Comments on: Testing Debian’s Lenny KDE beta

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:19:50 +0000

“Lenny (aka “testing”) appears poised to displace Etch as the popular Linux distribution’s “stable” branch next month.” In August 2008. Funny.

By: goran

goran — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:25:27 +0000

thanks!
you really make me happy and easy my life with this tutorial, and i’m very happy with my debian-lenny.

By: Randy

Randy — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 03:23:53 +0000

Thanks Robert. I have heard of xmms2 before, but I have not tried it. It’s a completely different app than xmms is. It looks to be a command line player. I like the command line and all, but not for a music player. Their website says:

List of features currently offered by XMMS2:

Client-server model

* Allows XMMS2 to have various multiple interfaces (as clients).
o Command line interfaces
o GTK clients (matching GNOME & Xfce4 look and feel)
o KDE clients (matching KDE look and feel)

But I could find no such interfaces on their site. Confusing…

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:02:11 +0000

@Randy

xmms is no more in Lenny but it is replaced by xmms2 according to

http://packages.debian.org/xmms2

By: Randy

Randy — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:43:10 +0000

Lenny Easytag installation.

Easytag is not in the lenny repos.
The latest easytag from their sourceforge page is 2.1.6.
I downloaded the tarball and tried to compile it. The compile fails with an error:
GLIB >= 2.8.0 not installed

It looks like lenny comes with v2.7 and therefore the compile fails. I don’t want to mess around with upgrading glib, so I’m going to install the easytag from sid, v2.1.4:

http://packages.debian.org/sid/i386/easytag/download

First install dependencies. These were the only ones I needed to install. If you need anything else, the output from the dpkg -i command will say what is needed.
dependencies:
#aptitude install libid3-3.8.3c2a libid3tag0

Install deb package:
# dpkg -i easytag_2.1.4-1.1_i386.deb

This installed easytag with no errors ans it loads and runs perfectly.

By: Randy

Randy — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 15:48:41 +0000

I have some more info for anyone wanting xmms in lenny. I did this last night and it worked well.

Grab xmms deb file from http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~knuta/xmms/lenny (xmms_1.2.11-1_i386.deb)
Install dependencies: aptitude install libglib1.2ldbl libgtk1.2 libmikmod2
Install deb package: dpkg -i xmms_1.2.11-1_i386.deb
this did not put an xmms entry in any menu, so you’ll have to do that manually

Note that the above website also has directions for putting his private repo in your sources.list file. If you did that, the package manager should automagically take care of the dependencies. I did not bother with that since this repo would only be used once – http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~knuta/xmms/

The other option is to install from source, if you’d rather not use someone else’s package:
http://vivapinkfloyd.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-install-xmms-in-debian-lenny.html

I did not install from source, but it looks like a standard ./configure, make, make install

On my system, xmms defaulted to OSS for the output plugin. No sound was output on that setting. I changed it to Alsa and then I had sound output:
right click anywhere in xmms > Options > Preferences > Output Plugin dropbox

Next up is installing easytag. I’ll post back when that is done.

Enjoy

By: Randy

Randy — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:14:31 +0000

Nice write-up, thanks. Another option is to use the netinstall iso image and install only the base system. Then from there you can add whatever you want. I use this method to build a minimal KDE because there’s a ton of apps in the full kde installation that I don’t use. So I install the base system, then install xorg, kde-core, and whatever apps I want. Here’s my apps list for anyone interested:

xorg kde-core desktop-base synaptic openssh-server sudo msttcorefonts konq-plugins kdeaddons-kfile-plugins kicker-applets alsa-base alsa-tools alsa-utils alsa-oss iceweasel icedove openoffice.org openoffice.org-kde kuickshow ksnapshot kamera kdeartwork kdemultimedia-kio-plugins kaffeine kpdf kget ktorrent2.2 rtorrent wget curl rsync k3b libk3b3-extracodecs htop rxvt-unicode kgpg kdf ark kwalletmanager kcalc kchmviewer krename keepassx kuser cfv par2 kpar2 dvd+rw-tools sshfs build-essential mozplugger menu xfonts-terminus ttf-inconsolata x-ttcidfont-conf rss-glx kscreensaver kscreensaver-xsavers xscreensaver xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra xscreensaver-data-extra kmix gtk-qt-engine unrar rar unzip kwin-style-crystal kde-icons-crystalproject vlc mplayer libxine1-ffmpeg libxine1-misc-plugins screen kget knemo kde-guidance sysv-rc-conf

Here’s some themes/icons/cursors/etc:

themes (window decorations?):
kwin-style-crystal kwin-style-powder kwin-style-blended kwin-style-serenity

styles:
kde-style-comix kde-style-polyester kde-style-klearlook kde-style-lipstik kde-style-serenity kwin-baghira kde-style-qtcurve kde-style-domino

icons:
kde-icons-crystal kde-icons-gorilla kde-icons-mono kde-icons-nuovext kde-icons-crystalclear kde-icons-crystalproject kde-icons-korilla kde-icons-noia kde-icons-nuvola

cursors:
crystalcursors chameleon-cursor-theme comixcursors industrial-cursor-theme oxygencursors

Here’s the apps on my “optional app” list:

ksim knetworkconf kio-apt kio-locate kdegraphics-kfile-plugins kdeaddons-kfile-plugins kdeadmin-kfile-plugins kdemultimedia-kfile-plugins kdenetwork-kfile-plugins filelight fusesmb audacious kde-kdm-themes (will also install kdm) kdmtheme (will also install kdm) kde-guidance-powermanager neverball kpat frozen-bubble fusesmb (or smbnetfs – also uses fuse and is more recently updated) smbfs p7zip-full p7zip

There are a couple packages that I want that are not available for lenny: xmms and easytag
For easytag, the etch version installs and runs OK
For xmms, I found a deb package on the net that seems to work fine, or I can build it from source.
Other than these 2 apps, everything I wanted was available either from debian or from debian-multimedia repos.

You can look up package descriptions here: http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages
Here’s where to get the lenny netinstall images: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

A previous commentor asked why use lenny instead of kubuntu. My reason is that the latest kubuntu comes with kde 4 and I don’t want to run that yet. With debian I can run my trusty kde 3.5. I’ve found that the lenny installation I outlined above runs much faster than my previous kubuntu 8.04 installation.

By: Darkman

Darkman — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 16:18:17 +0000

Damn fine HOWTO! (Some of the commentors need to get a life.)

By: CJ

CJ — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:05:57 +0000

As has been stated by others, Linux is all about the freedom to do with your system what you want to do. How the reviewer went about getting his system to work the way he wants it to work is his prerogative. How I go about setting up my system is mine and how you go about setting up yours is your prerogative. For some people nothing but free software will do and for others adding proprietary software helps them get the functionality they want. In the end isn’t the goal to have a computer that meets your particular needs? This silly bickering back and forth is pointless and a total distraction from the review.

By: neighborlee

neighborlee — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:16:50 +0000

Xiando says its Fascism to use anything but IceWeasel, , and that if anyone would use Skype or flash, that those people aren’t somehow ‘worthy’ of his time ; talk about Fascism, you are not one to talk Im afraid . Practice what you preach.

It is true we need to worry about our freedoms , or lose them which is why I support debian and not ubuntu due to the mono issue because I too value my freedoms, and realize if I am not willing to stick up for them then I may indeed lose them and anyone else that relies on them.

good day.
nl