but by the end of the day, voila, a graphical
system and sound. No built in wireless and my pci card (Atheros
chipset) has not worked yet. As this is a switch for me, from Gnome to
Kde, I am now going a bit slowly, I did enjoy the effort needed to use
command line for the install. I got a little sloppy towards the end,
but found vim easy enough to edit all the files I needed and my
knowledge of the file tree helped. Missing wifi will make it slow
going for a while as I want to add other programs and need to fix
koffice. I am back a few kernel nuances (2.6.32-24 from 2.6.32-38) and
using ext3 file system, not the ext4 which Ubuntu uses now. Main
issues were getting sources.list correct, making a correct
/etc/apt/preferences file and making sure to include the xserver-org
package to go graphical. Feels good to be using Debian, even if only
just a start. BUT, for the less energized, using Ubuntu or Mint may be
a good way to go.
In that direction I have looked at Kubuntu 11.10, which is the current
release showing where the 12.04 LTS release will probably go. It seems
okay, and avoids the too unique Ubuntu replacement for Gnome. I still
like menus.
See you next time, on April 12th.