Netinstall blues

[pottzie]

Tried pidsley's guide to doing a netinstall using 64 bit. Everything seemed to work, but when I boot into the fresh install, after the screen scrolls (more like screams) through the initial sequence of whatever a new system does, it then changes to a dark (blank) screen, like it's going into some graphical "something," I dunno, maybe it's trying for a Debian splash screen. But no image, just a dark screen. Ctr/Alt/f1 doesn't work, neither does any other f key combo.

What did I do wrong? Just remembered that when I tried going in with the grub 'advanced options' there were 5 identical entries for (jessie/sid)

EDIT: The only problem I remember having during the install was that I never saw where to tell the installer to format to ext4. I found "Use as ext4" OK, just never saw where "Format the partition" was.

I had previously made the partition using gparted, but had formated there as ext2, thinking that the installer would make the change.

[wuxmedia]

sounds like a graphics "something"
in grub select your install.
hit 'e'
should take you to a list of gibberish.
find the 'linux' line.
add, after 'ro' - 'nomodeset' (no quotes)
hit F10 to boot.
It might look like 1990 VGA but it should get you in.

what GFX card do you have?
there are a few different ways of putting something in the grub line to fix it.
for instance my intel (never had a prob before) needs 'modeset=1'

good luck

[pottzie]

Well..whaddya know! Had a busy day, booted into the Trollinger partition, that took WAY longer to load than it normally would. after that, when I was about to try fixing the Debian install, Debian worked! I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I'll go from here and see what happens next.

By the way, what happens next? Pidsley's guide says that there are a couple of guides to use to use to get things working, but I haven't found them yet. Mainly I need a WM, browser, flash player, and if they weren't included in what I've done already, wireless and sound.

Where are those guides at?

[DebianJoe]

Well, let's see what all you could do:
You could use a pidsley script to download source for cool window managers.
or
You could build a totally elitist Frame-buffer build that doesn't use window managers at all.
or
you could use tasksel to build your bloated bloat fest.
or
You could sudo apt-get install libX11-dev, and get the dwm source and make a customized dwm desktop.
or
You could "sudo cd /usr/local/bin && wget -Nc smxi.org/smxi.zip && unzip smxi.zip && smxi" from tty to go get flash and other neat cli tools that you might want.
...sky's the limit bro.

[pottzie]

Whew! Them's a lot of options. And I'm at work now, and have time to search and see what most of these actually do, too.

Looks like this is going to take a bit of tire kicking.

EDIT: After doing a thorough (read: 15 min, max) review, I've come to my conclusion of what I'm really after.

I just want to watch porn.

[rhowaldt]

^ tire kicking is most definitely the way to go.

[machinebacon]

Wants to watch porn... uhum!
1) boot into the netinstall and install Xorg
2) pick a tiler like dwm or i3, or even just an Openbox + obconf + lxappearance
3) install a browser + flash plugin
4) set browser to open maximzed if in Openbox, set HOOK=fullscreen if in tiler
5) ....
6) profit!?

[pottzie]

That damn near worked, MB. I went with the Openbox combo, what I wound up with was a screen with a mouse "arrow," and nothing else. Right clicking brought a menu that only showed a single 'browser' option (I installed both Iceweasel and Chromium, system defaulted to Iceweasel.) Did however play Youtube, but no sound, alsamixer was there, but I never got any sounds, and with a blank screen and not getting it to work from the terminal, I said fugit and installed LXDE.



And then............my God, what have I done! Looks like Gnome on steroids. Aggh!

[wuxmedia]

that's why he's the grillmeister 8)

[machinebacon]

@hotzpotz

my warm recommendation for a smooth ride independently of gtk-shit etc:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update
wget -c https://dl.google.com/linux/direct/google-chrome-stable_current_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i google-chrome-*.deb
# you will be told to install 4-5 smaller dependencies, do this in one line and then
sudo apt-get install -f

I recommend (not really, but for the sake of easiness) Chrome because it comes with flash inside, so no need to fuck around with adobe's flashplayer-nonfree package. And you can run it in kiosk mode (see LinuxBBQ Unia)

[rhowaldt]

Openbox combo, what I wound up with was a screen with a mouse "arrow," and nothing else. Right clicking brought a menu that only showed a single 'browser' option (I installed both Iceweasel and Chromium, system defaulted to Iceweasel.)

this is default Openbox, and normal. the default to Iceweasel is because it is set as your default 'x-www-browser'. use

Code: Select all

update-alternatives x-www-browser

if you want Chromium instead. you may also customize the Openbox-menu and add shortcuts to both browsers so you can pick.

