GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
Desktop Survival Project Home Preface Advocacy History Distributions Installation Basic Survival Wajig Audio AbiWord APM Backup Bash Booting Cameras CD Chinese ChRoot Clock Commercial Conference Management Configuration CRON CVS Databases DIA Directories Disks Documentation DVD Email Eye of Gnome Evolution File Systems Firewalls Floppy Disks Fonts Ghemical GIMP Glade Gnome GnuCash Gnumeric GQView Graphics Groups HTML Editors ImageMagick Initialisations on Booting Java KDE Kernels Keyboard Konqueror KVM Switch LaTeX Log System Login Magellan Mathematics Memory Modems Mounting Devices MS/Windows Music MySQL Nautilus Networks NFS NT File System OpenOffice.org Oracle Packages Partitions Passwords PDF Photos PPP Presentations Printing Python R Remote Desktops Rsync Samba Scanning Science Security SH File System Sketch Spell SPlus Spruce SSH SUDO Subversion Swap Themes USB Video Virtualization Web Word X XML Sample Installations Troubleshooting Index

Debian 3.0r1

Boot using Debian 3.0r1 CD-ROM with:

boot> bf24

Choose en, English (United States), qwerty/us, partition /dev/hda (/dev/hda1 / 36GB ext2, Swap 1GB), initialise swap, initialise partitions, modules (kernel/net 3c59x), network (fairmond, 105.229.8.169, 255.255.255.192, 105.229.8.190, act.cmis.csiro.au, 125.83.72.15 125.83.72.1), base system, bootable (lilo in mbr), create a boot floppy, remove floppy and CD, reboot.

After reboot set up GMT, Australia/ACT, no md5 passwords, enable shadow passwords, root password, normal user: kayon, remove pcmcia, no PPP, apt from cdrom (insert 3.0r1 CD), no tasksel, no dselect, continue with package installation with defaults, exim: 2, fairmond.togaware.com, none, none, none, mailhost.togaware.com, kayon.

Base installation is complete. Install discover in case some hardware can still be identified (like network cards).

Now set up the system. First, apt-setup to add other sources of packages, in particular, to add unstable, and then install wajig. Install grub (grub-install /dev/hda; update-grub), remove lilo, and reboot. Then upgrade the whole distribution to unstable. Use tasksel to install Desktop (fails with abiword/abiword-gnome conflict, so install gnome and x-window-system instead), Linux Standard Base, File Server, Unix Server, Java, C/C++, Python, LaTeX, Scientific. Might also need: cupsys acroread acroread-plugin rubber.