On Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 07:52:42PM -0400, John R. Culleton wrote:
I wasted most of the day on Debian Etch. When I discovered that it didn't even have a gcc compiler I gave up.
apt-get install gcc would have sorted that out for you quite nicely. Debian is such a large distribution that almost everything isn't installed by default, but it's easy enough to add more packages during the install or afterwards.
And I still haven't figured out how I turn off Gnome and get KDE back, although KDE was esy to download with apt-get install. Probably there is something to muck with in /etc/X11.
Most display managers (but not xdm) will let you pick which window manager you want from a menu, before you log in. If you're wedded to xdm, you can use the update-alternatives program to switch the default window manager system-wide, or just edit your ~/.Xsession file.
I guess Debian folks just figure that all their users will want the Gnome GUI. That's not to my taste. All I want from Gnome are the libraries.
That simply isn't true. Debian is just a distribution, and it doesn't care which window manager you use. Like gcc, Gnome isn't installed by default. I have neither KDE nor Gnome installed. Instead, I have fluxbox and enlightenment DR17.
Sorry if I seem a bit curt. It's just that it was Debian's easy-to-use package management and wide range of packages that originally sold it to me. I know people who've been put off Debian because they thought the distribution was too large, or because it doesn't have the 'my first linux box' administration techniques of some distros, and I can understand those viewpoints, though I don't agree. But I just can't see how anyone could use Debian and end up with the impression that Gnome is mandatory and compiling software is hard.