Did however play Youtube, but no sound, alsamixer was there, but I never got any sounds, and with a blank screen and not getting it to work from the terminal, I said fugit and installed LXDE.

wow, you give up quick! have you even tested audio independent of Flash?

i think you gotta either put in some more work or use a more full-featured release to do the work for you.

[pottzie]

Been a few days, and I've been busy doing other stuff. Hey, This is the first Debian install that I can actually work with, bloat or no bloat. Prior to this I was pissed that I had to do so much cornflagragating to make anything work! This pig may be a heffer, but after getting it working, I'm going to try it and see what it does for a while. Not liking that it takes about 47 mouse clicks to shut down, or that it's probably impossible to drag-n-drop from one disappearing/resizing window to another, but I did see that the developer said that LXDE with qt(?) was not that much larger than what we think of as the normal LXDE. And I'm seeing what a difference installing through Debian makes over most distros. Maybe slightly slower than Trollinger but runs circles around Bubuntu.


That said, I've got a hard drive that's collecting dust, and I'm a believer in not knocking something I haven't tried. So maybe I'll have another go at it.

So here's where I'm at. I ran Pidsley and Gangbang before I installed Sid. I didn't 'get' either of those. Pidsley was the same splash screen on eleventy different WM's, and no matter what or where I clicked, nothing changed. I decided that MB was playing a trick, and that no matter which WM or DE or whatever, it was all just the same screen. Wikipedia says there's a difference between Window Manager and Desktop Environment but I'll be damned if it makes sense to me. Window Manager , uh, I guess displays the window(s), hence the trickey name. Desktop Environment? Must be some kinda doohickey.

In Gangbang, I got stuff to happen by right clicking, but where do I go from there? and just because it's lightweight doesn't make it better. if all it took to make a killer system was lacking bytes, an empty hard drive would be the best operating system on the planet. I saw stuff that would make Windows 98 look like quantum computing. Maybe it's just because I like fat girls, but I want something with a little meat on it's bones.

So, there it is. I saw the screen fiil up with files falling off the page when I installed LXDE extra heavy. But what makes it worse than installing a Window Manager that just makes the mouse arrow?

[machinebacon]

Of course WMs make a difference. A Desktop Environment is a collection of applications, one of which is a window manager:

LXDE -> Openbox (by default)
GNOME2.x/MATE -> metacity
KDE -> Kwin
XFCE -> xfwm

You can place any (of the 60 something that there exist) WMs to play the role of a WM in a desktop environment. In the BBQ Pidsley release, they are similar but different, of course. Karmen, for example, decorates windows; cwm doesn't; alopex has a bar at top, etc.
They usually have different keybindings to open, for example, a root menu (most WMs do *not* have one), or to resize/move windows. Have you actually looked into the .xbindkeysrc file, as suggested in the release notes? Probably not, else you would have notced that Alt-F3 opens dmenu, Alt-F1 opens a CLI menu, Alt-Shift-Enter opens a terminal, and so on. The "splash screen" is called background or wallpaper, of course it can be changed for any WM - because it is loaded independently of the WM:
- Crunchbang uses nitrogen, if we take a distro as example
- LXDE uses PCmanFM, and XFCE needs xfdesktop to display wallpapers
- Gangbang/Pidsley use hsetroot, as a RAM/HD-saving solution, started via "/usr/bin/start-wm" - take a look there.
I'm not trying to be a dick (because I actually am), but

In Gangbang, I got stuff to happen by right clicking, but where do I go from there? and just because it's lightweight doesn't make it better.

Firstly, in Gangbang only WMs that actually *have* a root menu can display one (JWM, Fluxbox, Openbox, PekWM, Blackbox, TWM), others display something like a window placement menu. Secondly, what is lightweight? All WMs are pretty similar in resource usage (say: give and take 3-4megs of RAM), which is *nothing* on a system that is actually capable to run Debian Sid. Below 128meg you probably can't even install netinstall, as it needs 256meg, and of course some CPU that has the instruction set. So - back to the original point:
There is a user, and there is what he wants to do. He then decides what suits him best. 80% of the time I use a CLI system, either in X or in tty -- something like a tmux session with a few apps running, and occasionally I check youtube, so I log into an X session. To run a browser in full-screen mode doesn't even need a WM. It can be a blank .xinitrc file, or something with "exec $BROWSER", hopefully it starts maximized. Of course one could run a KDE session too, to open a browser inside.
The mouse arrow is not the business of a WM. This is what X11 does for you. And if you start a WM without calling xsetroot for mouse, you don't even have a real mouse pointer, but an ugly "X" as pointer. here you go, any interest in further criticizing the wrong part of the system? It is not the WMs fault - 95% of the WMs out there are heavily tested and used, probably the most/best tested interface in Linux land, partly developed in the 1990s, and perfectly integrated in X11.

