Installing A Debian Etch Xfce Desktop On A Thinkpad z60m

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Contents

Note: Just like every other page on this wiki, it is a work in progress. Results are not guaranteed. Use at your own risk

Installation

  • Download the Etch netiinst ISO: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
  • The install is fairly straight forward. For me, since I have XP installed on a partition I have to manually edit and congifure the partitions.
  • When to the type of install, I unselect the Desktop option. The end result of this is a very basic install, but that's ok and allows me to install only what I want later on.
  • After the install is complete, there will be no GUI....yet

sources.list

After the first reboot I modify my sources.list and add the contrib and non-free repos. I add the multimedia repo after I have a GUI interface. Make sure to comment out the deb cdrom line. 

# 
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Etch_ - Official Snapshot i386 Binary-1 (20061111)]/ etch main

#deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Etch_ - Official Snapshot i386 Binary-1 (20061111)]/ etch main

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free

# MARILLAT NON-FREE MULTIMEDIA
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ testing main

To install the Marillat gpg key 

gpg --keyserver hkp://wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 1F41B907
gpg --armor --export 1F41B907 | apt-key add -

Installing XFCE and other good base packages

apt-get install gdm xfce4 xfce4-terminal xfce4-goodies bzip2 curl xscreensaver mousepad xorg alsa-base alsa-utils iceweasel synaptic

Wireless Networking

http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php?fid=7
tar zxvf ipw2200-fw-3.0.tar.gz
cd ipw2200-fw-3.0
cp * /lib/firmware

apt-get install network-manager-gnome wireless-tools wpasupplicant

Need to add your username to the netdev group 

adduser username netdev

To add the Network Manager systray icon during startup, run the following 

xfce4-autostart-editor

From the Autostart Editor choose Add 

Name: Network Manager
Description: Network Manager
Command: nm-applet --sm-disable &

Sound 

alsaconf

Allowing Users To Shutdown/Restart The Computer In Xfce 

visudo

Add this line to the end of the file 

%shutdown ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/xfsm-shutdown-helper

Create a group called shutdown 

groupadd shutdown

Now add the username to the shutdown group. Replace username with the actual name of the user you want to allow shutdown abilities. 

gpasswd -a username shutdown

Tweaking the xorg.conf file

I replace my the default Debian xorg.conf with one from when I used to run Ubuntu on my Thinkpad z60m. It has system information that the Debian config did not pick up on and overall it make it look better.

Installing Firefox 2

If you install Firefox from the Debian Etch repositories with will be stuck with the 1.5.x release, most likely you will want to run the most recent Firefox 2.x release. These steps will show you how to upgrade to Firefox 2 and have all your plugins still work.

Note: Use this guide only if you want 'real' Firefox 2. I just install Iceweasel which is the same, just not called Firefox.

Installing Adobe Flash 9

Download Adobe Flash 9 final 

wget http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz

Extract the tar.gz 

tar zxvf install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz

Change into the new directory 

cd install_flash_player_9_linux/

Finally run the installer script and follow the prompts 

./flashplayer-installer

When it asks for your mozilla, seamonkey, or firefox directory, tell it: 

/usr/lib/iceweasel

Test here: http://www.adobe.com/go/tn_15507

Making Everything Look Better

The defalut install of Debian XFCE is a little drab. I especially hate the cursors, so this section will be a guide to tweaking the appearance of XFCE

Cursors

Fonts 

su
cp /etc/fonts/conf.avail/70-no-bitmaps.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d
fc-cache -vf


Beryl

Additonal Software

Now that the system is pretty much complete, it's time to install all that apps that make Linux great. You can either use synaptic or just copy & paste the following apt-get. Also, this is just scratching the surface of what can be installed, but this list will give you the basics of what you would get with Ubuntu.

apt-get install gimp gimp-data-extras gqview gcalctool evince gaim orage xfprint4 xchat-systray f-spot gthumb tsclient openoffice.org beep-media-player realplayer filezilla

Card Reader

My laptop has a built in SD card reader. In Ubuntu it would would automatically mount the card when it was inserted. That is a nice piece of functionality that I want to figure out how to make work in Debian. The good news is that the card reader is recognized with the install. The bad news is that I have to manually mount the card after it's inserted as root. 

mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt

Conky

My conky script shows some output from /var/log/messages This file however cannot be viewed by normal users so you need to add yourself to the adm group 

gpasswd -a username adm

My .conkyrc file

ToDo's

  • Make fonts look better
  • Get SD card inserted in to builtin reader to mount automatically (Like Ubuntu)
  • Get xscreensaver working. Currently it does not start properly

Credits

Did this help you?

Please send me a comment letting me know if this helped you at all.

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