>From: SOTL <sotl155360@earthlink.net>
>Reply-To: slug@nks.net
>To: slug@nks.net
>Subject: Re: [SLUG] Debian
>Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:13:47 -0500
>
>Thanks for your help.
>
>This is getting damn flustering.
>The objective was to make a small MySQL server of basely a telephone
>directory
>of clients for our business.
>
>What I have firmly established is that doing such with the current disarray
>in
>Commercial Linux distributions, Red Hat, SuSE, and Mandriva, that that is
>not
>possible for anyone on the lass that guru level.
>
>Believe me, I have tried this 6 times now 3 last night 3 today using both a
>standard Debian Desktop Installation and a choose package installation and
>all I have gotten is a installation that immediately installs apparently
>the
>same command line installation. I am now downloading the disks but
>considering that I have major issue with the other 3 other major
>distributions I am not keeping my fingers crossed. At current download
>rates
>I will have this downloaded in 4 or 5 days if things work well, more if
>not.
>
>X was not downloads nor was Gnome nor was KDE which is why I posted this. I
>could have easily screwed up one time that would be one thing but 6 times
>with complete setups. I don't think so. At least not so badly that I could
>not get to the part where you choose packages.
>
>I will state one thing though that is sure to get me flamed but from the
>user
>perspective unless SuSE, Mandriva and Red Hat clean their act up fast.
>Consider the typical small business is the group that could benefit most
>from
>using Linus and that the typical small business is composed of 5 to 10
>office
>level personnel that would utilize computers. I personally can not imagine
>any business type to switch to Linux until issues such as this are
>resolved.
>No small business personnel is going to waist the time that I have put into
>this in the last 2 weeks. Believe me they are not going to do it nor allow
>any of their employees to do it either. Things are simply going to have to
>work. ODBC and JDBC Connectors when install are going to have to connect
>[Mandrake]. MySQL when started will not give error messages indicating
>MySQL
>Server is not installed by will actually function [SuSE]. Kfish and Kbear
>will work [Red Hat] {Did not even bother to check any futher with Red Hat
>it
>is still so screwed up by the Blue Curve that I can not imagine anyone
>using
>Red Hat.]
>
>I will keep you guys informed but judging from quality of Debian and
>internet
>install to say that I am less that impressed would be kind.
>
>Thanks
>
>SOTL
>
I think that the issue here is that you have not installed the X server.
X is divided into two parts (client & server*). GUI programs require the X
client to be installed but not necessarily the X server since the server
could be on another machine. However, most desktop users want both the
client and server installed on the same machine.
So, executing a command like "apt-get install gdm" will make sure that the X
client, GTK, gdm et al are installed, but it does not ensure that the X
server is installed (becuase not every use case requires the X server). One
must explicitly install the X server.
There is a metapackage** in the Debian repositores that depends on both the
X server and the X client. I'm not sure what it is called. In Ubuntu, I
think that the package is called "x-window-system-core". Ubuntu uses Xorg
though and Debian uses XFree86 so there may be some slightly different
wording.
This is just a basic introduction to X in order to help you figure out what
is (or isn't) going on after a fresh install of the Debian base. There are
other aspects of system administration (using apt-get, using a CLI text
editor, configuring sources.list, configuring X) that one should also be
familiar with when doing a base install of Debian. As others have mentioned,
it may be a better idea for you to try another distro that simplifies this
process, unless of course you're willing to learn the in's and out's of
Debian and Linux.
-Jonathon
*X terminology can be a little confusing at first. The X server runs on the
machine where the user is sitting. It accepts mouse and keyboard input. It
also draws everything on the monitor(s). The X client is the machine on
which the GUI programs are installed. The client and server can talk to each
other over a network or locally through network sockets.
**A metapackage is a package that does not contain any files itself but
depends on other packages. Metapackages usually exist to simplify installing
a group of packages that do not necessarily require each other but that
users often want installed together.
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