[vox-tech] XF86Config Question

[Robert G. Scofield]

On Wednesday 12 January 2005 18:45, Rick Moen wrote:
>
First, let me say thanks for the post.  There's a lot of good stuff in here 
for me.  So I'm saving it.
>
> Under ordinary circumstances, you should not need to manually download
> individual packages (or sets of packages) for a Debian box.

In this Sarge net install you download 110 megs only.  After this "base" you 
then go online and download what you want.   Debian advertises this as a 
convenient way to download pointing out that it's quicker than downloading 
iso images for a lot of packages you don't want.


>
> > Apt and Aptitude, or whatever it is, plays around with packages,
> > removing "unused" ones, etc.
>
> That's not a bug; that's a feature.  ;->

Yeah, I'm just not used to it.  While I haven't yet figured out what Aptitude 
is doing exactly it does seem to be cleaning things up.


>
> > So I'll download KDE again, and read about how to set it up.
>
> I honestly would advise against:  I suspect you're solving the wrong
> problem.  If you're getting odd results from trying to use the normal
> package-management tools, it might be useful to describe those, so
> people can help determine what if anything is wrong.

The oddest thing I've seen so far is Aptitude in menu mode.  I seem to do 
better with the command line.  Every time I want something in menu mode all 
of the 8,000 to 14,000 Debian packages are set to be downloaded.  It's not 
practical to type the "-" 13,000 times to get just the KDE packages.  Asking 
for KDE from the command line is more straight forward.

The Debian website lists some books on Debian.  I was thinking of posting to 
Vox to see if anyone had a special recommendation for a Debian book.  Debian 
requires more study than the Red Hat, Mandrake, and SuSE that I've used. 

Bob