[NBLUG/talk] The Debian Way

[Andrew]

Walter Hansen wrote on Thu, 27 Oct 2005 15:21:59 -0700 (PDT):

> Also the desktop takes some getting used to, but I've never
> used it much anyway, so that's probably mostly me(KDE).

If you're having trouble with the default graphical environmnet,
you may want to have a look at Enlightenment. No, wait. Try
XFce4. On second thought, maybe IceWM. No, no! I've got it:
Blackb... no Fluxbox. Hold it. Now I'm thinking AfterStep or
possibly LarsWM. Ok, ok, Sawfish! Sawfish is the one. Unless you
think you might like 9wm more. Or GNUStep, maybe? That, of
course, is usually paired with WindowMaker...

Oh, wait. Didn't you say you were a KDE guy? Well, then install
that.

It's all in Debian.  :-)


> I do want to know what sort of mechanism is commonly used for
> starting and stopping services and setting them up for run
> level.

As has been mentioned by others, the standard way to
start/stop/restart daemons on-the-fly from the command line is
with:

# /etc/init.d/daemonName [start|stop|restart]

And to reconfigure the runlevels from the command line you'd use
the update-rc.d utility.

However, if you're more of a GUI person, you'll probably want to
grab Fabio Marzocca's BUM.

His Boot-Up Manager is a graphical utility to configure runlevels
without getting your hands dirty. It looks like it might also
start and stop services on the fly. It was developed under
Ubuntu, but since Ubuntu is essentially a repackaged Debian, it
works in Debian, too. In fact, you can apt-get it from Testing or
Unstable, or just download the .deb from
http://www.marzocca.net/linux/bum.html

Come to think of it, this probably would have helped Franis sort
out her NTP problem a few weeks ago. You listening, Franis?


> I've even learned vi recently (finally)
...
> So I learned it kicking and screaming because it was simpler to
> learn than install something better.

"better"? You might want to be kind of careful how you express
your opinion of editors. Them's fightin' words 'round some parts.
Here at NBLUG, we're generally level-headed and non-religious,
but if you stray into the wrong part of the 'Net, you could find
yourself in the middle of a small but vicious war!  :-D


> And then there's configuring the desktop for various
> settings.

By that are you referring to configuring X? The Debian Way for
that is with "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" (if you've got
XFree86) or "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" (if you've got
X.Org).

A.