[Installing Debian + Gnome 2 for a Newbie] -
Installing Debian + Gnome 2 for a Newbie
Discuss Installing Debian + Gnome 2 for a Newbie
Posted by: tavilach
I bought a Dell PowerEdge Server for $300, and want to install Debian on it, with Gnome 2.
I'm a very fast learner, and very good at technology...
...but I'm a total Linux newbie, and I have never even installed an OS on a computer without one...
Can anyone give me some advice...like where to start? How to go about doing all this?
I don't know what to do first!
Posted by: mikesgroovin
Thread moved
Posted by: ByTeDeMoN
ok tavilach, so you are saying you have a new Hard drive and want to do a clean Install of Debian ? or is this drive partioned in any way ? give me info I'll get you started.
Posted by: tavilach
No, I have a new computer.
I'm assuming the drive isn't partitioned yet, as it comes with No OS.
I want to do a clean install.
Posted by: ESmandrake
Since you've never installed an OS before I'd suggest you get hold of either Morphix - the Gnome version - or GNOPPIX. Both are Debian based live CD distributions using the Gnome desktop, so you can begin to get a feel for both Debian and Gnome without having to install anything. I've played with Morphix a little and it's very nice, it includes the ability to install to your hard drive and has to be one of the easiest ways to get Debian installed. Plain Debian doesn't have the most new-user friendly installer going, something like Morphix or GNOPPIX is much easier.
[url]http://morphix.sourceforge.net/[/url]
[url]http://www.gnoppix.org/[/url]
~~~
Steve
Posted by: tavilach
I appreciate what you are saying, ESmandrake, but I'm trying to set up a server...which I bought specifically to run Linux.
So I'm totally going for the real deal.
I think I have the intellect required, seeing as how I'm an MIT applicant ;).
So...help!
Posted by: ESmandrake
Hmmm, can I ask why you want to run Gnome on a server? Gnome is a desktop environment.
Anywayyyyy, if you want to install plain Debian you'll need all your machine's hardware details. Chipset, network card, scsi controller if it has one, video and audio if you'll be using them, all the hardware it has. This is one of the advantages of using Morphix and GNOPPIX to install Debian: they have hardware detection. So making sure you have all that info is your first step.
Step two depends on how you want to install, do you have Debian CDs already? If you don't, and you're on a fat pipe, a net install CD is probably the way to go.
A lot will depend on what you actually want to use the machine for. What services are you going to be running, for how many users, will it be an internal server or publicly accessible?
Some more info on what you want to do with the machine would help.
~~~
Steve
Posted by: tavilach
Yes, heh, I realize that Gnome is a desktop environment.
I will use the machine as a personal server to experiment with (publicly accessible, though, to host my site), as well as just something to play around with (hence the desktop environment).
I am planning on doing a net install.
Posted by: ESmandrake
OK, now it makes a bit more sense :)
How big is the hard drive? You can just dump everything in one partition but there are advantages to separate partitions, depending how much room you have available. I'd recommend having /boot /usr and /home on their own partitions.
If you're going to be using Debian/testing it includes Gnome2 (2.4 to be precise), but for stable you'll need one of the backports. I wouldn't bother with stable for what you're going to be doing. If you tell me how big your drive is I can give you my thoughts on partitioning and installation, though other people will probably have other ideas.
~~~
Steve
Posted by: tavilach
Oops! I forgot about this post!
Anyway, my hard drive is 40 GB.
At the moment, I am not too unfamiliar with Linux--that's the main reason I want to use it.
So I really don't know what /boot, /usr, and /home are...even though I can guess...
It includes Gnome 2.4? Someone told me it would be **** to install Gnome 2.4 on top of it, but I guess they were wrong?
Posted by: ESmandrake
40G is more than enough: unless you have a lot of audio or video files that'll take up the space I'd use at most 10G for your Debian installation. That way you'll have room to try out some other distributions if you want to, without messing with your main install.
/boot /usr and /home are some of the standard directories.
/boot contains boot related stuff - surprise surprise - including bootloader config info, and your actual linux kernel image[s].
/usr contains the majority of your applications. Having it on a separate partition means you can mount it read-only, less chance of accidentally borking something, or someone else intentionally doing the same.
/home is where user's home directories are located. Using a separate partition makes backups easier, plus you can use a different file system. If you're going to have lots of small files reiserfs is good, whereas for large files, like video, XFS is better.
Assuming you just use 10G of the 40 you have, I'd do something like this:
/ 2GB
/boot 80MB
/usr 2.5GB
/home 5.5GB
The installer will ask how you want to partition the drive, and let you assign the partitions to the directories, or mount points, listed above. / is the root directory btw.
There are three Debian distributions: stable testing and unstable. Gnome 2.4 is part of testing and unstable. It's not in stable but there is at least one well maintained backport that seems to install and run just fine, so no matter which version of Debian you use it certainly isn't **** to install Gnome. Anyway, hope this helps get you started.
~~~
Steve