DEBIAN 7 LXDE

Debian 7 represents the transfer of Debian Wheezy (Testing) to Stable in May, 2013. The Debian Web information for downloading an installation iso is quite confusing, especially to beginners, which is a word not really in the Debian vocabulary. To get the appropriate .iso, go to Debian.org. The images offered here should include nonfree firmware. This is strictly an install image. There appears to be no way to see beforhand what you are installing.

The installation was fairly straight forward following the simplest (graphical) path offered. Debian differs from most other Linux distributions by offering multiple choices at several places in the procedure, which can be confusing to installers who don't know the consequences of the choices. My solution was to pick what appeared to be the simplist choice, which was usually quite obvious. Another peculiarity was that the basic system was installed first and then some application packages, mostly programming in nature, were offered after you have removed the installation disc and you think that you have finished. Although I had a wired connection to the internet, this later application installation program asked in several places to reload the installation disk, which I dutiful did without any problems. Not being a programmer, I just left the default application choices intact, which left out most of the special programing apps, and this seemed to work perfectly for my needs.

Debian offers over 37500 different pieces of software, which is a big plus, and every bit of it is free, which makes two big plusses, but they are tough about using proprietory software, for example, not to be allowed on installation iso's. However, if you have proprietary software that runs under GNU/Linux or GNU/kFreeBSD, you can still use it - in fact, there may even be an installer in Debian that will automatically install and set up everything for you, which is as far as Debian will go in this regard. In my case, I needed a piece of proprietory firmware to allow the kernel to find the wireless. Debian did not include this firmware in the install disc, but they did put in the install program the name of exactly what I needed. I googled the name and found Debian actually had the required package in their backroom "approved" proprietory software repository. So it was equivalent to being there. For an index of debian non-free freeware, see Debian.org. A good search engine for Linux apps is Packages.org.

With my wireless firmware installed (using gdebi, which I had to first install) and my wireless working, I had a look at my new system and was totally taken aback by two things. First, the main menu showed almost no applications. Talk about minimal install, this was it. There were two heavy weight exceptions, Gimp and Libre Office. See the table on the right for the stock installed (or non-installed) apps, and my finished version. The second surprise was speed. I have tried a lot of so-called minimal distributions over the years, and never have I experienced anything close to the speed of Debian 7 LXDE. Debian stable releases are known for their "stability", and are the first choice for servers who must be up for months at a time. So with stability (things will be the same tommorrow as thet were today) almost certain, with over 37,000 app choices as starters and with the fastest app-launches, window opening-closing that I had ever experienced, I just sat back and reveled in my new computer experience. I was always somewhat fearful of dealing with the difficulties supposedly associated with pure Debian, and so always opted for Debian-based systems that placed a layer of so-called protection between the user and Debian. Well, either Debian has changed, or this conventional wisdom is wrong, because apparently that layer of protection is like carrying a heavy pack in a speed race. It is just going to slow you down!

I generally do not install a 64-bit system in a computer with less than 4 GB ram. The advantage of a 32-bit system is that one does not have the fight of installing the dual-arch system required to run 32-bit applications like wine and skype. With less than 4 GB ram, the performance difference is essentially negligible. Since I had 4 GB Ram, I installed the 64-bit. Multi-arch was already installed, so I went directly to the biggest culprit in 64-bit distro installations, namely, getting Wine installed. I followed the procedure described in LXDE Guide, and achieved success after the second go-around described there.

I essentially followed the LXDE-OPENBOX Guide to complete the installation. Briefly:

• Used apt-get and synaptic to install my favorite Linux applications as shown in the table;
• Installed Skype and my favorite Microsoft applications as described in LXDE-OPENBOX Guide, #10;
• Installed Oracle-Java as described in LXDE-OPENBOX Guide, #7;
• Installed Lxmed Menu Editor as described in LXDE-OPENBOX Guide, #8;
• Replaced the Openbox menu.xml and rc.xml with my stock ones as described in Openbox Menu;
• Set up the automatic Wallpaper Rotation program as described in LXDE-OPENBOX Guide, #5;
• Set up Conky as described in Openbox Menu - Conky.

One warning. I do not recommend installing xfce4-screenshooter, even using no-install-recomends. It comes with a heavy load - hundreds of MB.