[rhowaldt]

I saw stuff that would make Windows 98 look like quantum computing.

by contrast, the *functionality* of the stuff you saw makes Windows 98 look like a piece of diseased meat sliced from a crippled dying horse. the way of looking at things is a dependency of understanding.

somewhat related: http://linuxbbq.org/wiki/index.php?title=Bloat
whatsome related: http://linuxbbq.org/wiki/index.php?title=BBQ_Philosophy

[DebianJoe]

I've tried to let this one go, but due to the obvious Dunning Kruger Effect I don't think it's possible for me to just chill out on this discussion.

All users are different, and have different needs. I tend to go with the iron-fist kung-fu approach of having ONE thing done exceptionally well (which is also the Unix philosophy) as the best possible answer. I use dwm often because for what I do with a system...it's exactly what I need, and not much else. I don't tend to criticize other people's choices unless it's just jokingly referring to 'bloat' because I don't care what color the bikeshed is. If it works for you, then that's great. Don't assume that I will like it, though. Each and every WM that exists was created for some purpose. Regardless of if it was for ease of use, ease of configuration, efficiency, an art project, a variation of configuration choices and languages, etc. It is foolish to assume, though, that your limited understanding of the subject puts you in a position to criticize the product. I would not know a good set of yoga pants from a shitty set, as I don't do yoga...so I choose to STFU about things that I don't understand. I also wouldn't appreciate having a yoga instructor criticize my taste in boxing gloves. "They don't allow your wrists to flex slowly."-Yoga Person. Of course they don't! They weren't designed to.

In the Linux world, there are literally thousands of options to finding something that should fit most needs. Find something that fits your needs and use that, but don't preach about its superiority to all other things that don't fit your viewpoints.

[GekkoP]

Totally agree with DebianJoe.
As I always say, I'm a noob on mission. A mission called "learn, kid, LEARN". With Linux it is an ongoing learning thing. I believe everyday since I moved away from Windows (and from Ubuntu) I've been learning something new. The beauty of it is simple: there's always something I don't know that I have to understand and see if it's the right thing for my needs. Lately I fell in love with cwm and i3, but who knows what else I can find if I keep looking for something new.

[wuxmedia]

yeah to the aboves.
potz if all you want to do is watch porn/browse, then install 'Unia' or better run it on an old 1GB USB for no trace perusing...
if you want win'esque then hit Arrogance or another XFCE spin, great for everything and then some.
i too tried making my own XFCE, got pretty far configurating the thing, then bacon pops a spin that blows my efforts away.
not sure if the unix philosophy expands to 'one person doing one (or multiple) things well' but works for me.
basically i'm lazy, but i want to learn, if i'm learning i'll hit RICE or killX -
like changing the plastic covers on your car wheels and putting some furry dice on the mirror does not qualify you to be a mechanic.
anyway i'm blathering on and on here, again.
I should take more note of my sig 8)

[pottzie]

Well, that escalated quickly. Sorry if I ruffled some feathers, and it's obvious I don't have a clue what difference swapping WM's makes.

I was going to do another install on the dual core lsptop that LXDE wound up on, but since I just re-inherited a complete "pile of poo" 2003 or so Compaq that probably won't even work with flasplayer, I'm in the process now of installing a 32 bit Sid as we speak. Hell, ain't nuthin' gonna hurt this turkey, and it's waiting to have it's fenders ripped off and raced at the local dirt track. So I'll see what comes of it.

I've heard of running video from the command line, never thought I'd want to, but what the hell. Worst that could happen is I learn something, even if it's just that it sucks, and that no one in their right mind would go about it that way. I may have as few brain cells as it takes to do it.

BTW, I just installed Wifey on a computer for a family member that can't find the on/off button. Looks like it works good, and that even they will have a hard time breaking it. Although they're always up to the challange.

I'm sure there's acertain mindset to mucking about with the gizzards. This might be a fine start to whats probably going to be a steep learning curve.

And you're all wrong about my mother.

[wuxmedia]

swapping WMs is a matter of preference. main diff is tilers(i3, dwm) vs stackers(openbox, xfwm)
a DE gives what could be considered a full environment, file browser, desktop / icons, wm - all playing by the same rules.

video in the command line hard?
use with pretty much any BBQ release;

Code: Select all

mplayer name/and/path/of/Your.movie.file.mkv

in X11 it pops a window (mines seems to be set to fullscreen automatically) and from there you have space for play/pause arrow keys for skip 5 secs, it's resizable.
if you mean from the ttyx or framebuffer, thats a bit harder - but the same principle.

[machinebacon]

^ as wux says. And there's also an important file called .mplayer/config in which you can set stuff like fullscreen, or which rendering to be used. Mplayer and cvlc are simply genius.