hi. I'm a debian newbie in a pretty big way.
I installed potato from CD (the $9.95 price for the potato build
was easier for me to swing than the $21 for woody) on a Powermac
8500/200 with 128 MB of RAM and 2 2GB scsi drives (1 is partitioned
for boot, root, usr, var and a small mac partition, the other is
all for home).
I use BootX 1.2.2 to boot the system. I got everything partitioned
and installed and it loads up nicely (is that a picture of Tux
holding a *beer* during the boot sequence?! very amusing). And I
guess I installed the right packages because it installed without
complaining (that I could see).
So there's a sort of "now what" feeling in me. I was able to use
lynx to hunt around some of the file system and I feel comfortable
with things like changing directories and so forth. I logged on as
me (instead of root) and I feel good about that.
BUT
I guess what I'm asking is, does anyone have suggestions vis a vis
a good starting place? I mean, I can read man files all day--
although I could use a tip for generating additional workspace so I
can bounce between a man file and trying out the instructions--but
*which* man files should I look to first? I'm such a GUI victim I
don't know what to do-- I miss having a help window open while I
work.
The first time I did the install I think I screwed up X because
when I entered startx after logging it, it greyed the screen and
did nothing ever again. So now I'm a little gun shy and I've
decided I'd like to navigate and use the command line.
Also, I use my other macs and wintels for you know, the usual--
word processing, checking mail, research, spreadsheet work, and
fun n' games. I just went with a "standard" install-- of course
maybe I should have documented by hand what packages I loaded. So
far I can't get online, don't know how to print and I don't know
what work I can do.
For example, if this were a mac, I could go to my tcp/ip control
panel and make sure I'm seeing my firewall and I could go to a
browser to test if I'm getting beyond my firewall, etc. And I can
go see other macs on the network. If this were a wintel machine,
I could go to the start menu and open up the help files and pore
over them in a window on the left while jumping from application to
application in a window on the right. And in either case I could
be typing poetry and stories and printing or emailing them to
friends. Or retouching my photos to give myself a third eye while
holding a spear of fire. That kind of thing.
So I'm at that point where I'm realizing the trade off of user
friendliness for *power* is backfiring a bit. Because now I
supposedly have all this power and I'm uncertain as to what to do
with it. I now have enough knowledge to be dangerous. I think.
I hope someone can gently prod me in the right direction. I'm glad
to be here in the sense that it was easier than I thought it would
be, but now I'm scared and the wolves are after me.
JonO
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