Getting a GUI
Posted by kamaraju on Tue 3 Jan 2006 at 10:51
After installing Debian, often one is left with just a command line prompt waiting for the user to enter login and password. If you are coming from Microsoft Windows environment, this command line prompt looks similar to the DOS prompt. This article explains how to get a GUI environment after installing basic Debian.
Since I have experience only with KDE, I will try to focus just on installing KDE.
In order to get a working GUI as quickly as possible, run the following two commands as root.
apt-get update apt-get install x-window-system kde kdm
This will fetch all the required packages necessary to run KDE.
During the installation of the packages there will be some questions regarding configuring X environment etc., Once you finish answering all the questions, you will get a working KDE environment.
I advise to install the kdebase package instead and add later the programs you really need. Happy KDE experience :)
Fnor
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Indeed, but for entering user it's very nice to have all installed. Todays space storage is capable enough to provide space for all of KDE (and even Gnome).
BTW - I'd like to see more that mini-article touched.
Best Regards,
Luke
PS. Yes, my english is horrible. ;)
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
I did an install on a box for someone, and he kept complaining that bits were missing and he needed to use "apt" to get them.
When he tried MACOS he was happy it was all "just there".
That the MACOS install took 5 times the disk space available on the machine we installed Debian on, seemed to pass him by. Especially when we still had a couple of Gig free for him to use.
If you are setting up Debian for a newbie, use decent, compatible, hardware, and stick in as many of the 16 thousand packages as patience, bandwidth, and conflicts will allow.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
If I have kde installed and I want to use only the kde apps which are included in kdebase, is it possible to have kdebase installed without first remove kde and then instal kdebase?
thanks
unixsurfer
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
If you then want to remove a "lower" package (say, kdegames) apt will warn that you are removing "kde", but you are actually just removing only the metapackage, not all its dependencies; so kdebase, kdelibs, etc will stay there.
Hence, if you just want kdebase, you could do:
apt-get remove kdemultimedia kdeadmin kdenetwork kdepim kdeaddons kdeartwork kdeutils kdewebdev kdegraphics kdegames (or kde-amusements, depending on the version you have, and I might forget something)
You'll see that kdebase (and kdelibs, an essential package) will stay there even after APT removes "kde", like a lower brick in a pyramid would stay put if someone took out the top :)
The same would happen if you removed a single program in a metapackage, say kcalc: after
apt-get remove kcalc
APT will complain that you are removing "kdeutils"; but all the other programs included in the "kdeutils" metapackage will stay there. I'd personally reccomend to install everything and then take out the single programs you don't need.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
you said that if I remove kcalc which is part of the kdeutils metapackage I will not lose the rest packacges of the kdeutils meta package.
I did a test removing the kmilo and see what happenned
# aptitude remove kmilo
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done
The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED:
ark dosfstools kcalc kcharselect kdelirc kdessh kdf kedit kfloppy kgpg
khexedit kjots klaptopdaemon ksim ktimer kwalletmanager
The following packages will be automatically REMOVED:
kdeutils
The following packages will be REMOVED:
kdeutils kmilo
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 18 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 11.1MB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
Writing extended state information... Done
(Reading database ... 123000 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing kdeutils ...
Removing ark ...
Removing kfloppy ...
Removing dosfstools ...
Removing kcalc ...
Removing kcharselect ...
Removing kdelirc ...
Removing kdessh ...
Removing kdf ...
Removing kedit ...
Removing kgpg ...
Removing khexedit ...
Removing kjots ...
Removing klaptopdaemon ...
Removing kmilo ...
Removing ksim ...
Removing ktimer ...
Removing kwalletmanager ...
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done
# aptitude show kcalc|grep State
State: not installed (configuration files remain)
aptitude show kpdf|grep State
State: installed
so, some packages were removed and some were not!
how can I see what packages a meta package includes?
regards,
unixsurfer
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
#apt-get install aptitude
then open aptitude which is a text(actually ncurses) based package menu.
To search for the kde package use "/kde" to serach. I have found that aptitude uses a keybinding similar to vim.
Hope that helps... I started using Debian Woody with Dselect and almost tore my hair out trying to find and install packages. Sarge defaults to aptitude. Now that I am more familiar with some packages I use apt-get a good bit.
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
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We don't have a printer at present, nor am I on a laptop. There are a few K applications dealing with these circumstances that I'd like to get rid of, but each one tells me it's going to remove kde, kde-core, or kdeutils (I'm using Synaptic to mark the packages).
Just so I know, does this mean I don't have to worry about removing meta-packages, as the packages it contains will remain? I'm sure this will come in handy down the track...
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
apt-get install x-window-system gnome gdm
If you prefer to not use a desktop environment, I would recommend fluxbox, mrxvt, gkrellm and rox-filer as my favorite window manager, terminal, system monitor, file browser combination. You can get all these with:
apt-get install x-window-system fluxbox mrxvt gkrellm rox-filer
-l
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
Never heard of rox-filer before, but I've always been tired of Nautilus and this looks like a very good alternative.
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commande line to use my GUI mode interface but the reply is E: couldn't find package x-window-system .what does it means?
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Tasksel may be use during the install of Debian, but you may launch at any time :
tasksel
It should be already installed, else just apt-get tasksel.
Regards
[ Parent | Reply to this comment ]
startx
will start you graphical UI ??
(startkde does the job too ..)
Marc
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~viper~
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-Trash
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http://ftp.gva.es/mirror/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/3.1_r2/i386/iso-cd/
http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/
...
to get back to our GUI issue, amazing that all those brains have not managed in years to offer an intuitive approach to installation and the rest with a tree structure access with up-down-left-right arrow keys ... so weird, almost like some competitor gave them a personal phone call... "an offer you can't refuse" to just play dumb and not write the 10M code to implement it.
...
In the meantime let's just study the silly two thousand lines of DOS-like commands like when we first had those 'puters in the seventies, we had to propell with coal (but they were fun and warm in winter).
:-)
Eric
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