Debian GNU/Linux is the computer operating system that I use when I get to choose. It's a version of the GNU/Linux operating system that's developed cooperatively by people around the globe. It's very stable, very high-quality, and you can decide for yourself whether you want older, more proven software, or newer software, or bleeding-edge software. Freedom and control. Sweeeet.

It's also somewhat more difficult to install than its commercial counterparts, so most people start with Red Hat or Mandrake first. You can get more info about the operating system (and the operating system itself!) at http://www.debian.org/.

• DebianPrinting
• DebianNetworking
• DebianPackages
• DebianSparc
• OracleOnDebian

woody netinst - http://people.debian.org/~ieure/netinst/ - this is a small file that allows you to burn an installation CD that gets most of its files from the net. It's much quicker than downloading an ISO because you only get the files that you need.

woody minimal cdrom image - if you don't have access to the 'net during your installation then these images might do the trick: they're very small but can build a minimal system that includes some useful stuff. http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/debian-cd/

installing Debian - install the smallest number of packages possible during the initial install process. I've found that it's better to get a minimal system up and running and then add packages to it later.

Before installation make sure that you unplug the power cord for a few seconds and then plug it back in. Modern machines don't always power down completely, sometimes they stay awake enough to see network events and I've had problems with the kernel not being able to initialize devices like network cards as a result. It's best to get a fresh start.

After installation check:

• is all of the system memory recognized (i.e. cat /proc/meminfo)? If not you might need to use a HIGHMEM enabled kernel, or pass the amount of memory into lilo.
• if you've got more than one cpu, are they all recognized (i.e. cat /proc/cpuinfo)? If not then you might need to recompile the kernel with SMP support.
• are the disk drives using DMA (i.e. hdparm -d /dev/hda)?

Before you walk away from the console:

• add one non-root account (Debian by default doesn't let root log in remotely)
• install ssh server and client
• ssh to another machine and then back again (just to test that you can)

installing using chroot - this seems like a good way to get debian onto a machine which isn't supported by Debian's installer, perhaps one with funky kernel drivers like my Compaq DL-380. http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2002/debian-user-200204/msg01010.html

installing/configuring i18n - Debian by default appears to install just the "C" locale, but you can do a little work to get many more languages. You need to install the locales package, then dpkg-reconfigure locales and pick the languages that you want. They'll be generated when you leave the program. The language codes are listed in /etc/locale.gen and there are aliases in /etc/locale.alias. To switch the locale set the LANG environment variable, e.g.

$ LANG=fr_FR.ISO-8859-1 hello
Bonjour, le monde!
$

fan speed control - http://www.lula.org/pipermail/lula/2004-January/002287.html

automatically mounting devices

GNOME 2.8 (in sid now) supports auto actions when devices (such as thumb drives and digital cameras) are plugged in. Here are my notes on getting it to work.

First make sure that you've got the right packages installed. I needed to install dbus-1, dbus-glib-1, hal-device-manager, and ifrename (and all of the other packages that apt-get pulled in).